Musical Zionist

In the days when Israel was great, the Jewish people were bound together by one belief: their God. Since the Diaspora (their dispersal from Palestine) Jews have followed many gods. Modern Jews have espoused two diametrically opposed causes: 1) Radicalism (which promises Jews a society without racial prejudice) and 2) Zionism (which promises Jews a national home in Palestine). While leftist-minded Jewish composers tend to express themselves in the tuneless technicalities of modernism, or in the Negroid dialect of jazz, Zionist-minded Jewish composers seek a purely Jewish variety of concert music, color their symphonies and sonatas with the traditional chants of the ancient Hebrews.

Principal spokesman for musical Zionism is fiery, bald-headed Lazare Saminsky, a Russo-Manhattanite who not only writes Israelite music, but books and articles expounding its principles and importance. Also prominent in the fold is soft-spoken Joseph Achron. whose smaller works, based on Hebrew themes, have won particular favor with solo recitalists. But foremost among all Zionist-minded composers stands crotchety Swiss-born Ernest Bloch, whose descriptive suite for piano and orchestra. Evocations, was given its first performance last week by the San Francisco Symphony under walrus-faced Pierre Monteux.

In Evocations, as in many earlier works* (Schelomo, Israel Symphony, Sacred Service, Voice in the Wilderness), Bloch mixes French Impressionism with fervent Levantine lamentation, getting an idiomatic pottage peculiarly his own. His finest scores reflect the barbaric splendor of the Old Testament, sing their Hebraic song with prophetic thunder and wailing intensity. Even his "America" Symphony --which won a $5,000 prize offered in 1927 by Musical America for the most distinguished work by a resident American-- was colored by Hebraic idioms.

To Composer Bloch fervor has always been instinctive. When he was a youngster running about the shop of his clock merchant father in Geneva, he made a vow that he would become a composer. Unlike most little boys, who would have made the vow and let it go at that, Bloch wrote it out on a scrap of paper, buried it under a mound of stones, built a fire over it, and mumbled incantations while he watched the burning embers.

Though the originality of his early compositions drew high praise from Critic Romain Holland (Jean-Christophe). it was not until he was 35 that Bloch got into his stride as a composer of distinctly Jewish music, began to color his music with scales and intervals derived from ancient synagogal hymns. In 1916 a tour as conductor of a dance troupe took him to the U. S., stranded him in Manhattan. Since then he has made the U. S. his home. He began to write his most important works in the early 1920s while serving as director of the Cleveland Institute of Music. He left Cleveland after a row with the Institute's management in 1925. settled in San Francisco. Today, supported by a wealthy Pacific Coast philanthropist, he divides his time between California and Switzerland.

Explosive by temperament, intolerant of contemporary modernists. Composer Bloch upholds racial musical distinctions as militantly as any German Nazi theorist. Says he: "Racial consciousness is absolutey necessary in music even though nationalism is not. I am a Jew. I aspire to write Jewish music not for the sake of self-advertisement, but because it is the only way in which I can produce music of vitality."

* Two of Bloch's larger works are available for the phonograph, both recorded by Victor (Musical Masterpiece Series). They are the Concerto Grosso, played by the Philadelphia Chamber String Sinfonietta, under Fabien Sevitzky; and the Quintet for Piano and Strings, played by Alfredo Casella and the Pro Arte Quartet. His Violin and Piano Sonata has been issued by Gamut Records.

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