ERNEST BLOCH'S PEDAGOGICAL WRITINGS:

A DIDACTIC LEGACY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICA

by

Michael David Nott

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the

Requirements for the Degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Supervised by Alfred Mann

Department of Musicology
Eastman School of Music

University of Rochester

Rochester, New York

1985
 CURRICULUM VITAE

Michael David Nott was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

on August 1, 1956. The son of professional musicians, he

began his musical studies at an early age, first on the pi-

ano and later on the violoncello. He graduated from Univer-

sity High School in Normal, Illinois in 1975, and enrolled

at Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, Illinois as a

violoncello major, receiving a B.M. magna cum laude in

1979.

His graduate training was begun in 1980 at the East-

man School of Music, where in 1982 he received an M.A. in

musicology. While at Eastman he has held an assistantship

with the Department of Conducting and Ensembles and teach-

ing assistantships in Musicology both at Eastman and at the

College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Roches-

ter. In addition, he has been active as a cellist and a

gambist with the Collegium Musicum, the Musica Nova Ensem-

ble, and various other performing groups at Eastman. He

has been the recipient of the Sraduate Assistant Teaching

Prize, the Heinemann Foundation Fellowship in Musicology,

and the Ball Dissertation Year Fellowship of the University

of Rochester.

His recent activities include the presentation of

iv
 v

papers at both the National and New York-St. Lawrence Chap-

ter meetings of the American Musicological Society. He is

presently an Instructor of Musicology on the Eastman

faculty.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The major portion of the work on this project was

done under a Ball Dissertation Year Fellowship, granted by

the University of Rochester, and I am grateful to the Ball

Foundation for its support.

The dissertation benefitted from observations and

recollections of numerous Bloch students--foremost among

them the composer's daughter, Suzanne Bloch. Their contri-

bution is fully documented in the main body of the disser-

tation, particularly in its final chapter.

I am grateful to the members of the Musicology fa-

culty of the Eastman School of Music for their suggestions

and encouragement in the writing of the dissertation and

for their steadfast help throughout my term of graduate

study. The staff of the Sibley Music Library took special

pains to give me ready access to the contents of the Bloch
collection. Phil Lambert, presently a graduate student in
Theory, greatly facilitated my work on the text by sharing

with me his IBM personal computer; he has been a good and

faithful counselor besides.

My greatest thanks go to my adviser, Dr. Alfred

Mann, who through his dedication and expertise passes on to

his students a precious didactic legacy of his own.

vi
 ABSTRACT

Ernest Bloch arrived in America on August 1, 1916,

and became one of the first of a number of prominent Euro-

pean composers to make a permanent home in the New World.

From his earliest days in America, he was active as a teach-

er of composition. Within two years he was offered a posi-

tion on the faculty of the Mannes School of Music; during

that time he also established a reputation that brought to

his studio many private students, including Roger Sessions,

Bernard Rogers, and Randall Thompson. There followed

appointments at the newly-founded Cleveland Institute of

Music (1921-25), the San Francisco Conservatory (1925-30),

and the University of California at Berkeley (1940-52).

Throughout these years Bloch preserved the material

resulting from his various didactic activities, and it was

during his Berkeley years that he began to arrange these pa-
pers as a formal collection. A series of letters exchanged

between Bloch and a former student, Herbert Elwell, reveals

that there had been plans to have the material published.

But no such project actually materialized. After Bloch's

death the collection passed into the care of his daughter,

Suzanne. Her decision to deposit it at the Sibley Music

vii
 viii

Library served as the impetus for the present critical

edition of her father's didactic writings.

The principal contents of the collection may be di-

vided into four parts--representing, respectively, the dis-

ciplines of harmony, counterpoint, fugue, and musical analy-

sis. In each case, the methods involved evince the perspec-

tive of the practicing composer. Bloch's instruction in har-

mony focuses on the practical application of concepts rather

than the exposition of rules, and the study of harmony is in-

tegrated from the start with the study of musical form. His

approach to counterpoint is guided by a stylistic examina-

tion of sixteenth-century repertory, and by an effort to

achieve an increasing artistic command of the discipline.

The writings on fugue consist of a methodical presentation

of the basic aspects of fugal texture--subject, answer,

countersubject, exposition--leading to the composition of

complete fugues; constant reference is made to the keyboard

fugues of J. S. Bach. One particularly important documen-

tary record of this aspect of Bloch's instruction is found

in a body of manuscripts gathered from Sessions, Thompson,
and others that contain their early exercises in fugal

writing~ Bloch's analyses--a body of remarkably detailed

studies devoted to works by composers rar.ging from Josquin

to Debussy--reflect his conviction that all didactic inquiry

must ultimately focus on the master models themselves.

 ix

A final consideration is that Bloch's teaching forms

a continuing bequest passed on from his direct students to

successive generations of eminent American composers.

TO MY PARENTS
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE xii

Chapter
I. BLOCH AND THE AMERICAN SCENE 1

II. INSTRUCTION IN HARMONY 33

Simple Examples Used in Figuration 41

Harmony Applied to Form . . . . . . 51
Modulation Applied to Form . . . 64

III. INSTRUCTION IN COUNTERPOINT 94

Early Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Studies in Configuration . . . . . . . . . . 114
The San Francisco Notebooks . . . . . . . 127

IV. INSTRUCTION IN FUGUE 261

Examples by Herbert Elwell . . . . . 265

Examples by Randall Thompson . . . . . . 271
Examples by Roger Sessions . . . 280
Examples by Quincy Porter . . . . . . . . . . 288
Examples by Theodore Chanler . . . . . . . . 295
Examples by other students . . . . . 300
Fugue I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
Studies in Configuration . . . . . . 349
Fugue Ibis . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

V. ANALYTICAL WRITINGS 383

La Forme musicale . . . . . . . . . . 384

Studies in Configuration 390
Analysis of Works by Bach . . . . . . . 403
Analysis of Works by Beethoven 433
Analysis of Works by Musorgsky and
Debussy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485

VI. DISSEMINATION OF BLO~H'S TEACHING 495

APPENDIX: INVENTORY OF THE COLLECTION 525

BIBLIOGRAPHY 526
 PREFACE

This study was prompted by the donation of Ernest

Bloch's collected didactic writings to the Sibley Music Li-

brary of the Eastman School of Music, University of Roches-

ter, in 1983. The collection, compiled by the composer him-

self, had passed after his death into the possession of his

daughter Suzanne, an eminent musician in her own right, who

had received her early training from her father. It was

with the professional's sensitivity that she attended to

the exemplary preservation of these manuscripts and ulti-

mately decided that they should be given into professional

custody and made available for critical examination.

The Sibley Music Library proved to be a natural

choice. Bloch himself had been affiliated with the Eastman

School of Music, and Suzanne Bloch had visited the school

variously in the course of her performing career. Some of

her programs there, featuring Baroque music on authentic in-

struments, were given in the 1940s jointly with Alfred

Mann, now serving on the School's faculty as Profes~or of

Musicology; they had met in 1935 at the Dolmetsch Festival

in Haslemere, England, with which Suzanne Bloch was con-

nected as a regular member.

xii
 xiii

It was at the 1980 meeting of the American Musico-

logical Society in Denver, which included a centennial trib-

ute to Bloch, that Suzanne Bloch, then in her seventies,

spoke to Professor Mann of her concern about a permanent

custody of the collection. Professor Mann's special re-

search interests had for many years been devoted to the

study of manuscripts embodying the teaching of eminent

composers, and this fact, together with the stature of the

Library which her family had known so well, determined even-

tually her decision for the bequest.

Some portions of Bloch's pedagogical writings had

gone at an earlier date to the Library of Congress; others

remained in the possession of the family. But what was

chosen for the donation to the Sibley.Music Library repre-

sents a core of the composer's didactic writings that was

designated by mutual consultation in a number of meetings

during which the final extent of the gift was formulated.

Professor Mann announced the arrival of the collection at

the Sibley Music Library in Notes, the Quarterly Journal of

the Music Librarians Association (vol.40, 1983), in a brief

article that remains the only published description of its

contents. A first complete inventory of the collection was

made by Iva Buff, Acquisitions Librarian at the Sibley

Music Library.

In undertaking a detailed examination of Bloch's

writings, it seemed that two additional aspects of his

 xiv

achievement should be considered in order to place the docu-

ments in their proper perspective. Part of the significance

of Bloch's contribution as a pedagogue is due to the circum-

stances in which he taught, and thus it is important to view

his work in the larger context of the American scene upon

which he entered in 1916 and in which he remained active un-

til his death in 1959. He had arrived as the first major

,
European emigre composer of his generation--a generation

that included Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, and

Hindemith--and this fact lent weight to the singularity of

his role as a mentor of a young generation of American

composers.

An ever growing context, finally, arises from the

wide dissemination of Bloch's teaching, for his major stu-

dents have become major teachers whose influence now ranges

over two and three generations. Bloch's direct influence,

however, has remained clearly discernible, in spite of

changing tastes and trends, for the generations of his

schooling overlap and interact. An immensely gratifying

circumstance of this study arose from the fact that it was
undertaken at a time that still offered opportunity for

communicating with Bloch's immediate students in person.

 CHAPTER I

BLOCH AND THE AMERICAN SCENE

During the early decades of the twentieth century,

the discipline of music was subjected in American universi-

ties to a system still in its infancy. John Knowles Paine,

the "father of the collegiate music curriculum," had estab-

lished the legitimacy of music pedagogy in 1875 by taking

the first professorship in his field at Harvard; several

other departments of music and various music conservatories

followed, creating the outposts of higher music education

on the American scene. But formal musical training devel-

oped slowly, and for the remainder of the 1800s speculation

remained as to what the role of higher education in music

should be. The vagueness which characterized music pro-

grams was in many ways only symptomatic of a much larger

problem. The evolving social structure of young America

was not stable enough to provide a foundation which could

lend genuine support to musical life. American musicians

were artists without a recognized native tradition, and

this posed profound difficulties for the growing pedagogi-

cal system.

1
 2

Amidst this uncertainty, administrators and stu-

dents alike looked for guidance where America had already

sought direction in many other matters of culture: Euro-

pean tradition. The collegiate pattern, which American

universities had inherited from England, included the col-

lege chapel whose musical organization had always played a

vital part in the university student's education. But

unlike its English counterpart, the American university

chapel did not represent a religion that was, in fact, an

arm of the government, and its function in the American

educational system remained "extracurricular."

