Autograph letter signed in full to noted musicologist, conductor, and music editor, Arthur Mendel
1-1/8 pp. Octavo. Dated 21 July 1933. On letterhead of the Hotel Peter Stuyvesant in New York. In French (with transcription and translation).
Bloch was very touched by Mendel's "kind letter" and "charming attention" and tells his correspondent that he will let him know as soon as the date of performance of his "Service" is fixed, closing with "I will certainly be very pleased to see you again."
Creased at folds and very slightly overall. In very good condition.
Bloch's monumental Sacred Service, Avodath ha-Kodesh, is based on text drawn from the Reform Jewish prayer book. The work premiered in Italy in January of 1934 and had its first American performance in New York in April of that same year.
"Bloch attracted many distinguished students (among them Sessions, Douglas Moore, Rogers, Chanler, Frederick Jacobi, Porter and Elwell), whom he taught to develop and create according to their individual temperaments and talents, an approach he adopted from his teacher, Knorr. He neither founded any school nor blazed new trails; he moulded into a distinctive style the ingredients he found already in use, including aspects of atonality and 12-note theme s... In his best work, the expression of his firm faith in the spirituality of mankind always shows through. Bloch was, and continues to be, a singular figure in the music of the 20th century." David Z. Kushner in Grove Music Online
Mendel (1905-1979) graduated from Harvard University (B.A., 1925) and went on to study theory with Nadia Boulanger in Paris from 1925-27. He then returned to America, becoming literary editor at G. Schirmer from 1930 to 1938 and writing music criticism in The Nation from 1930 to 1933. He was editor of the Journal of the American Musicological Society from 1940 to 1943, and editor for Associated Music Publishers from 1941 to 1947. Mendel had a special interest in Bach, editing the New Bach Reader (with Christoph Wolff) among other important works.
Item #39108
Price: $300.00 other currencies