Search - Bloch, Stokowski, Symphony of the Air :: Ernest Bloch: America, An Epic Rhapsody

Good sentiments and patriotism don't always produce good mus

Discophage | France | 04/07/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I love the music of Ernest Bloch (and not just Schelomo), as my numerous reviews bear witness - but not all of it. I am happy to have this disc, as it nicely complements my collection of Bloch and of Stokowski, but I don't think "America"' is very good music. Like its counterpart "Helvetia", written to celebrate Bloch's other fatherland and country of origin, Switzerland (see my review of Ernest Bloch: Helvetia; Suite pour alto et orchestre; Suite Hebraique pour alto et orchestre), it is often bombastic and verging on the corny. Good sentiments don't always produce good music - in fact, they rarely do (although Beethoven's 9th is certainly a major exception). Bloch (already the composer of Schelomo and the powerful First String Quartet) had the idea of such a tribute to America straight upon his arrival in the US, in 1916, fleeing the war in Europe, but it took him another 10 years to absorb American culture and its folk melodies and vernacular songs and complete the Symphony (for, despite its subtitle of "An Epic Rhapsody in Three Parts", its three movements and concluding chorale do lend it the features of a choral symphony). The poetry of Walt Whitman was also a big inspiration.



The composition does start beautifully, hushed and very atmospheric: Dawn on the New World, really. And in fact, this is what it is: the annotation in the score here is "Primeval Nature". Bloch here expounds the "anthem" theme which will be further developed, and it sounds marvelously Blochian - e.g., Jewish. But then after 2:30 the Indian folk tunes enter, and it starts resembling corny music written by some Hollywood composer of those days for some documentary by Robert Flaherty on the Rain or Sun-Dance of the Pueblo Injuns. And that is followed, around the 8-minute mark, by a triumphant and bombastic "Old-English-March" theme - ah ah, guess who set foot on the Land of Promises? Bye-bye, Injuns! It is embarrassingly naïve and corny.



Bloch wrote into the score all these little historical and descriptive annotations (sometimes quotes of Whitman) making explicit the origin and meaning of the themes he uses and elaborates upon. Despite the liner notes' and Bloch's own claim that "these comments were not a "program" but were inserted only to guide the performers in interpreting the emotional flow of the music", the piece is in fact very graphic and programmatic. You can easily follow the script. It is a historical survey of the US: first the natives, then the arrival of the colonists (First movement, actually subtitled "1620"), then the 19th Century, good ol' life in the southern plantations, Lincoln and the Civil War (2nd movement, "1861-1865", with more bombastic, martial music), then 20th Century ("1926" to be precise), the bustling City, Man enslaved to the Machines, Man mastering the Machines, his environment and himself with the help of Whitman's poetry, all topped off by a triumphant and somewhat Elgarian call of America leading the Nations of the World (3rd movement). Patriotism may be great in times of war but has not produced great music here.



Granted, there are, throughout the Symphony, more beautifully atmospheric moments like the opening, such as at the end of the first movement, at 14:11, with the return what the liner notes say is the Chippewa mourning theme, now played by bassoon: Injuns mourning their land and freedom, or, as the liner notes contend and Bloch's notes suggest ("Loneliness. Memories of the Past"), an evocation of the hopes the colonists, after, one supposes, a hard-day's work of axing woods and natives? Ah music, ambivalent language.



As ever, one remarkable feature with Bloch is that even when he elaborates on vernacular folk-tunes (be them Native or not), he makes them sound incredibly Jewish, as in the other very atmospheric moments which opens the 2nd movement, in which oboe and violin interlace another of these mournful themes, here an Old South Ballad apparently.



Still, these are only passing moments in a whole which is marked by bombast and naïveté. I must, however, confess a kind of perverse soft tooth for the beginning of the third and final movement: is so corny as to become in fact funny, starting with what sounds like music for a Katzenjammer Kids or Felix the Cat cartoon, integral with car honks. Bloch must have been influenced here by his former student, George Antheil, whose equally provocative "Ballet mécanique" had its infamous American Premiere at Carnegie Hall a year after the completion of Bloch's Symphony, in fact. But I do enjoy its "bad taste" and percussive cacophony: at least it has the merit of being pretty outlandish. But again it is short-lived.



The prize of the disc, though, is the 2:15 speech of Bloch himself, featured on track 4, explaining the composition. We are not told where the speech comes from, its date or anything. It seems dubbed from a 78rmp disc. Bloch's voice is startling: nasal, high-pitched, piercing, and heavily-accented, the voice of a Niebelung gnome - not what I associated with his picture. He doesn't say much more than what the very informative liner notes have already told us, but it is moving to hear him, and he says it with the same overflowing and embarrassingly naïve enthusiasm that imbues the Symphony, even asking the audience to sing along with the chorus at the end of the composition.



Great sound from 1960 and great remastering, fine liner notes, definitive performance, TT 53:13. Note that I don't have the original,1993 Vanguard issue, but a 2008 reissue made under licence by the Musical Heritage Society, that doesn't seem to be listed on your favorite webiste. This disc is really for the diehard Bloch admirer or Stokowskite insisting on having everything by their idol(s) - I am one of them, although when things come to a head I won't agonize on parting with this one. Those wanting only to hear the best of Bloch should go to Schelomo, to his Piano Sonata (Silberstein plays Franck, Bloch and Giannini) or any of his chamber music.

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