Ernest Bloch in San Francisco 

Authors

  • David Z. Kushner University of Florida Author

Abstract

During his tenure as Artistic Director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (1925-1930), Ernest Bloch, skilled in the art of multi-tasking, managed to compose three award-winning compositions, create nineteen watercolor paintings, and maintain a romantic life that included four extra-marital lovers. In addition to these endeavors, his official activities included teaching, conducting, fund-raising, and curriculum development. The compositions, apart from Abodah, the only Judaic work of the period, tilted in the direction of nationalistically focused populist expressions; indeed, these works, namely the four Episodes for chamber orchestra, America:An Epic Rhapsody, and Helvetia, subtitled “The Land of Mountains and its People,” were an effort to reach not the elite, but the average music-loving audience. While some critics were puzzled by this turn from the vast epics of the “Jewish Cycle” and the more abstract chamber music represented by the two violin-piano sonatas and the Piano Quintet No. 1, the judges who found these works worthy of prizes in major competitions saw that it was possible to create well-crafted art works that could also have wide audience appeal. Similarly, the watercolors, virtually unknown and hidden in a museum vault, are far removed from the expressionistic art championed by Galka Scheyer, one of the composer’s lovers. Like the musical works, they, too, seek to plumb no depths; however, unlike the brilliant technique and orchestration displayed in Bloch’s compositions, the paintings do not aim to please critics or, for that matter, a wide audience. They are the efforts of a dedicated hobbyist. What emerges from Bloch’s San Francisco years is a portrait of a multi-dimensional personality, whose professional and personal life merge in ways that reveal something 
of the pathways he would follow in the years that led him back to Europe and back again to America. To this day, Bloch’s nomadic existence is a source of fascination to many, and his creative life, with its many changes in direction and its all- encompassing eclecticism, continues to merit attention. 

Author Biography

  • David Z. Kushner, University of Florida

    Dr. David Z. Kushner, Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of Florida, is the author of Ernest Bloch: A Guide to Research, The Ernest Bloch Companion, and such previous Min-Ad articles relating to Bloch, as “Religious Ambiguity in the Life and Works of Ernest Bloch” and “Ernest Bloch: The Cleveland Years (1920- 1925).” Other publications include “Jaromir Weinberger: From Bohemia to America” in American Music, “Marc Blitzstein: Musical Propagandist”  in The Opera Journal,” “Reflections on the State Songs of Florida” in Min-Ad, and the articles on Ernest Bloch, Marc Blitzstein, Jaromir Weinberger, John Powell, and T. Scott Huston in The New Grove Dictionary of American Music. He is a recipient of the President’s Award from the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (2014). In February 2015, the College Music Society Southern Chapter established the Kushner Award for the best student paper submitted for presentation at the annual conference of this organization. Dr. Kushner has recently been teaching courses for the Institute for Learning in Retirement, a division of the University of Florida’s retirement community, Oak Hammock. 

Downloads

Published

2024-04-26

Issue

Vol. 12 (2014)

Section

Articles