From the Concert Hall to the Synagogue

    If Paul Nizon had wanted to include a Swiss composer in his "Diskurs in der Enge" (1970), he could not have ignored Ernest Bloch (1880–1959) as a quintessential example in music. Switzerland did not afford the multi-talented musical artist the necessary opportunities to develop freely and live on the fruits of his creative talents. Thus, the same year that Bloch created the Hebrew rhapsody "Shelomo," a cardinal work in modern Jewish music, the Geneva-born citizen of Lengnau in the canton of Aargau immigrated to the United States.
    His meteoric rise that started in his newly chosen homeland in 1917 as a music professor at the David Mannes School in New York took him to his next milestone in 1920, when he became the director of the Cleveland Institute of Music. As a Jewish musician in Switzerland, a career of these proportions would have been impossible. In 1925, Bloch advanced further to become the director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, spent the years between 1930 and 1938 in  Central Europe and was finally, in 1952, named Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of California (Berkeley). At the time of his death on July 15, 1959 in Portland, he left behind a considerable oeuvre as a composer as well as a photographer.

Visionary of Film Music

    Though his contribution to absolute music – including five string quartets, two sonatas for violin and two quintets for piano – enriched modern chamber music with numerous masterpieces, his merits in the service of Jewish music go considerably beyond his other accomplishments. He was the first composer to systematically develop a so-called "Jewish Cycle" comprising instrumental and vocal pieces. Psalms 22, 114 and 137 – he started work on them in 1912 – embody the preliminary work for vocal and orchestra, while the orchestral "Trois Poèmes Juifs" (1913) introduce this unique cycle.
    Interestingly, in the piece "Danse" that is enriched with sensual sounding orientalisms, Block anticipates the special sound of film music that did not develop in Hollywood until much later. Simultaneously, this visionary musician points the way in one of the major directions that Jewish music would take in the 1920s in Europe. Pseudo-Orientalist scales with excessive intervals that would soon become a cliché created and spread a mood among the listeners that was intended – together with the corresponding scenic associations – to awaken associations with the Old Testament.

Hebrew Rhythm of Speech

    With his sophisticated orchestral sound, Bloch unintentionally contributed in a substantial way to shaping American film music that was later further developed and typified by Aaron Copland and immigrants like Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Ernst Toch. This blend of Orientalist sound opulence and epic width provides "Shelomo" for violoncello and orchestra even today with its lasting effect worldwide. Aside from an imitation of the shrill sound of the shofar as well as archaic-sounding quints intended to conjure up biblical images, the novelty lies in the extremely differentiated rhythmizing of the narrative, rhapsodizing music. Ernest Bloch dared emulate the rhythm of speech, meaning the intonation of the Hebrew language, by instrumental means. The composer borrowed the accent placement that falls mostly on the last or second to last syllable for his musical language, refined by late Romanesque and Impressionist influences, in order to transfer them primarily to the monologues of the solo instrument having the function of Salomon's voice. With this conceptual principle, he assured himself a historically founded base upon which generations of composers after him could build.     Various composers attempted to create music that especially emphasized Jewishness in Western and Central Europe by tying their works to old song traditions. Juliusz Wolfsohn with his "Paraphrasen über altjüdische Volksweisen" (1921) for piano as well as Darius Milhaud with the "6 Chants populaires hébraïques" (1925) for voice and piano are beautiful examples for this neo-folkloric mainstream.
    Ernest Bloch juxtaposed this approach, which was oriented on handed down sources, with an independent, individualized principle. He admitted he did not intend to "attempt a revitalization of Hebrew music while building upon more or less true melodies." In 1922, he put his intention into powerful words: "It is the Jewish soul that I am interested in, this multi-faceted, glowing, agitated soul that I am sensing based on my reading of the Bible; the freshness and simple-mindedness of the Patriarchs, the fierceness as expressed in the Books of the Prophets, impetuous love of justice, the despair of the Preacher of Jerusalem, the pain and inscrutability of the Book of Job, the sensuality of the Song of Songs …" He let himself be quoted in 1938 by the periodical "Musica Hebraica," he would listen "only to an inner voice" in order to be moved and inspired by his Jewish heritage.
    Even in creating "Avodath Hakodesh" for baritone, choir and orchestra  (1930–1933) in Roveredo-Capriasca in the Tessin region, which is his major religious work, except for a brief recitation by the cantor, Bloch stayed away from any adaptation of traditional topics from liturgy. The same significance that the choir work has for modern synagogue music, which is only comparable to Milhaud's "Sabbath Morning Service" (1947), is to be assigned in Bloch's instrumental music most likely to "Baal Shem –Three Pictures of Chassidic Life" (1923) for violin and piano and the  "Suite hébraïque" (1951) for viola and piano. They conclude the "Jewish Cycle" and one of the high points of all of Jewish chamber music.

Walter Labhart is a journalist and respected music expert. He lives in Switzerland.