On the continent, it was not the university but the

conservatory that determined the nature of higher education

in music. To study in a metropolitan center such as Paris,

Leipzig, Munich, and Frankfurt was virtually required of

any aspiring American composer in the nineteenth century;

indeed, even in the early twentieth century very few gained

prominence without first having obtained some measure of

training overseas. Paine, George Whitefield Chadwick, and

Horatio T. Parker were just a few of the American peda-
gogues who received their education in continental conserva-

tories. They returned to college appointments and brought

to these the substance of their continental training, and

thus musical education in the American university came to

consist of a certain blending of collegiate and conserva-

tory traditions.
 3

That this blending did not result in a system

entirely to the benefit of the student of composition is

apparent from the story of the most American of composers,

Charles Ives. Ives received his initial training at the

hands of his father, an enthusiati~, versatile musician who fk·

owed allegiance to no pedagogical tradition. The elder

Ives gave his son an education which, while well-grounded,

placed a premium on freedom and imagination.

Father was not against a reasonable amount of "boy's

fooling", if it were done with some sense behind it .
. . . Father used to say "If you know how to write a
fugue the right way well, I'p willing to have you
try it the wrong way--well."

Upon enrolling at Yale in 1894, Ives suddenly was

faced with a system in which doing things the "right way"

was obligatory. His teacher was Parker, a student of the

conservatory-trained Chadwick, and himself trained by

Rheinberger in Munich. Parker, then in his first year of

teaching, established a new (though conventional) curri-

culum, consisting of a sequence of classes concerned with

technical aspects of musical composition: harmony (accord-

ing to Jadassohn's text), counterpoint, and instrumenta-

. 2
t ~on. Ives must have felt continual frustration at the

"rules of composition." "Tell Parker," his father encour-

aged him, "that every dissonance doesn't have to resolve

any more than every horse should have to have its tail
3
bobbed just because it's the prevailing fashion."
 4

In the end, Ives's gift overcame the limitations of

his Yale experience, and he was able to wash his hands of

academic coercion. A number of his peers, however, were

bound to succumb to a conventional pattern. Daniel Gregory

Mason and Edward Burlingame Hill, both contemporaries of

Ives, continued the tradition of the preceding generation:

training in Europe, followed by faculty appointments at

horne. Yet in the early 1900s there were signs that the

American composer might begin to challenge the authority of

the prevailing system.

Prior to the turn of the century the most visionary

of early American pedagogues, Edward MacDowell, assumed the

first chair of the music department at Columbia University

with the conviction that, as Columbia's president Seth Low

stated, the University "ought to teach the science of music

4
in such a way as to train cornposers." MacDowell's peda-

gogical orientation was ultimately realized in the form of

a "colony" established in his memory, where gifted young

composers (as well as artists and writers) could spend an

undisturbed summer of study and creative work.

The MacDowell legacy was indicative of currents in

the study of cornpositj.on which rendered the American scene

more promising for the student composer. Musicians born

around the turn of the century were the first, after Ives,

who gained consistent independence from the European

 5

tradition. The careers of Douglas Moore, Randall Thompson,

Aaron Copland, and Roger Sessions are notable examples;

Moore and Copland were, in fact, early fellows at the Mac-

Dowell colony. Nevertheless, the new spirit could not yet

challenge the solidity of the academic curriculum, whose

patterns were maintained in spite of enlightened views in

the university faculty. A conflict with the Columbia admin-

istration over policy resulted in MacDowell's resignation.

Mason (who was eventually appointed to the MacDowell chair

at Columbia) and Hill (who was one of Sessions's teachers

at Harvard) were equally disturbed by the inadequacies of a

system from which their own European training had been the

only escape. As Sessions recalled:

In my junior year, Edward Burlingame Hill, who was the

member of the faculty that I knew the best, took me on
a walk and said to me, somewhat confidentially--or I
assumed it was: "I want to tell you that we are not
in a position here to give you what you need. I won't
go into the reasons why." And he urged me very
strongly to go after I graduated to France to study
5
with Ravel.

Hill's reluctance to be specific does not obscure

the wisdom of his remarks; it is clear that he was fully

aware of the shortcomings of his surroundings, and that he

understood equally well what the student of composition

actually needed. To study with Ravel would mean an ideal

combination of artistic freedom and skilled guidance, the

like of which had proven itself time and again in the educa-

tion of great composers: the master-artisan relationship.

 6

Sessions was not able to take Hill's advice. The outbreak

of World War I made study in Europe impossible and dis-

turbed, for a time, the steady flow of American composers

overseas. But the impact of the war on Sessions's career

and on the American scene was ultimately quite different

from what he or his colleagues were then able to envisage.

With increasing political and economic instability in

Europe, the cultural migration was gradually reversed; many

a distinguished European composer left the oppressive condi-

tions of his native country to make a home in the New

World. Sessions eventually found his master in America in

the person of Ernest Bloch.

Bloch was the first prominent European to flourish

in the States as a teacher of composition. His own arrival

in New York in 1916 was actually preceded by that of Anto-

V/
nin Dvorak, who took a position at the National Conserva-
y/
tory in October of 1892. But Dvorak's activity in America

was short-lived--as was that of the National Conservatory--

and it did not result in any lasting contribution to the

pedagogy of composition. Bloch's career as a teacher was

another matter. Already by the 1920s he was providing

training to some of the strongest musical minds of the

younger generation. At that time, perhaps only Nadia Bou-

langer in Paris remained in a position to attract American

composers of quality and to produce similarly lasting

 7

6
results. But the Boulanger legacy must be considered a

countercurrent to a tide already turned.

Bloch's immediate and unqualified success as a

teacher was essentially the consequence of two principles

central to his pedagogical conception. For one thing,

Bloch, with true reverence for the great composers of the

past, made it manifest that students could find a more

valid model in the masterpieces of musical literature than

could be isolated in any traditional music text. Examples

from the literature made their way into every stage of his

teaching. By this means, the student encountered models of

unquestionable quality which could be examined with refer-

ence to their larger musical context. Secondly, Bloch, who

had complete disdain for stylistic labels, was equally

unwilling to force any stylistic, regional or aesthetic

orientation upon his students. What he prized most in

those who came to him w~s individuality; that, he believed,

ought not to be compromised, either by one's teacher or

oneself. Henry Cowell made the most apt appraisal of this

rare quality in Bloch's teaching: "his pupils are remark-

able because they all write so thoughtfully and well, but

7
differently."

Above all, Bloch's status as an accomplished and

distinguished composer enabled him to approach his teaching

with a confidence and insight that was uncommon among his

American colleagues, and in the same sense the continued

 8

arrival of prominent composers from Europe became decisive:

regardless of particular pedagogical orientations, there

could be no mistaking the voices of authority which came to

be heard on American shores.

Some of the major European composers who came to

America, such as Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky, never gave

thought to pedagogy. For a large majority, however,

teaching was virtually the sole means of support. The

/

emigre composer flourished in a few cases; the prominence

of students trained by teachers ranging from Scale~o to

Milhaud gives ample testimony of the instruction native

Europeans brought to America. But many others--like

Dohn~nyi--languished in minor university appointments where

the level of aspiration and achievement among students was

obviously below that which they had left at home. There is

no legacy by which their teaching might be remembered or

assessed.

Almost all these distinguished compcsers ~ere of

Bloch's generation. His career, too, might have run a

course much the same as theirs. His father was a \vatch-

maker; expectations were that the son would become a part-

ner in the family business. But by the mid-1890s his musi-

cal gifts had begun to assert themselves strongly. In the

following years Bloch traveled to many metropolitan cen-

ters, first as a student in the conservatories of Geneva,

 9

Brussels, Frankfurt, and Munich, then as a young composer

in Paris--all the while accumulating a growing portfolio of

compositions. In 1904 Bloch returned to the family store;

in 1911, by then well-established as a composer, he assumed

a position on the faculty of the Geneva Conservatory, where

he lectured in aesthetics and composition.

Yet it was in his migration to America that Bloch's

life diverged from that of his contemporaries, his arrival

in 1916 preceding that of most other major European compos-

ers by some twe~ty years. What this meant in practical

terms was that Bloch left Europe with his best years still

to come. For many of his colleagues the opposite was the

case. When Schoenberg, for instance, arrived in New York

in 1933 he was almost sixty, poor in health and spirit,

having already passed the most successful years of his pro-

fessional life. The circumstances under which the various

masters took up their American careers had obviously much

to do with the educational influence they ultimately

exerted.
. . ,
The clearest v1ew of the em1gre composer as a

teacher comes from three figures who, in addition to actual

instruction, undertook the task of recording their pedagogi-

cal theories in print: Schoenberg, Hindemith, and Krenek.

Their later writings are all the more revealing in that

they arose directly out of their experience with education

in the New World.

 10

The American years of Schoenberg and Hindemith have

much in common: both came to the United States with an ex-

ceptional teaching history; both had written important peda-

gogical texts prior to arriving in America; both ultimately

settled in prominent university positions--Hindemith at

Yale, Schoenberg at the University of California at Los

Angeles.

Yet in neither case did their American careers

approach the illustrious success they had known as peda-

gogues in Europe; in fact, in comparison to the theories

presented in their European texts, the teaching Schoenberg

and Hindemith imparted to pupils in the American classroom

was altogether conventional in nature. In the main, this

arose from necessity. The two masters met an unexpected

challenge in the American student, whose preparation for

advanced study in composition was often inadequate. As one

of Schoenberg's pupils from 1935, Pauline Alderman, later

observed:

He was to write to friends in Vienna that summer,

commenting sadly on the low quality of the class
both as to ability and preparation. This was
natural since he must inevitably remember his
classes in Vienna, among whose members were some of
the most brilliant minds in all Europe. Also, even
the most pedestrian among them had as a common
heritaqe a musical sophistication and solid training
8
still very uncommon among western students.

Of course, such craftsmen as Schoenberg and Hindemith would

have been concerned about the fundamentals of composition

 11

in teaching anywhere. But in the course of providing basic

training to the American student, their return to conven-

tion became so complete that in relatively few instances

did they attempt to pass on the innovations which had been

the most vital part of their pedagogical work.

