The Ernest Bloch companion /

Kushner (Univ. of Florida) is today's foremost specialist on Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch (1880-1959). This study builds on Kushner's Ernest Bloch: A Guide to Research (CH, Jan'89) and his numerous other writings about Bloch in periodicals and encyclopedias. The title word "companion" seems inadequate, for this is really a major "life and works." An opening overview is followed by chapters covering the alternating periods of the composer's life in Europe and the US. The discussion is richly documented and includes descriptions of Bloch's music and its reception, the composer's varying philosophical positions and wide intellectual interests, and his important role as a teacher and administrator in several American institutions. The epilogue offers a major critical assessment of Bloch's place in the history of classical music. One of the important composers of early and mid-20th century, Bloch continues to be performed and recorded today. Though preserving the established idea that the most celebrated core of Bloch's music is "Jewish" (Schelomo, Sacred Service), Kushner extends Bloch's eclecticism to encompass both neoromanticism and neoclassicism. The book has copious musical examples and photographs and an appendix on Bloch's production as a photographer and the relation of this activity to his composing. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and performers; general readers. W. K. Kearns emeritus, University of Colorado at Boulder