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Bloch

Ernest Bloch (1880–1959) was a Swiss-born composer for whom Jewish heritage was not incidental but central to his musical language: the modal harmonies, augmented intervals, and cantorial inflections running through his work were a deliberate expression of what he called the "Hebrew soul". He arrived in the United States in 1916 as conductor for a touring dance company, settled permanently, and went on to direct both the Cleveland Institute of Music and the San Francisco Conservatory. His Schelomo, a rhapsody for cello and orchestra, remains one of the most emotionally concentrated works in the cello repertoire; his Baal Shem suite and Suite Hébraïque offer string players music of comparable depth on a smaller scale.

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