Schoenberg's textbooks for the study of harmony are

a case in point. To be sure, portions of the Harmonielehre

of 1911 are devoted to traditional concepts of the disci-

pline; however, Schoenberg also directed considerable atten-

tion to his seminal concept of "emancipation of dissonance"

and to the expanded harmonic resources which were part of

the most recent trends in musical thought. By contrast, in

the posthumously published Structural Functions of Harmony--

the manual written for American students--only a scant por-

tion of the text refers to the "emancipation" and the

twelve-tone method, and these without benefit of musical

examples. As the British composer Alexander Goehr said of

the latter text:

One is always aware that this book, unlike the

Harmonielehre, deals with a closed subject. And
where the earlier book ends with a vision of a
glorious future, this book ends with a rather wan
"Apollonian" evaluation of a Dionysian epoch. 9

Schoenberg's other American texts, Models for Beginners in

Composition, Preliminary Exercises in Counterpoint, and Fun-

damentals of Musical Composition, represent a similarly tra-

ditional orientation for the training of pupils in this

country.
 12

Hindemith's major theoretical work was marked by

the fact that in 1937--the year of the first volume of

Unterweisung im Tonsatz--many of the decisive steps in

modern music were no longer in the future; thus he sought

to make a more explicit statement of contemporary practice,

ostensibly to replace conventional pedagogical views.

Hindemith states in the opening chapter of Unterweisung im

Tonsatz, Volume One:

If the confusion in the technique of composition is

not to increase and spread, if the conflicting re-
sults of an outworn system of instruction are not to
bring disaster in the wake of uncertainty, a new and
firm foundation must be constructed . . . . I prop~5e
to attempt the construction of such a foundation.

It was a compelling vision. But even such a degree

of confidence and conviction could not come to grips with

the realities of teaching in America. Upon arriving in the

United States in 1940, Hindemith, as Schoenberg before him,

found that his method required an advanced knowledge which

the typical American student did not have. By 1943--only

six years after the publication of Unterweisung im Tonsatz--

he found himself obliged to produce a new text, the very

title of which reveals a dramatic reversal: A Concentrated

Course in Traditional Harmony. Hindemith wrote in the

preface:

Despite the evident loss of prestige which conven-

tional harmony teaching has suffered, we still must
count on it as the most important branch of theory
 13

teaching, at least so long as it has not been

replaced by any generally recognized, universally
adopted more comprehensive, and altogether better
11
system.

What is at issue here is not so much the quality of

Schoenberg's and Hindemith's teaching as its character.

Without a doubt, these two composers brought a competence

and a richness to their instruction that no American

teachers could equal. Nor would it be correct to imply

that Hindemith and Schoenberg completely avoided intro-

ducing their innovative concepts to pupils in the American

classroom. To be sure, Schoenberg did impart the twelve-

tone system to American students; similarly, Hindemith

presented to his students at Yale ideas from a projected

third volume of the Unterweisung im Tonsatz--though it is

indeed indicative of the situation that this volume, pub-

lished posthumously, had never been put into final form by

the author. Both masters realized that their American

teaching must differ from former didactic work in its point

of departure, and this had decisive implications for the

later stages of their pedagogical writing.

The circumstances under which Krenek began his

American career in 1938 varied from those which marked

Schoenberg's and Hindemith's arrival. He was twenty-eight

when he assumed a professorship at Vassar, and without any

essential prior experience as a teacher. Far from exercis-

ing any conservative turn of mind, he was dismissed after

 14

one year for instructing the Vassar students in the twelve-

12
tone method.

Commitment to twelve-tone composition was to remain

the characteristic of Krenek's teaching in America. His

text Studies in Counterpoint, published shortly after his

arrival in the United States, approached the craft of part-

writing from a strictly dodecaphonic perspective, and

Krenek stated elsewhere (in terms that Schoenberg would

have abhorred) his conviction that such an approach is

viable:

The twelve-tone technique is eminently teachable

because the student's essays may be judged according
to clear-cut standards, similar to sixteeth-century
counterpoint, . . . because I~ery detail is under
easily demonstrable control.

Following his year at Vassar, Krenek accepted the direc-

torship of the Music Department at Hamline College in Min-

nesota where he was able to organize a program in keeping

with his own pedagogical vision. Since 1945 he has been

involved with a number of institutions, somewhat in the

manner of a "freelance" teacher, and has produced various
writings of pedagogical interest (see bibliography).

Their divergent experience and attitude not with-

standing, Hindemith, Schoenberg, and Krenek were united in

their position as mentors: they and their European col-

leagues viewed the pedagogy of composition from the

 15

composer's perspective. Hindernith was quite clear about

what this meant to the student:

A gifted composer is not always a good teacher. But

his instruction is bound to have a certain creative
warmth . . . because he is ~~ssing on directly what
he himself has experienced.

By the middle of the century--Hindernith returned to Europe

in 1953, and Schoenberg died in 1951--the dilemma which had

confronted the American student of composition in the early

part of the century was clearly a thing of the past. The

generation of composers which unwittingly heralded a final

break from European dependence--including Roger Sessions,

Randall Thompson, Douglas Moore--became now themselves the

respected professors in this country's universities, creat-

ing a lineage from American teacher to American student

which continues unbroken. These three were students of

Ernest Bloch, the European whose didactic work became a

genuine part of the American scene.

Bloch's teaching in America can be divided into

three periods: New York, 1916-20; Cleveland and San Fran-

cisco, 1920-25 and 1925-30 respectively; the University of

California at Berkeley_, 1940-52. Bloch first carne to the

United States, 1 August 1916, not as a pedagogue, but as a

conductor. He had accepted a position with a dance troupe

on their American tour which he hoped would provide his

family with financial stability lacking in war-time Europe.

 16

But the tour failed after only six weeks, and Bloch had to

probe other options. Quite independent of the tour,

Bloch's own work began to gain attention; one performance,

in fact, was hailed by Musical America as the "most signifi-

15
cant event of the year in New York." While proceeds

and royalties were not sufficient to provide means for an

independent existence, Bloch did achieve a measure of repu-

tation from which other opportunities--particularly those

involving teaching--naturally followed.

The first of these came through David Mannes, who

in 1916 had established a new Conservatory of Music in New

York. Mannes offered Bloch the position of head of the

Theory Department starting with the school year 1917-18,

and this meant the beginning of a series of faculty posi-

tions upon which the Bloch family's fortunes were based for

many years. Bloch's duties at Mannes consisted of a number

of lectures, primarily on the aesthetics of music, and

course work more specifically didactic, such as counter-

point and the study of form.

By 1918 Bloch was also affiliated with the Julius

Hartt School of Music in Hartford. But more significant

was his work as a private teacher in New York which at-

tracted some of his most outstanding students of composi-

tion. The great activity in Bloch's studio is remarkable,

considering that neither the Hartt nor the Mannes positions

involved the kind of public recognition that brought his

 17

teaching to the attention of pupils outside the student

body. But here again Bloch the teacher was served by his

own continuing success as a composer. No doubt the mere

presence of an accomplished European composer in America

captured the eye of prospective students. Indeed, this

growing reputation provided the threshold for a wider scope

of Bloch's teaching career. Mrs. Franklyn B. Sanders, who

was in the midst of preparations for establishing an insti-

tute of music in Cleveland, "set herself to the formidable

task of securing to direct ~he artistic end, a man of corn-

rnanding musical stature and educational experience." (The

words are those of another of Bloch's students, Bernard

16
Rogers.) Her choice for the position was Bloch.

Bloch responded to the offer from Cleveland with

alacrity. The situation at Mannes had not been entirely to

his liking (he referred to his tenure there as a "two years-

17
sentence"), and the Cleveland position meant both a bet-

ter salary and greater security than did his earlier commit-

rnents in and around New York. But Bloch also must have

been attracted by the consideration that, as director of a

new institution, he could shape the curriculum and faculty

in accordance with his own pedagogical vision. There was

nothing tepid about Bloch's views on music education. When

he arrived in Cleveland with his family, he arrived also

with a wealth of, what for the organizers of the Institute

 18

were, unorthodox plans, for instance abolishing grades and

and textbooks. Bloch was supported in his goals by a few

of his private students from New York, who joined their

teacher on the faculty of the newly-founded Cleveland Insti-

tute of Music.

But ultimately the unconventional policies proved

to be too much for the Cleveland administration, even

though in five short years Bloch had raised the Institute

from an unknown school with an enrollment of seven students

to a thriving musical center. The conflicts which thus

arose eventually brought his association with the Institute

to an end. In the meantime, Bloch's teaching had come to

the attention of other institutions. In 1925 at the invi-

tation of Howard Hanson he gave a series of master classes

at the Eastman School of Music--classes which were attended

by Hanson himself. In the preceding summer he had taught a

five-week course at the San Francisco Conservatory, and the

force of Bloch's personality and artistry led soon a9ain to

the point where he was offered the position of director.

Bloch assumed the directorship of the San Francisco
Conservatory with the beginning of the school year 1925-26.

The situation was more to his liking than that of the final

years in Cleveland. Not only Fas the salary higher, but

the governors of the conservatory were well disposed to-

wards his directoral policies; Bloch's tenure in San Fran-

cisco was peaceful and productive.

 19

Bloch also had a good understanding with the resi-

dents of his adopted community (community education was

part of his regime in both San Francisco and Cleveland)--in

fact, rather too good for the continued association with

the Conservatory: towards the end of the 1920s a prominent

San Francisco family established a trust fund for Bloch,

which was to provide him with an annual income on the condi-

tion that he occupy himself exclusively with composition.

Bloch found the opportunity, which in essence amounted to

an entire decade of creative work free from other profes-

sional distractions, too attractive to refuse, and his

affiliation with the Conservatory came to a close.

The break from teaching, however, was to be only

temporary. The terms of the trust fund further stipulated

that in 1940 Bloch would assume a chair in composition

established in his name at the University of Califonia at

Berkeley. After spending most of the 1930s in Europe

composing and supervising performances of his works, Bloch,

now sixty and a respected elder statesman in his field,

returned to the American classroom.

Bloch's duties at Berkeley were not as demanding as

his directorships in Cleveland and San Francisco. He had

ample time to pursue projects of his choice and spent ma~y

hours analyzing masterpieces from the music literature. No

doubt this work was related to his teaching, but the docu-

ments themselves are so detailed and so meticulously

 20

notated that one concludes Bloch must have found the work

satisfying in a more personal way. Similarly indicative of

an increasingly introspective spirit is the fact that Bloch

took a house in Agate Beach, Oregon (a considerable dis-

tance from Berkeley) , where he passed the remainder of his

life in privacy, repose, and study.

Bloch's retirement from university life in 1952, at

the age of seventy-two, brought an illustrious teaching ca-

reer to a close. He died seven years later. The legacy of

his teaching lives on in numerous students who have assumed

positions of high stature in American music, and it is

faithfully documented in his pedagogical writings. Unlike

some of his European colleagues, Bloch published no works

on the teaching of composition. Yet it is clear from the

care he took in compiling a collection of his didactic writ-

ings, as well as from his own statements, that he realized

the value of such a record. In fact, we know from a series

of letters exchanged between Bloch and one of his New York

students, Herbert Elwell, that publication of some of

Bloch's pedagogical documents was under consideration at

18
one point. Equally revealing are magazine articles pub-

lished at the occasion of Bloch's seventy-fifth birthday;

they refer explicitly to "the impending publication of a

19
part of his immense accumulation of pedagogic papers."

