Professor Emeritus Ernest Bloch in Portland, Oregon, Famous Musician

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                

       Ernest Bloch in 1917at age 37   He and his wife lived primarily in the small coastal community of Agate Beach, Oregon (now Newport). 

Ernest Bloch was an Oregon Jewish musician. Bloch was born in Geneva on July 24, 1880.  He began playing the violin at age 9, and began composing soon after. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. He then traveled around Europe, moving to Germany (where he studied composition from 1900 to 1901 and back to Geneva before settling in the United States in 1916, taking US citizenship in 1924. In 1925 Bloch resigned from the Cleveland Institute, where he had not been happy, and relocated to San Francisco. He was named the director of the Conservatory and remained in that position until 1930, when the school was running low on funds. He returned to Switzerland, where he composed his "Avodath Hakodesh" ("Sacred Service") before returning to the US in 1939, the year Germany entered Poland.                                                

Bloch joined the music faculty at Berkeley in 1941 and taught there one semester each year until his retirement in 1952.In 1947 he was among the founders of the Music Academy of the West summer conservatory.

Ernest Bloch (July 24, 1880 – July 15, 1959) was a Swiss-born American composer. Bloch was a preeminent artist in his day, and left a lasting legacy. He is recognized as one of the greatest Swiss composers in history. As well as producing musical scores, Bloch had an academic career that culminated in his recognition as Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley in 1952.

Ernest and Marguerite Bloch lived in Agate Beach from 1941 to 1963. Ernest died in 1959, Marguerite in 1963. In 1976 the Governor of Oregon accompanied by Bloch’s three children dedicated the Ernest Bloch Memorial in a wayside in Agate Beach near the home in which the Bloch’s lived.

Bloch's compositions - in particular the Suite hébraïque for viola and orchestra, Baal Shem for violin and piano (later orchestrated) and Schelomo for cello and orchestra - often reflect his Jewish heritage. Bloch's father had at one stage intended to become a rabbi, and the young Ernest had a strong religious upbringing; as an adult he felt that to write music that expressed his Jewish identity was "the only way in which I can produce music of vitality and significance". 

"Perhaps what is at the heart of the question is his genius for evocative color in music. If some of his works evoke the atmosphere of the Old Testament, they also operate elsewhere with equally telling and totally different effect: the Gauguinesque South Seas in the slow movement of the first Quintet, and China [in the last of the] Four Episodes are examples. Beside Israel stand Helvetia and America; beside Scenes from Jewish Life stands Nirvana."

In the gap between 1916 and 1942 Bloch had taken a path from New York’s Mannes School of Music, London Chamber Orchestra, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, a sabbatical in his native land, UC Berkeley, and Agate Beach. 

His was a storied history filled with organizations (Library of Congress, London Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Juilliard School of Music and numerous others) 

world centers (New York, London, Tel Aviv, Chicago, Philadelphia) and giants of the 20th century, including Albert Einstein, Rafael Kubelik, Leonard Bernstein, Claude Debussy, Jascha Heifetz, Diego Rivera, Georges Szell, Serge Koussevitzky, Frida Kahlo, Griller Quartet, Zara Nelsova, Yehudi Menuhin, Isaac Stern, Igor Stravinsky, Sir Adrian Boult, and Ansel Adams.

Family Tree:  Geni.com

Ernest Bloch Hebrew: ארנסט בלוך
Birthdate:	July 24, 1880
Birthplace:	Geneva, Genève, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland
Death:	July 15, 1959 (78) Portland, Multnomah, OR, United States (Cancer)
Immediate Family:	Son of Meyer Maurice Bloch and Sophie Bloch Husband of Marguerite Elisabetha Augustine Bloch Father of Ivan Kolia Bloch; Suzanne Bloch and Lucienne Dimitroff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Bloch

https://coastarts.org/events/bloch-legacy/#:~:text=Ernest%20and%20Marguerite%20Bloch%20lived,in%20which%20the%20Bloch's%20lived.

https://oregoncoasthistory.org/2023/07/11/the-man-from-agate-beach-the-legacy-of-ernest-bloch/

https://www.geni.com/people/Ernest-Bloch/6000000016202588775