Ernest Bloch: The man and his music; Episode 9 of 15

Riverside radio presents the ninth in a series of 15 programs. Ernest Bloch the man and his music the commentator for these programs is Suzanne block. The composer's daughter and a member of the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music. On today's program you'll hear poems of the Seaver solo piano with Mario I am Ian and the concerto Symphony for piano and orchestra with Marjorie Mitchell as soloist. And here to introduce our program is the composer's daughter. Suzanne block during the summer of 1921 before moving from New York to Cleveland Ohio where Bloch had accepted the directorship of the Cleveland Institute of Music he took his family for a vacation to the little village of pixy in the province of Quebec. At the very edge of the gaspé Peninsula in those days it is a wonderfully isolated there were no automobile roads. One came by slow train that at times jobs you know to to get a cow off the tracks. There was only one hotel in Tennessee and the sum of visitors were mainly from Montreal and Quebec. This is ideal for the blocks because they hated resorts and crowds the magnificent beach was

almost empty. Little fishing villages were picturesque with the sort of natives that endeared block who always liked the simple people close to nature. He converses the old sea men whose speech was hard to understand. The French mix of English and old sixteenth century expressions. The people themselves like to talk to the strange sympathetic men who seem to be interested in their lives and problems. Work was terribly indignant at the way these fishermen were exploited. They saw the catfishes to Montreal and Quebec dealers for a song and then were sold back their own fish at exorbitant prices that you would tell us that they lived on the heads of the card costs same to us. Sybil lifted demoed it brought tears to our parent's eyes and when they could they would tactfully hand out the little money to these thin philosophical children. Among the visitors their block met a remarkable man most in your goatee archbishop of Montreal. At that time these two would meet at the beach and after talking about trap fishing would burst forth into the gore and sham discussions singing in full

voice as to the competence of the cigars. A sight and sound I happily witnessed. Another person my father admired was a woman over 55 years of age who cut trailers all over the wilderness and discovered a large crevice in the hills which became known as like crack and I'm sure a vet. And I'm sure they had such an impact on us all that which children wherever we have been in wilderness have made a point of cutting trails. The atmosphere was just right for block to begin to judge down things inspired by the sea and these things became the primes of the sea for piano which he prefaced with a quotation from Walter Whitman in cabin ships at sea. The boundless blue on every side expanding with whistling winds and music of the waves the large imperious waves or some lone bark Boyd on the dense Marine where joyous full of face spreading white sails she cleaves the ether amid the sparkle in the foam of day or under many a star at night by

sailors young and old happily will-I a reminiscence of the land be read in full rep or at last. This cycle was completed in 1922. He ultimately orchestrated it. The first piece descriptivist titled waves is followed by Chante which I found scribbled on a sheet of paper dated from the visit. This is modeled using it first a feeling of earlier times with the melancholy places where you had been but the middle section comes in. That could be more Irish than French Canadian and then the chance to return to the soft strains of the opening this cycle and see a good lusty depiction of the open sea with the rising waves the wind and the acceleration. A good sailor feels this music is not like blocks usual works it is quite simple harmonically nothing under the sun but it educates three different moods of the sea with Pan a stick coloring. You were not here primes the sea before.

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Poems of the sea for solo piano with Morrow Amy and once

again Suzanne blog. Some of the material of the concert was Stephanie was conceived 30 years before the work took shape in 1948. I miss innumerable powers of sketches found after my father's death all carefully sorted and annotated for my liking mint. I found a sheaf of yellow material which Bloch had written themes written on October 19 18 at Lexington Avenue New York City. These were inside folders containing the sketches of the Corsair 270 October 1918. The Russian Revolution and its culmination had impressed block strongly. Fired by the revolt of the oppressed workers and peasants full of idealism and enthusiast and his catch Matile inspired by their efforts. So as the sketches were entitled The Torah lawyers and the factories he had no idea that later this sort of thing would be typical propaganda material for the Soviet Union. And since he was against any sort of ism he would have recalled from this

approach. In his early youth had gone through the usual phase for young European intellectual yellower to Sister reddened at the age of 18 he called himself an anarchist. Now you are going to change his mind. Then a few years after that when he visited Versailles he deeply impressed by the atmosphere and sense of history there wrote about his Monaco stick tendencies. That was my father. He discussed Tolstoy's philosophy at length but doubted that these principles of life would work as long as man was a sort of animal. He was like all was skeptical of new orders saying that first men must change. No new political order or new society would change men. The change must come from within man. He must first realize how small he is in the face of the universe. Though politicly went from one extreme to the other. He was consistent in one thing and his horror of the hypocrisy and false righteousness of the ones who under the name of justice and religion exploited humanity in all his works there is a certain pattern of struggles. Desire for Serenity a certain

sardonic realisation that man is a victim of his own demon. There is also a desire to escape some ever cation of an exalted utopia. For long there is generally his last movements contain a return to the brutal realities of life yet ending with the hope of a better world. You know a time when the writing of music has become an abstract expression. All this may seem very naive something like program music yet blocks music can be heard without these descriptions and their words were never read program notes. So it can sense what is meant. The concert was one of these works and in it you use some of the themes it jotted down in 1018. There were cars premiered at the Edinburgh Festival of nine thousand forty nine. We are conducting the American tennis corps not comedy performing the subtle part not dedicate his concert to the Italian musicologist and writer Mary to bow to kids. A friend of long standing. ALEX COHEN The musician writer who championed blocks music in England wrote the following about the composition.

The first movement seems to picture the conflict in a surgeon of Titanic pent up forces struggling to free themselves but held down in a fluctuating unstable equilibrium by still greater forces. The movement pursues its mighty way through many mutations to the dramatic cadenza. The orchestra comments the piano re-enters and the movement ends in a mood of troubled quietude with a soft reminiscence of the opening notes. The second movement is a combination of skirts Oh and on Dante I contrasting picture the skirt so is a short leading into the slow section a calm episode blocks usual pastoral style has escaped into the contemplation of nature. The first mood returns after a spell with a heightened anguish. A brief uneasy recollection of the contemplative episode with phantasmal figures in the background and the movement. The finale Allegro de Caesar contains a martial motif in which also appears the early themes

composed in 1918. It is a heavy brutal movement with a piano used as a percussive force but at the end the music rises to heights of exaltation as if to say that the spirit of man will prevail over his weaknesses and failings. You were not here. Ernest Bloch's course Seto Safranek for piano and orchestra. Margaret Mitchell playing the piano with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra that a mere Guardsman conducting.