None of these plans, however, reached fruition, and no part

 21

of the meticulously preserved collection ever appeared in

print.

* *
*

The contents of the collection, while representing

Bloch's experience as a teacher in this country, naturally

also reflect the traditions that had formed the basis of

his own training. Bloch began his formal studies in music

in 1894 at the conservatory of his native Geneva, after his

early virtuosity on the violin had come to the attention of

one of the faculty members. In 1896, it was recommended on

the strength of his abilities that he continue his studies

in Brussels with Ysaye, and this led to a three-year term

at the Brussels Conservatory. Yet Bloch, who had been writ-

ing music from his early years, was advised by many, includ-

ing Ysaye, that his true calling was that of a composer.

Prospects for advanced study in composition in Brussels

were not good (his teacher was Fran9ois Rasse, only six

years his senior); thus, in 1899 Bloch traveled to Germany,

where he enrolled at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt be-

fore concluding his studies in Munich (1901-03). A final

phase of Bloch's association with the European conservatory

tradition came in 1911-15, when he returned to Geneva to

assume an appointment on the Conservatory faculty.

 22

The circumstances of Bloch's training placed him in

direct contact with some of the most eminent pedagogues of

the day: in Geneva, he studied with Emile Jaques-Dalcroze,

whose innovative teaching methods were to attract consider-

able attention in the first half of this century; in Brus-

sels he doubtless came to know Fran~ois-Auguste Gevaert,

the distinguished director of the Conservatory and author

of a well-known text, Traite d'harmonie (1905-07); one of

his teachers in Munich was Ludwig Thuille, whose Harmonie-

lehre (written in collaboration with his Munich colleague

Rudolf Louis and published posthumously in 1907) was a

standard work for classroom use in the early decades of the

1900s. We can gather--given the wide dissemination of

ideas that accompanied the cosmopolitan environment of the

conservatory setting, and the fact that Bloch received

training in both French- and German-speaking countries--

that his education was indeed one of great breadth.

But what direct bearing did Bloch's European experi-

ence have on his own work as a pedagogue in America? On

the one hand, turn-of-the-century theory was marked by

certain progressive tendencies that were in fact to become

integral to Bloch's own didactic methods. These tendencies

are manifest in the efforts among writers to relate the

didactic disciplines to living music, as well as to inte-

grate a historical perspective in the educational scheme.

Thuille, to cite one instance, incorporated examples from

 23

the music literature--ranging from Alessandro Stradella's

to Richard Strauss's dramatic works--in his Harmonielehre,

but the volume nonetheless represents a continuation of the

conventional mode of instruction presented in numerous

nineteenth-century textbooks.
. . ~ ~
Slmllarly, Andre Gedalge

made specific reference in his widely used Trait~ de la

fugue (1901) to works by Bach, yet the primary emphasis of

,
his method is on the fugue d'ecole. The training Bloch re-

ceived in the European conservatory setting represented a

tradition with which, in the end, he was highly dissatis-

fied, and from which his teaching in the New World consti-

tutes a significant departure.

On the other hand, an explicit--though varying--

indication of Bloch's interest in the prevailing didactic

scene comes to us by way of one of his American students,

Quincy Porter. The collection of Bloch's pedagogical writ-

ings (which otherwise is preserved entirely in his own

hand) includes a pair of volumes compiled by Porter, con-

taining notes he gathered while enrolled in a class taught

by Bloch in the summer of 1921. The notes--detailed

chronicles of the events of each class meeting--show that

the lectures were devoted mainly to Bloch's discussion of

the fundamental aspects of musical composition. But it is

also evident that Bloch, in the effort to expose his pupils

to a wider context of ideas, occasionally spoke about the

writings and methods of other pedagogues.

 24

Many of these were mentioned merely in passing:

Bloch comments on the manuals of Riemann, Jadassohn, and

Richter, for example, but says only that they are "pedan-

tic"; of Schoenberg's Harmonielehre, he reportedly remarked

that while it "contains much that is quite wonderful in its

paragraphs on aesthetics . . the actual technical part of

it is not so simple as it might be"; Rimsky-Korsakov's Text-

book of Harmony is also cited, though Bloch's comment ("may

be good, but opinions vary") suggests that he may not have

been fully familiar with the text. Indeed, all these re-

marks indicate more than anything Bloch's dissatisfaction

with and essential independence from the texts in question.

There emerges in Porter's notes, however, a strict

division between volumes to which Bloch makes passing refer-

ence, and a body of writings that he recommends to his pu-

pils for actual use. Among the latter are three counter-

point texts: Heinrich Bellermann's Der Contrapunkt (1862),

Michael Haller's Kompositionslehre fur den polyphonen

Kirchengesang (1891), and Wilhelm Hohn's Der Kontrapunkt

Palestrinas und seiner Zeitgenossen (1918). These manuals

are representative of a movement that arose in the second

half of the nineteenth-century--initiated by Bellermann--

~nd that advocated a return to an instruction of counter-

point based strictly on the practice of the Renaissance

masters. This movement was to culminate in the writings of

Knud Jeppesen, whose didactic presentation of contrapuntal

 25

technique (Kontrapunkt, 1930) was in fact an outgrowth of

his own systematic and scholarly investigation of the

sixteenth-century repertory, Der Palestrinastil und die

Dissonanz (1925). The remaining volumes listed by Porter

are equally revealing of the premise of Bloch's teaching.

We find the titles of several general histories of music,

including Arnbros's Die Geschichte der Musik ("probably the

best book we have"), Lavignac's La Musique et les musiciens

("primitive in some respects, but of very great value''),

and The History of Music by Waldo Pratt. But mentioned

with particular emphasis are anthologies of Renaissance

repertory such as The English Madrigal School and Antholo-

gie de m~itres religieux primitifs--volumes that come to us

from "people who have studied the works."

In addition to the various figures mentioned by Por-

ter, several pedagogues are frequently named in Bloch's own

writings; and here we are dealing with a group of authors

whose influence on Bloch is manifest. In his volumes per-

taining to the study of counterpoint, Bloch makes reference

to Bellermann, who, as we have seen, revived a mode of in-

struction that was to form the foundation for Bloch's own

contrapuntal method. Prominently mentioned in another por-

tion of the collection is the Swiss writer Mathias Lussy,

whose theories on rhythm and expression received high

praise from Gevaert and had considerable influence on

 26

20
Jaques-Dalcroze. The thrust of Lussy's work is in pro-

viding a systematic basis for the teaching of musical inter-

pretation. Bloch applied Lussy's ideas to the study of

harmony--harmonization, in Bloch's view, being a process

that is fundamentally related to the interpretation of

melodic structure (cf. p. 37, below).

A further figure mentioned by Bloch in the context

of harmony is his teacher from Frankfurt, Iwan Knorr.

Though largely forgotten in our day, Knorr provided train-

ing in his years at the Hoch Conservatory to an impressive

number of prominent composers--including the so-called

"Frankfurt Group" (Cyril Scott, Percy Grainger, Roger Quil-

ter, Norman O'Neill, and Balfour Gardiner), and such native

German composers as Hans Pfitzner and Ernst Toch. Knorr

was also the author of a text, Aufgaben fur den Unterricht

in der Harmonielehre (1903), whose distinguishing feature--

that it consists of a brief and straightforward expostion

of the basic principles of harmonic writing--led Bloch to

incorporate it in his own teaching; in fact, Sessions also

acknowledges his indebtedness to the book in the opening

pages of his Harmonic Practice. But Knorr's greatest im-

pact on Bloch is evident in a more general way. As Bloch

was to recall to his biographer Mary Tibaldi Chiesa in

later years, "Knorr was a great and profound pedagogue.

And he appraised me of the most important thing: to be my

21
own teacher."
 27

The commitment to rigorous and independent thought

instilled by Knorr's teaching is a decisive aspect of

Bloch's didactic work--particularly so in his analytical

studies. One finds more references in this material to the

writings of various authors than in any other portion of

the collection. Yet what Bloch refers to are not the stand-

ard analyses of Tovey, Schenker, or d'Indy, but rather the

work of the aesthetician Charles Lalo. Lalo proposed in

his Esthetique musicale scientifique (1908) that the study

of music, like that of the sciences, should be based strict-

ly on empirical observation, with no reference to precon-

ceived theoretical or philosophical systems--a postulate

which is at the heart of Bloch's approach to analysis. Its

foremost manifestation is in passages from Bloch's writings

that show his f~miliarity with the work of the French en-

tomologist, J. H. Fabre. Fabre's purely scientific studies

were apparently of considerable influence in prompting

Bloch to undertake a series of analyses--the "Studies in

Configuration"--in which he altered certain detailed fea-

tures of a musical idea in order to observe the effect of

the change on a larger context.

Against the background of his European experience,

the essential nature of Bloch's approach to teaching comes

into vivid relief. In spite of his conservatory training

and his great familiarity with the standard pedagogical

 28

literature, he remained staunchly opposed to the conven-

tional didactic currents of his day. Yet, neither was he

in any sense a "modernist"; and in this respect his writ-

ings are clearly distinguished from those, for example, of

Joseph Schillinger, who set forth in his The Schillinger

System of Musical Composition, published 1941 in New York,

a method of composing based on the application of mathema-

tical principles--or even those of Krenek, who, as we have

seen, proposed that the craft of part-writing might be

taught through the twelve-tone method. The essence of

Bloch's teaching is in its ties to tradition--to modes of

instruction that had been proven in the training of great

masters of the past, and that are reflected in their music.

We thus find a striking parallel between Bloch's

didactic orientation and the approach to his creative work

that concurrently arose in his American years. As is well-

known, Bloch embraced no modern system of composition. The

influence of the musical past, however, is evident through-

out his oeuvre. One might point to the First Piano Quintet
(1921), whose movements are based on traditional formal mod-

els for the genre; or to the melodic and harmonic material

of the Suite Modale (1957), which recalls that of earlier

periods. In the Concerto Grossi No. 1 (1925) and No. 2

(1952), Bloch makes direct use of textural and structural

aspects of the Baroque form; while in other works, such as

the Sinfonia Breve (1952), stylistic references are more

 29

oblique. In short, it is an approach towards the musical

past that is quite varied, yet nevertheless is character-

ized in each case by a personal style unquestionably rooted

in its own time. The meeting of past and present is simi-

larly evident in the contents of the collection.

