Ethnomusicology of Bloch

[W. H. Phillips <wphillip...>]

Abraham Z. Idelsohn's views on Bloch are not necessarily the last word on
the subject. It is true that ethnomusicological exegesis often degenerates
into a maudlin swamp. However it is also recorded that Sibelius, for
example, succeeded in his attempt to create from his own imagination a
facsimile of the folk music of Karelia. He never pretended the effort was
"unsought" or "innate" but he did succeed in creating themes strikingly like
those of Karelia without actually having heard Karelian music.
The statement, "For the Jew his lore and his faith substitute national
atmosphere" is surely true only of the diaspora. In our time Israel has
syncretized a music that meets accepted criteria for a national idiom. The
process has been like the syncretization of a "Moorish" music in medieval
Andalusia. The mode Hijaz is in itself hardly of Iberia or even uniquely of
the Maghreb but in the context of certain performance conventions it did
become so.
Bloch's music therefore does sound Jewish to the degree that it recognizably
resembles music nowadays widely heard in Israel.
However such music, as A.Z. Idelsohn rightly declares, could as easily be
Armenian or Tunisian.
Bill Phillips