Ernest Bloch's Poems of the Sea, Nirvana, Five Sketches in Sepia - A Stylistic and Pedagogical Study

Abstract

Ernest Bloch (1880-1959) was an important Jewish composer. He developed his individual style by employing several diverse musical styles. His music shows characteristics of his Jewish heritage, Western musical tradition, and French impressionism. Bloch is known for his chamber music, string works, and opera. In addition to these works, he composed several solo piano works which are seldom performed today. It is worthwhile to explore his piano music which contains various musical styles that were influenced by his different life experiences. Bloch's piano works, Poems of the Sea, Nirvana, and Five Sketches in Sepia were all written in the 1920s when he lived in Cleveland. This paper contains a discussion of the stylistic features of these three works. They show the influences of his Jewish heritage and French impressionistic traits. Bloch did not quote Jewish melodies directly, but he was influenced by the modal characteristics of the music particularly the Phrygian mode. There is also much use of parallel chords, an impressionistic trait, and the use of quartal and quintal harmonies and the octatonic and whole-tone scale. From the pedagogical point of view, these works are good teaching pieces for intermediate to advanced level students. I will discuss the pianistic problems and how to solve them based on the teachings of Tobias Matthay. I will also discuss musical interpretation based on Matthay's ideas, and musical progression based on Marcel Tabuteau's ideas as explained in David McGill's book, Sound in Motion.