 30

Footnotes
1
Charles E. Ives, Memos (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, Inc., 1972), pp. 46-47.
2
A complete list of Ives's course of study at Yale and
the music courses offered during his tenure is supplied in
Memos, pp. 180-84.
3
Ibid., p. 116.
4
Irving Lowens, Foreward to Critical and Historical
Essays by Edward MacDowell, by W.J. Baltzell (New York:
DaCapo Press, 1969), p. vi.
5
Edward T. Cone, "Conversation with Roger Sessions," in
Perspectives on American Composers, ed. Benjamin Boretz and
Edward T. Cone (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
1971) 1 P• 91.
6
The case of Boulanger is a particularly interesting one,
both because of her widely-recognized contribution to the
development of a school of American composers--Copland, Roy
Harris, and Walter Piston among them--and because of the
special regard she and Bloch seem to have held for one
another. Sessions recalled that Boulanger was reluctant to
accept him into her studio because he would have already
received excellent training as a Bloch student (Ibid., p.
96.). Bloch's tribute to Boulanger was comparable. While
she was visiting him in Cleveland on her first tour of
America, Bloch agreed to entrust to her tutelage his
seventeen-year-old daughter, Suzanne (see Leonie Rosen-
stiel, Nadia Boulanger, a Life in Music [New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 1981], p. 188.).
]
Henry Cowell, "Current Chronicle--New York," Musical
Quarterly 40 (1954): 237.
8
Pauline Alderman, "Schoenberg at USC," Journal of the
Arnold Schoenberg Institute 5 (1981): 207.
9
Alexander Goehr, "The Theoretical Writings of Arnold
Schoenberg," Perspectives of New Music 13 (1975): 13.
10
Paul Hindemith, The Craft of Musical Composition Book
I, trans. Arthur Mendel (New York: Associated Music
Publishers, 1942), p. 7.
11
Idem, A Concentrated Course in Traditional Harmony Book
!' Revised ed. (New York: Schott, 1968), p. iii.
 31

12
see Ernest Krenek, "America's Influence on Its Emigre
Composers," Perspectives of New Music 8 (1970): 113.
13
Idem, "Teaching Composition in America: Reminiscences,"
The American Music Teacher 24 (.April, 1975): 11.
14
Hindemith, The Craft of Musical Composition Book I,
p. 4
15
H. F. Parker, "Unique Music by Ernest Bloch Receives
Notable Exposition," Musical America (May 12, 1917): 9.
16
Bernard Rogers, "'.A Bas, Formalism!' Is Device of
Cleveland Institute," Musical America (July 8, 1922): 9.
17
See Myron Schwager, "A Contribution to the Biography of
Ernest Bloch: Letters at the University of Hartford,"
Current Musicology 28 (1979): 45.
18
See below, p. 512.
19
Ernest Chapman, "Ernest Bloch at 75," Tempo 35 (1955):
6.
20
see Howard Elbert Smither, "Theory of Rhythm in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries with a Contribution to
the Theory of Rhythm for the Study of Twentieth-Century
Music," (Ph.D. Dissertation, Cornell University, 1960),
p. 79 ff.
21
Mary Tibaldi Chiesa, Ernest Bloch (Torino: G. B.
Paravia, 1933), p. 18 "Knorr . . era un grande e
profondo pedagogo. E mi apprese la cosa piu ardua e piu
importante: mi apprese a essere il maestro dime stesso."
Her work was the first monograph devoted to the composer;
only one full-length biography has followed so far: Robert
Strassburg, Ernest Bloch: Voice in the Wilderness (Los
Angeles: The Trident Shop, 1977).
 CHAPTER II

INSTRUCTION IN HARMONY

The collection of Bloch's pedagogical writings con-

sists of some forty documents representative of the entire

1
length of his American teaching career. Bloch preserved

the legacy of his didactic work in manuscript books and

folders, casting upon all the materials a degree of order

that is one of the collection's remarkable features. Most

of the writings are dated; often Bloch also provided labels

for the individual volumes. In short, every page of the

collection is a testimony of Bloch's firm intention to

create a comprehensive and orderly record of his teaching.

One is reminded of the way in which Handel, Haydn, and

Beethoven methodically collected notes and examples for the

instruction of students. And an interesting comparison

rises through a certain parallel with Bach, because to some

extent we are dealing with a conscious attempt at reviewing

and summarizing--merging styljstic study with original

creative work. Some of the dates which accompany Bloch's

writings are deceiving. The years specified are mostly from

the 1940s--the final stage of his teaching career. Indeed,

32
 33

much of the work of collecting appears to have been done at

that time. In many cases, however, what Bloch codified in

a single manuscript during those years may actually have

been drawn from his earlier experience as a pedagogue.

Particular dates will sometimes indicate only when a given

document was compiled.

In gathering his didactic writings Bloch left not

only a legacy of his approach to the instruction of compo-

sition, but a unique and detailed documentation of his

teaching in all its phases. As the- materials reveal, Bloch

the teacher was involved in projects of remarkable diver-

sity, and his tutelage characteristically consisted of

various manners of inquiry. The collection contains three

volumes, compi"led during Bloch's .first decade in this

country, that concern his work with children, including his

own, in basic music education. In other folders Bloch

preserved notes for lectures at Berkeley, in which copious

musical examples appear next to quotations by philosophers

ranging from Buddha to Schopenhauer. A further group of

writings pertains to courses in community education.

Yet valuable as these materials will be for future

research, they are in a sense ancillary to a central sub-

stance of Bloch's writings. From the multiformity of the

contents emerges a core of studies directly rooted in the

practice of musical composition, and all other discussions

eventually guide the reader back to two major sections

 34

where Bloch's thinking is preserved in its most comprehen-

sive form. The first (and larger of the two) consists of

analyses, astounding in their detail, of works by Debussy,

Musorgsky, Bach, and Beethoven; judging from these papers,

Bloch found the Well-Tempered Clavier and the Eroica

Symphony particularly important for systematic study. The

second section consists of fundamental teaching material

concerned with harmony, counterpoint, and fugue. Yet the

seemingly traditional arrangement is easily misleading.

The convent~onal disciplines are treated in a totally

unconventional manner, and their presentation is guided by

a spirit that invariably reflects the practicing composer

as a teacher of composition.

The individuality of Bloch's teaching is imme-

diately and strikingly evident in his instruction of

harmony. Bloch gathered the principles essential to his

teaching of harmony into a single volume, Applied Harmony,

which measures 10 1/2 inches by 6 3/4 inches, a special

type of music manuscript book: single sheets of music

paper alternate with unlined leaves, so that each page of

staff paper faces a plain page. Bloch used this arrange-

ment to good advantage; in the space adjoining musical

examples, he frequently provided remarks that are highly

illuminating with regard to the principles in question.

The text of the harmony volume runs to twenty-five

 35

2
pages. The book happens to be one of the few manu-

scripts Bloch neglected to date, but there is little

question, judging on the basis of handwriting and internal

organization, that it is a companion to other manuals com-

piled in the 1920s.

Mention should be made of two additional documents

in the collection which relate to Bloch's teaching of

harmony. The first is a manuscript book, dated 1921, with

the title La Forme musicale, in which Bloch gave a brief

exposition of procedures he ultimately included as part of

Applied Harmony. In the latter volume, however, his treat-

ment of this material is considerably more developed and

refined, and thus La Forme musicale is of limited relevance

to the present discussion. The second supplementary docu-

ment, on the other hand, is of essential help toward an

understanding of this aspect of Bloch's teaching. Bloch

compiled this manuscript in conjunction with a series of

ten lectures he delivered during the fall of 1920. In them

he explained certain points which are fundamental to his

thinking on the subject of harmony, and his draft of these

lectures constitutes a highly informative introduction to

his approach to the discipline.

The la~ter manuscript is included in a folder,

labeled Notes to the Teachers of Theory, Cleveland 1920.

It consists of eleven typed pages, representing Bloch's

personal record of the lecture series--observations he made

 36

at the conclusion of each presentation as to effectiveness

of chosen methods and materials, response of participants,

and possible objectives for each subsequent meeting. In

some cases, Bloch also noted the date and time of lectures,

and we can gather from his annotations that the sessions

were generally held on a weekly basis. When the series

began Bloch had just arrived in Cleveland, and his account

of the opening meetings is recorded on hotel stationery.

For a later lecture, presented in December (the month in

which the Cleveland Institute first opened its doors), he

wrote--with evident pride--"at the institute" at the head

of the page. On page two of the manuscript he wrote out

the title of the whole series; it reads with the formality

of a description from a course catalogue (and perhaps was

initially designed for such a purpose):

THE MUSICAL SPEECH and its different elements .

An analytical Course, in TEN LESSONS , for the study
of Rhythm, Melody, Harmony, Counterpoint, Form, and
Expression, their relative importance, their logic,
their evolution through the ages, in the great works
of the masters and their intimate connection with
the problems of Interpretation.

This and the nine pages following clearly form an

integral unit, summarizing the ten lectures as the composer

presented them. They are preceded, however, by a page

whose text differs in the style of its formulation from

that of the other pages. While it is introductory in

nature, there is no indication as to how it was to be

 37

incorporated into the series proper. Yet it is in this

short introduction that the material of greatest bearing on

Bloch's teaching of harmony is to be found.

The concept which figures so prominently in Bloch's

discussion -Of harmony--and this is documented in the intro-

duction to the Notes to the Teachers of Theory--is that of

rhythm. Bloch's use of this term, however, stands apart

from that commonly applied. He considers the individual

metrical accent, upbeat, or downbeat as belonging to the

realm of meter, or "thesis." Rhythm or "ictus," by com-

parison, is concerned with the motions of strong and weak

that exist within larger musical gestures. Discussing the

connection between meter and rhythm, in the second of the

Cleveland lectures, Bloch applies this metaphor: the

metric unit of the measure

is the smallest musical organism, like a cell in a

body or a plant . . . later, studying rhythm, a
higher organization (reunion of many cells), those
cells will give a higher form.

Bloch found his thought corroborated in publi-

cations of the nineteenth-century aesthetician Mathias

Lussy, whose name in fact appears frequently in the com-

poser's writings. Lussy defined the rhythmic phrase as "a

3
collection of notes corresponding to a line of poetry."

