Sacred Service

One of the few contemporary composers who has the respect of conservatives and radicals alike is Ernest Bloch, Jew by blood, Swiss by birth, American by citizenship. Everyone who knows of Bloch knows he is a Jew. His greatest works declaim the suffering of the Hebrews, their religious exaltation. Last week in Manhattan Bloch's faith and eloquence were manifested again in the U. S. premiere of his Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service), a setting for the liturgical texts used in the Hebrew temple. Composer Bloch conducted the performance, given by the 250 choristers of the New York Schola Cantorum, 80 members of the Philharmonic-Symphony and Baritone Friedrich Schorr of the Metropolitan Opera who acted as cantor. Bloch appeared clean-shaven and smiling, changed much from the harassed-looking. black-bearded man whom New Yorkers remembered. But Bloch's strength had not gone with his beard. He spread his arms wide and the orchestra sounded quietly, richly. Then Baritone Schorr, whose father was a cantor, started to intone the Mali Tovu ("How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob"). The chorus rose to one climax after another. Cymbals and tympani triumphed over melancholy woodwinds. In the epilog, Baritone Schorr abandoned Hebrew for English: "May the time not be distant, O God, when Thy Name shall be worshipped in all the Earth. . . ." It was Bloch's way of showing that in spirit his Service was universal, as much for Gentiles as for Jews. And as a full-blooded masterpiece the audience accepted it, clapped for Composer Bloch until a certain rich young man who sat well back in the orchestra thought that in all his life he had never been so proud. The rich young man had commissioned the Sacred Service and to him Composer Bloch had dedicated it. He was Gerald Warburg who, when he left Harvard, chose to be a 'cellist rather than enter his father Felix's banking business (Kuhn, Loeb & Co.).* Four years ago when he organized the Stradivarius Quartet, Gerald Warburg toured with it to San Francisco. There he found Ernest Bloch teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory, chafing because he had so little time for composition. Warburg made it possible for Bloch to find peace in Switzerland, where he proceeded to learn Hebrew so that each accent, each phrase of his Sacred Service would have its perfect mystical setting.

Peace for a Jewish fammily was something unknown when Bloch grew up in Geneva. The community was strongly Gentile, still seething from the Dreyfus affair. In his home Bloch learned Jewish melodies, Jewish lore. There was money enough for him to study for a time in Brussels, Frankfurt, Munich, Paris. Then his father's jewelry business soured and he went home to peddle cuckoo-clocks. In 1916 Bloch landed in the U. S., as accompanist for Maud Allen, a dancer whose tour ended disastrously in Ohio. Bloch took a room in Manhattan. He was penniless but in his trunk were the Israel Symphony, the Psalms, the Trois Poemes Juifs, Schelomo, music which the French had called too German, the Germans too French.

Because he stood on his own artistically, following no fads, expressing only his own passionate individuality, New York was quick to proclaim Bloch a genius. He got a job teaching at the David Mannes School, went from there to Cleveland, thence to San Francisco. His children settled in New York -- Suzanne who teaches music, Lucienne who sculpts and paints, Ivan who is an electrical engineer. But the grind for a living again gave Bloch the feeling that he was a man without a country. The music he was writing (America, Helvetia) added little to his name. He was desperate when he relinquished valuable manuscripts for the sake of a ten-year endowment from the rich Stern heirs in California (TIME, March

31, 1931).* Switzerland has refreshed Bloch's musical powers, given him leisure to indulge his passion for mushroom-hunting, made him jovial. His gloomy look vanished with his beard, which he shaved off as a surprise for Suzanne when he met her in Genoa two summers ago.

* Banker Felix Warburg has four sons: Frederick, a Kuhn, Loeb partner; Gerald, the 'cellist; Paul ("Piggy") who is a vice president of Bank of the Manhattan Co.; Edward, the secretary-treasurer of the new School of American Ballet. James Paul Warburg who writes popular songs with his wife, Katherine ("Kay") Swift, is a cousin, son of the late Paul Moritz Warburg. * The endowment was for $5,000 a year. During Depression it shrank.

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