Ernest Bloch

Bio

Ernest Bloch (1880–1959) was a Swiss-American composer whose music fused late-Romantic European traditions with Jewish liturgical and folk elements. Born in Geneva, he studied in Brussels, Frankfurt, and Munich before emigrating to the United States in 1916, where he became an influential teacher at institutions such as the Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of California, Berkeley. His best-known works include the rhapsodic Schelomo for cello and orchestra, the Israel Symphony, and the Sacred Service (Avodath Hakodesh). Bloch’s chamber music—string quartets, violin sonatas, and piano quintets—remains a cornerstone of the 20th-century repertoire, admired for its intense lyricism and modal color.