Just as the sense of a poetic phrase depends on much more

than metrical organization of the words, so meaning in

music arises only to the extent that the various features
 38

of the musical line and its existing rhythmic phrases are

fully integrated. Because composition is concerned with

levels of organization beyond the phrase, this concept of

rhythm is potentially of unbounded significance: phrases

are combined into what Bloch calls "sentences"; sentences

are extended into musical form; and rhythm has its place in

the organic unity of the whole. Thus, when Bloch mentions

in his summary of the ninth Cleveland lecture that he pre-

sented a "discussion of the Mozart Sonata in A Major, and

its rhythm," one has a sense as to the breadth of investi-

gation that may have been involved.

Lussy's notion of rhythm--like much of his work---

was intended to benefit the performer, the act of interpre-

tation being primarily a matter of discovering the particu-

lar "rhythm" of a composition. Bloch extended such inquiry

to the work of the composer. Upon it

depends . . the real sense of the musical speech.

All stages of invention are to be undertaken in service of

the structural rhythm, for

Harmony is absolutely dependent on it . . . it is

only when you know the real sense of the melody that
you are able to harmonize it properly. i.e.
according to the real sense; to discriminate among
the different notes and accents, where are the most
important, to deduce the real divisions of the
sentence, to know it5 pun9tuation, then to put in
the real chords--(5- 3 or V and inversions)

Thus harmony never stands as a phenomenon in itself,

 39

isolated from the other basic concepts of music in Bloch's

teaching. It is revealing that he included certain exer-

cises relating to harmony in the volume entitled La Forme

musicale.

It is in Applied Harmony that the pedagogical impli-

cations of Bloch's thinking are first realized in full; and

there the relationship between harmony and form clearly

emerges as the source of his method. One is aware of the

composer's conviction that, at every step, individual

exercises should be linked to a larger musical context;

technical principles are never isolated or abstracted. It

is never a matter of "filling'' harmonies into a prescribed

pattern. Rather, the study of harmony, as Bloch presents

it, becomes a natural outgrowth of musical form--it thrives

on the student's powers of invention, and can by no means

be mastered as an end in itself.

As was his custom in all his major didactic compi-

lations, Bloch provided for Applied Harmony a table of

contents. Certain markings in the table appear in blue

pencil. Bloch made it a point to use different pencils and

pens in compiling his writings--the analytical studies in

particular contain notaticns in an impressive variety of

colors. But in the didactic manuals, Bloch did most of the

work in black ink. Where he did use a different color, the

change often hinges upon some matter of organization or

 40

emphasis, but seldom involves an essential pedagogical

point. (Thus black and white photocopies, as given here,

will convey Bloch's intentions adequately.)

Simple Examples Used in Figuration

The table of contents shows the following headings

for the main sections into which Applied Harmony is organ-

ized: Figuration, Harmony applied to Form, and Modulation

applied to Form. This threefold division represents the

stages essential to Bloch's method. But while one can

interpret Applied Harmony as his definitive pedagogical

record on the subject, it is evident from the very nature

of the volume that Bloch gave no thought to creating a man-

ual that would form the basis of a "curriculum." Indeed,

he referred to the harmony text of another author for cer-

tain aspects of his instruction. On the cover of Applied

Harmony, Bloch wrote in parentheses under the title:

to be used in connection with Knorr's exercises

The exercises in question are from !wan Knorr's Aufgaben

fur den Unterricht in der Harmonielehre, first published in

4
1903.

Bloch studied with Knorr at the Hoch Conservatory

in Frankfurt during the period 1899-1901, and there are

conflicting accounts as to the nature of the training he

 41

received from Knorr's hand. David Kushner has written that

Bloch credited in part to Knorr's teaching the fact that he

gained the ability "to think independently and to develop

5
his own musical personality [cf. p. 26, above] ."

Herbert Elwell, on the other hand, reported:

Knorr was evidently a rather pedantic teacher. When

Bloch brought him an assignment in second rondo
form, he [Knorr] remarked, "It is an intere~ting
piece, but it is not in second rondo form."

While the argument might require further explanation, it

remains beside the point when it comes to the exercises

Bloch adopted in his harmony text: there are concrete

reasons why the relationship between Bloch and his teacher

cannot be summarily dismissed. Their work shows a definite

kinship in conceptual matters that shape the character of

their respective writings.

In the introduction to his Aufgaben, Knorr

addresses himself to the subject of pedagogical tradition,

and he speaks somewhat critically about the abundant writ-

ings on harmony and prevailing didactic practice. His

concern is that the traditional text does little more than

propagate "rules" which, by their nature, are contrary to

the creative spirit; and he resolves that his text will

have no part of the constrictions imposed by convention.

He accomplishes this by brevity and simplicity, preferring

to limit himself to a straightforward formulation of

principles presented in brief examples. Knorr is emphatic

 42

about his conviction that the successful students of

harmony will be only those who are the most gifted to begin

with, and he invokes his memory of a conversation:

. about theoretical instruction Master

Brahms once said to me gruffly: "Eh harmony!
Either on7 knows it, or else it can never be
learned."

Bloch's orientation is similarly directed at the student of

evident gift. And in the introduction to the 1920 Notes to

the Teachers of Theory he had already expressed reserva-

tions about the study of harmony as promulgated by the

traditional text: he recommends

. . . using the simplest examples taken from the

book of study (any book will do! When wrongly
written, as is generally the case, the teacher and
the pupils will correct and reestablish the true--
punctuation) .

Bloch found in Knorr's text (and perhaps even more

so in Knorr's teaching) valuable influence effecting this

orientation. Knorr's Aufgaben, however, also proved to be

useful in a purely practical sense. For the opening

section of Applied Harmony Bloch selected from Knorr's book

certain formulas to illutrate his didactic principles. As

the basis for his first exercise he used a figured-bass

8
formula from Knorr:

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 43
Apptied Haromony--p. 1

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44 Applied Hanmo~y--p. 2 }
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 45

As the first two pages of Applied Harmony show,

Bloch's method is imbued with a novel sense of freedom.

Knorr's formula is harmonized faithfully, but the tradi-

tional chordal realization gives way to one built of arpeg-

giated patterns--literally "figurations"; and the exercise

unfolds in the manner of a set of variations, each of which

is formed by a single pattern. As a natural response to

the inherent musicality of the procedure, the student be-

gins to attend to various other aspects of musical texture.

This Bloch demonstrates in written commentary adjoining the

examples, where he appears continually as an eloquent pupil

of his own method.

Bloch notes from the outset that the musical tex-

ture resulting from figuration will suggest an actual per-

formance situation; he mentions in the table of contents

that the entire section on figuration is "for piano." Yet,

in the case of particular variations he gives at times

other specific directions. Regarding Variation IV, for

instance, he notes:

The melody could be written here, either for

Violin--Cello (8ve lower) or voice.

He makes a similar remark on page 2, above the tenth varia-

tion. Bloch also stresses that the student must begin to

exercise a certain critical perspective in order to com-

plete the exercises in figuration successfully. He writes

at the margin of Variation I that in inventing the

 46

individual variations the student will

. study the forms which fit the best a variation

to an exercise.

In other words, the character of melodic writing and that

of the accompaniment must result in an appropriate

combination. Through these procedures, the discipline of

harmony becomes less a study in the abstract, and more of a

craft which is truly "applied." One can see from the

dynamics and articulation Bloch provides for the last of

the fourteen variations in the first exercise that these

elementary examples begin to assume a vivid musical

identity.

Bloch concludes the opening section of Applied

Harmony with two more examples in figuration, each of which

is based on a formula taken from Knorr.

 _47

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 48 AppUe.d Hcvunon.y--p._ 4 . _
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 49

In the second exercise in figuration, which appears

on page 3 of Applied Harmony, Bloch takes up a particular

issue: the addition of "extra'' notes in the accompaniment

(placed in parentheses) to form more elaborate patterns of

figuration. He had examined a similar process in the first

exercise, where the last six variations consist of a figura-

tion derived from a five-part harmonization, and where

Bloch illustrates a fundamental principle of part-writing;

he avoids doubling the third of the chord. The sound of

the doubled third, as he writes in the margin, is "not very

satisfactory."

Yet the question of doubling is superseded by a

more significant point on page 4 of the manuscript. In a

culminating third exercise in figuration, Bloch turns his

specific attention to the relationship between harmony and

musical form. He introduces the exercise with these

comments:

Ask the student to use the two forms of the exercise

[a and b] . as a sentence, 4 & 4, . . for
piano--or for piano and voice, or diff. instruments.
NB. Notes to be doubled (avoid the 3rd)

Bloch again uses the simple resources Knorr has

provided. For this third example, Knorr's formula is four

9
measures long.

r II
 50

In fashioning the individual variations, however, the

student is actually to double the length of the phrase to

create the larger structure Bloch calls a "sentence." (He

used the same procedure in the first exercise of this

section, as is clear from the first variation and the

marking "etc." at the end of the variations that follow.)

In essence, Bloch is creating a structural context

for the exercises that, even in this most elementary form,

adds to his writing a sense of directedness and proportion.

The subtle sustaining quality of figuration enhances the

relationship between the motions of harmony and structure:

the structural implication of harmony emerges more clearly

because the didactic presentation is in itself more musi-

cal. That this is indeed the thrust of the exercises in

figuration is clear from a postscript to the section which

Bloch notes on page 5 of Applied Harmony:

It is not only useful to use figuration, from the

very beginning, it is necessary to connect the study
of harmony to the study of form.

Harmony Applied to Form

The introduction of the subject of form into the

study of figuration prepares the student for the section of

Applied Harmony that follows; and the connection of harmony

and form becomes the central pedagogical issue. Bloch

 51

specifies the principles operative for this second section

in his table of contents:

Harmony applied to Form, from the start (using only

I.IV.V in root position, for the formation of small
sentences, or song form (a.b.a.) with diff. rhythms
(no use of inversions, nor 7, nor changing or
passing notes, etc.)
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52
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 53

The simple chordal progressions may seem a definite

step back from the more elaborate texture of figuration.

And in fact, Bloch does implement harmonic means in the

first section of the manuscript--such as seventh chords and

inversions--that he forbids in the second. The new exer-

cises, however, represent a significant advance in proce-

dure in that they incorporate no pre-composed elements, so

that the melody, rhythms, and formal plans involved are now

completely of the pupil's own device. Bloch apparently

imposes particular restrictions to ensure that the student

will not be distracted from these new and essential compo-

sitional challenges. He writes on page 5 as commentary to

the first example:

Using only I.IV.V, in the root position, it is

possible, within such limitations, to form small
sentences, first--than [sic] "song form" (aba) using
all kinds of rhythms. (If the student has been well
prepared in rhythm, it will be an easy work for him,
and he will enjoy using, in a creative way the very
modest harmonic elements he controls.)

Bloch evidently had in mind three specific objec-

tives for this section of Applied Harmony. These he lists

in the space adjacent to the second exercise.

The example shows a b a, using I.IV.V only, in root

form. It is a.n excellent exercise: 1/ for the use
of the different positions 2/ [for the] connection
IV-V, V-IV. 3/ for application of Elementary Form.

Bloch further stresses the formal aspect of most of the ten

individual exercises in the harmony section through some

 54

schematic illustration, such as can be seen beneath the

second exercise on page 5 of the manuscript. And of course

the preeminent concern is that the student pursue these

exercises with the understanding that an example cannot be

deemed correct unless it is first of all musical.

--- - --
55 Applied HtVUnon.y--p. 6
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 56 A22~ed Hanmon~--p. 7

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 57

Bloch introduces the third exercise, on page 6, as

an example offering a very diff. character. (See

Palestrina "Ecce quomodo moritur". [)]

The reference to Palestrina applies to the famous four-part

motet, which begins with the same harmonic progression

Bloch uses for this example and which is of the same

rhythmic character; moreover, Palestrina's motet (like

Bloch's exercise) consists predominantly of chords in root

position. Bloch also emphasizes the unusual phrasing of

this example: "5&5 2&2 5."

-
For the fourth example Bloch

simply indicates "single sentence 4&4," reminiscent of the

structural lessons provided in figuration. The fifth

example is marked

single sentence (start for an a.b.a.)

The commentary for the sixth example, on page 7 of

the manuscript, contains only the indication "aba." Bloch

does not mention that in this exercise he has somewhat

stretched the stipulated restrictions. The "b" section of

the example, in effect, moves to the relative major, though

it continues to concentrate on I IV V in the new key. This

is a point, however, that Bloch takes up later in the manu-

script. In the seventh example Bloch reiterates the main

issues of the exercises presented thus far, so that it

takes on the direction of a compendium:

 58

shows, besides form, the real use of the chords in a

normal and efficient way (I--IV v-- I--IV V--I) use
of change of positions, too ([marked by] X~ )

With that summary provided, Bloch concludes this

second section of Applied Harmony with more advanced

examples.
 sg(aJ Appll~d Hanmony--~

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 60

Bloch comments on the eighth exercise, (page 8):

This, and following examples show the possibility of

applying already more subtle rhythms--in form--to
the very simple harmonic elements thus far studied
(I.IV.V)

-
But it is the ninth example that stands as the quintessence

of this section. In extensive commentary on the exercise,

Bloch truly reaches beyond the seemingly defined pedagogi-

cal limits, integrating many of his fundamental notions of

harmony into a full range of harmonic techniques, and thus

putting his entire approach to the discipline into

perspective.

a) This example shows once more that with such

limited means the 3/4 time can be used to advantage;
on account of its rhythmic possibilities 'Prlrrlrrr)
b) all these ex. could be improved later, when the
first inversion (6) has been studied as well as the
7 and its inversions. It will be an excellent
exercise for the student to learn how to apply his
knowledge. how and when to use 5 or 6, according to
the real musical sense of the melody (a very impor-
tant point, which is almost totally ignored in our
actual teaching of harmony: the use of the chord)
(see illustration in red ink [fourth staff from the
bottom]) c) later too, using secondary chords
(II.III.VI-VII)

This commentary is of further interest in that it provides

the only instance in which Bloch makes explicit mention of

the study of seventh-chords and of inversion, even though

he had used these as early as the first section of Applied

Harmony (in the final section, figured bass notation is to

appear more frequently) . Bloch apparently assumed a degree

 61

of understanding on the part of his students that made a

strictly systematic exposition of chordal procedure super-

fluous; or he regarded it as an unnecessary concession to

technicalities, the presentation of which ought not to

10
distract from more essential lessons in harmony. Once

again we sense a certain affinity to Knorr's charge against

traditional harmony manuals: "Do they not offer, rather

than 'principles', an abundance of 'rules' which would

11
frustrate any creative thought if followed!"

Bloch concludes the second section of Applied

Harmony with a tenth exercise, on page 9 of the manuscript,

for which a simple diagram is his only commentary.

(b) 1<1
'l...
s- 1-~ 1 s-
}
r---7 :, /I
-
'l·t••i;,,..-
cit\!'· r·
(w~~::~~-·t)
 62 Applied Hanmony--p. 9
(4.} 6
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 63

Clearly he is taking up a new subject: the use of a second-

ary key center, and its integration within a larger formal

structure. He had, in fact, illustrated this process in

the sixth example, Applied Harmony page 7. Yet only in

this tenth exercise does he acknowledge the tonal motion,

and in neither of these two cases are verbal explanations

given. Verbal explanation is reserved for the final

section of Applied Harmony that follows.

Modulation applied to Form

This final section is remarkable not only for the

exposition of Bloch's teaching of modulation, but also for

features that reveal something of the way in which he may

have compiled this portion of the document. Attached with

a paper clip to the opening page of the modulation section

is a piece of scrap paper. Bloch used one side of it for a

checklist representing the organization of the text, and

the other side to develop the initial exercise. He seems

to have been so certain of the contents for the section on

modulation that he may have sketched the total layout of

the pages at the outset.

 64

•.

./

~V'
~, c.- v
-
'L=-G--V
~-.r
A.-c'-
-

Bloch evidently did not work on the pages in sequence.

There is a notation at the top of each page specifying what

material it was to contain. But it was only for those

groups of exercises that are crossed out on the checklist

 65

that Bloch provided musical examples. The pages designated

for the fourth, ninth, and tenth groups, as well as an

additional sheet designated for the third group, are blank.

It would be wrong, however, to conclude from these

lacunae that the section on modulation is "incomplete."

One might rather infer that Bloch realized his method would

involve a rather extensive repetition of general prin-

ciples; and once he had illustrated all the fundamentals,

it apparently became less important to do so again. In

fact, Bloch sets forth the essential principles within the

first few pages dealing with modulation. For this reason,

the opening of this section takes on a character quite dif-

ferent from other portions of Applied Harmony. In Figura-

tion and Harmony Applied to Form, Bloch demonstrates his

practical orientation from the outset, introducing and

developing details along the way. The initial pages of the

section on modulation, on the other hand, appear as more of

a discourse. Basic concepts are verbally formulated, and

are illustrated by short examples returning to Bloch's

method of practical application.

Bloch begins the section by raising the question

"What is modulation," and he then defines it as a process

consisting of three parts. The first is called "point of

departure"; it contains material which affirms the home

key. The second part of the process, which Bloch labels

"no man's land," involves only "neutral chords"--chords

 66

which are common to both the home key and the new key; it

avoids "conflicting chords"--chordal structures which the

two keys do not share. The third part is the "point of

arrival," introducing the new key, and confirming it ulti-

mately by a cadence. Concentrating at first on a modula-

tion from C major to G major, Bloch underscores these prin-

ciples with musical examples.

 67

I'
iT

..'
'I t I ;/

-- (!)@ (])

I
!(~~~~~~~~~
•I
:

t r
1i
8UJ tpi)J fPl1 cn;t ~ lrt 6C: wP(!;>vc ,, ... "tC:
~
1·· 4,
I ~ r 'I "' 3 _ _ _ __..,
?, _ _ _
~~

li ~~2~·?~;~.
J
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0~1
-,~lJ~J~i~;~:1~~~j'1~.:
,
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I - - - - - - - - - Jr1 Gr- I
21 we u'>otr n;= ¢<?".-; ..t;.;;..· ; --. :r ( ,iji" ~- i1: .l

I')

r.
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 68

At the top of page 10, Bloch demonstrates a way to

determine conflicting and neutral elements of keys: the

chords considered conflicting appear in parentheses; the

other chords are neutral. On the fifth and sixth staves of

the page, he illustrates through a short harmonic scheme

the three parts of the modulation process. He also writes

out a short melody modulating from D major to G major, to

which this "condensed" scheme can be applied. Bloch then

notes

we could use [for parts one and two of the

modulation process] another chord than I (III or IV)

Three cadence formulas are given at the bottom of the

page--two beginning with chords in root position, and the

6
last with an inversion. (The symbol III is here errone-
6
ously placed for II .) But Bloch begins to appeal again

to a more musically sensitive procedure:

[(]If we use more of these neutral chords we give

more importance to part CD and get a more artistic
(subtle) result)
 69 Applied Hanmony--p. 11
\\ '/

'

/D
......
~
---3
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-
~
tl
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t ..:: ~ ~
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ty
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 70

Bloch's initial examples on page 11 are concerned

with the same part of the modulation process. Bloch com-

ments on the exercise in the first system:

Here we get all neutral chords

And for the second example (labeled Example a):

We get them [the neutral chords] in a "freer" way--I

mean in using them either twice or not all of them.

Example a is of further interest because it is used repeat-

edly as the basis for other examples in the section; in

fact, Bloch's next exercise (~meter, third system) is

derived from it.

Bloch observes, however, that the latter exercise

involves only the last two parts of the modulation process;

there is no representation of its first part. He writes:

If now, we want to use Q) (affirmation, more or less

of C . [)] we have to write a few chords using
the-characteristics of that key (f and leading tone)

(In the middle of page 11, Bloch supplies the "Characteris-

tics of C Major," and providing for the event of a modula-

tion away from the minor mode, the "[Characteristics] of a

minor.") The question of balancing the three parts of the

modulation process gives Bloch the opportunity to integrate

this phase of study with that to which his unending

attention is devoted:
 71

This is an excellent way to apply our knowledge in a

more living manner, to For~. We may use sentence~
(p. 11) as the end of a period . . ending at the
Dominant--we will have to make 4 bars . . . prepar-
ing it, and taking the part(D, inC--same material
may be used

Example b, on the second system from the bottom of page 11,

illustrates this blend of study aspects, for Bloch takes

the four-bar modulating scheme (Example a) and supplies for

it a four-measure antecedent. The result is a well-

proportioned "sentence" passing from C major to G major;

the circled arabic numbers above the example indicate the

three parts of the modulation process.

But he also demonstrates, in his commentary for

Example b, a concern--which appears without precedent in

Applied Harmony--for fine musical detail:

The x~~ indicate a little change in chords C VI

III VI instead of I.V.I in example a. (Because---
having had enough I V I in a [the antecedent] we
could, for variety and better transition use less
affirmative chords of C (which we are leaving) in
second fragment

The final exercise on page 11, Example c, expresses the

same tendency, though in this case Bloch's objective

involves a more extensive manipulation of rhythm and

meter. Bloch comments:

Same scheme, with Rhythm changes, and more melodic

form, (passing, changing notes, etc.) (may be used
as a start for a song form) (a)

Yet, these are not isolated examples of Bloch's attention

 72

to subtleties of expression. As the modulation section pro-

ceeds, Bloch tacitly expands his musical palette, approach-

ing melody, rhythm, and harmony with increasing freedom,

and evincing, in the process, an orientation which is

patently less pedagogical than artistic in nature.

The studies of modulation from C major to G major

are concluded on page 12 of Applied Harmony.

 . . ..

73 .Applied Hcvr.mqny--p.<72 .-·

. . . . . ·-
... ...-.· .... ·..

t If~ dlll. ular:..

(f)
r r
+-btu CQ..d~U.

c. :I. ~, N
-
G- N ~( !L (jn:( $,} ~ r:
I

,
,~
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.... ;

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)
-

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t~ J) (1 J I J
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-
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 74

.
Bloc h wr1tes . more exerc1ses
out s1x . (d -g, g---,
bis g---
ter)

in which we can see a continuous refining process. He

comments on Example d:

We may prepare the new key by another chord than V

(III. for inst. which contains the f ~)

Bloch uses the scheme so derived as the second half of a

"sentence" in Example e. Both Example e and the next exer-

cise, Example f, involve further variation in rhythm, phras-

ing, and contour of the material given on page 11 in Exam-

ples a-c. An additional point is made in Example f in that

the antecedent phrase ends on the dominant:

One does not need to end the first part on the I

With Example g Bloch initiates a short series of

execises based on new material. Example g represents a

four-bar harmonic scheme. Like Examples d-f, it deals with

the procedure of using III to prepare the modulation. But

in this case Bloch makes use of inversion. His remark

added to Example g offers a particular explanation:

using softer forms (~ before the cadence (shadow &

light)

As before, Bloch uses the modulating scheme in Example g as

the consequent phrase of a larger formal unit, thus obtain-

his
ing a complete "sentence" (Example g---). The first half

of this sentence in turn, being based on the simple

 75

elaboration of the interval of a descending fourth, becomes

the subject of two remarkably free and ornate variations,

. Examp 1 e g---.
ln ter He provides a more basic illustration
ter
for the harmonization of Example g--- at the bottom of

the page (with a bass line that departs slightly from that

of Example gbis); as he explains parenthetically:

alteration may be used, giving a slight impression

of going to a minor or to e minor .

On page 13 of Applied Harmony, the aspects of modu-

lation discussed in the preceding pages are summarized.

The presentation of these remarks is given particularly

emphatic appearance because Bloch abandons the arrangement

of confining commentary to one side of a double page,

writing straight across instead.

Method of Working From the preceding notes we can

already see how modulation ought to be studied for
practical aims. 1/ Anatomically--using just chords
(and thinking theoretically of the process 6f
modulation) 2/ Physiologically using the scheme as
the second part of a sentence . . and adding
accordingly a first part, in the 1. key. 3/ Adding
passing notes, etc. more melodic--and eventually
changes of rhythm This method may be applied to all
the following modulations

In essence, these comments mark the point where the

exposition of principles ends and methodical application

begins. Concentrating on one pair of tonalities at a time,

Bloch illustrates the process of modulation in different

contexts. He uses a diagram, which is also entered on his

 76

checklist, as a graphic aid.

C major serves in each case as point of departure. As is

clear from the diagram, Bloch is concerned exclusively with

modulations to closely related keys; no other possibilities

are mentioned or illustrated. But before commencing this

series of examples, Bloch makes one further point on page

13: modulation is not a purely harmonic phenomenon.

An excellent exercise would be to use it [the

modulation scheme] only melodically . . . using the
same thematic material for different modulations

-·
w. c:.
- @ 4% ? r lr T IJ J J !l~t J I 1 i
I1. L r I j J pi IJ l
'
,.
1 f f f· r1
I J fl IJ
~
if

1 1
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,
k ,I 3 ~J I 3
J

~) ,_ I 1 1 I
1 br- tq \ .I

@
...
r , r I,,· !. J 1I I
-
 77

Working with a melody developed in a previous exercise

(Applied Harmony page 11, Examples a-c), Bloch demonstrates

modulations from f major to each of the five closely re-

lated keys contained in his diagram. Underneath the last

of these melodic examples, and extending from the extreme

left hand margain to the far right side of the recto sheet,

he notes the observation that the fourth and fifth

exercises

are not so satisfactory. The shape of the first

fragment could be modified, in order not to end on 1
[the tonic] which is rather conflicting .

The same issue is discussed at greater length in the

following pages. What is most noteworthy about Bloch's

comment is the implication that all modulations cannot be

handled identically; each particular pair of keys involves

peculiarities that must be considered if the modulation is

to be acceptable. The peculiarities often have to do with

conflicting chords and the way the three sections of the

modulation are used; and this is the subject to which most

of the remaining pages of Applied Harmony are directed.
Having dealt with modulations from C major to G

major thoroughly, Bloch begins page 14 with examples going

from C major to its relative minor; he comments at the

beginning of the page:

Proceed exactly as prescribed on page 10-13--

( and . . think! )
 78
ApplJ.ed Hanmony--p. 14

§- -
.JJ1- /
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~~~ l-o-·s)
...a
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.J
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 79

The process implemented here is the same as is used for the

preceding exercises: the first step is to identify the con-

flicting chords; next, Bloch constructs a short harmonic

scheme, beginning with neutral chords, and ultimately

arriving at the new key; the scheme is then used as the

consequent phrase in a "sentence." In some cases, addi-

tional examples for the same modulation are given.

Bloch notes from the start that special conditions

are involved for the modulation from C major to its rela-

tive minor. He defines the conflicting chords as those

containing "g/g:lr' ," but also states that with the descend-

ing (natural minor) scale, circumstances will be different.

Most of his commentary, however, is concerned with the

first full "sentence" (on the sixth and seventh staves of

the page) and especially with the measure he has marked

with a large " X" .

The modulation is rather difficult here, because the

ictus [~] comes on a chord very conflicting The V
of C (which is the negation of a minor on account of
the g)--It would be much easier if the ictus come on
a neutral chord--(or to modulate to a, by immediate
alteration of g on the fifth bar . [)]

(Find examples among the Masters! and study them)

Practice modulations in diff. keys too!

On page 16 of the manuscript, as elsewhere in this

section, Bloch further illustrates the change of key with

examples written by his daughter, Suzanne.

 Applied Hanmony--p. 16

-
-
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.,..,
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.... ' I rn-i

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•
 81

In the same manner prescribed in her father's "meth-

od of working" she evidently would compose a ''sentence" and

then approach it with the idea of making the part-writing

more intricate. Her exercise ends on the conflicting "V of

C" to which her father refers earlier. But she avoids the

problem he describes: rather than using neutral chords at

the outset of the consequent phrase, she prolongs C major

6
and introduces neutral chords (VI, VII in C major) later

in the "sentence," followed by the characteristic "g :f:t" of

the new key.

Exercises for modulations from C major to e minor

appear on page 17 of the manuscript. The absence of any

commentary for these exercises perhaps suggests that Bloch

regarded this modulation as one which entailed no particu-

lar problems. One should notice that in his harmonic

scheme and the corresponding "sentence," he uses all three

available neutral chords to prepare the modulation. Bloch

also notes that the examples on the lower two sy~tems of

the page are by Suzanne.

Pages 18 and 19 of the manuscript, as mentioned

earlier, are blank. On page 20 Bloch examines the modu-

lation from f major to d minor.

 -------- ---
82 Applied Hanmony--p. 17

1"1

I
I. ..,
-
J
f 'I:
:> I

.
1-
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l
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c :t. 11t- !!"

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t t, I 1 r r , tr -
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J d .J ..J ,... I
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....
(
- I I -tr

11• .a 11. lSr. I G. Jr.

 83
Applied H~ony--p. ZO

,. . r ,
c
3 :: :' I '4

a
6 :
1 \i ..
g !
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v "
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~ I C' I

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7: I I -7

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I j
l"' ? ""' rr f 'f i'
t'·,., " "' "' I ' ....' I i I/ ·,

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I

t ~I I
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I .g_ ., I ( Lt-
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t .t I ,;..~.
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ta.. 'I . 1 IT
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II ..,.
1 I
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 84

Bloch states that modulating from C major to d

minor is complicated, primarily because there is only one

chord between the two keys that can be considered neutral.

He comments of the example on the third system:

This is possible--but not very satisfactory aesthet-

ically because the ictus (measure four) lays such
stress on b~. On the other hand, the only neutral
chord is d-minor (which is the tonic of the new
key--using it too much will deprive the tonic of its
freshness) Furthermore, If the sentence has to be
repeated, the return to f. (after C~!) will seem
unnatural. The best way would be to have the
sentence begin with another chord than the tonic C.
(IV F, for instance, which is nearer to the next
key . .)

This approach is demonstrated in the exercise designated

with the mark n:ij::-.n But Bloch.further notes that, since it

is very closely related to d minor, the 11

IV F 11 serves to

make the modulation smoother if also used as an interme-

diate point of reference in moving from C major to the new

key; that is, the conflicting notes can be introduced one

at a time: 11
b P 11 in the context of a stabilized F major,

and 11
c :W 11 as leading tone to d minor.
The application of this process, in Example.::#= a,
poses problems, however. Because the sentence begins with

an ~ major chord, the opening tonic of C major is not firm-

ly established and sounds quite tentative. Furthermore, by

introducing the conflicting notes so early in the passage,

Bloch has blurred the first and second parts of the modula-

tion process so that the clarity of the modulation is

 85

compromised. He corrects these problems in Example~ b,

where the tonal and structural relationships are clearer.

He remarks about this final exercise:

Here the process is complete and definite.

On page 21 of the manuscript, Bloch examines the

details of modulating from a minor to e minor. As in the

previous example, there is only one neutral chord between

keys. Here, however, that chord has a functional

(subdominant) relationship to the new key, so that the

modulation is accomplished more easily. The eight-measure

"sentence" drafted as the last example on the page becomes

more convincing due in part to Bloch's very economical use

of chords in different positions as a means of shaping the

modulation.

The exercises leading from ~ minor to e minor

represent Bloch's first illustration of modulations

preceding from the minor key. Here, too, he is concerned

only with a group of closely related keys.

 ------ ---------- --Aprt:te:d-Httttmony--p-.- -2-7 - --
86

_5!
 87

The modulation from a minor to C major on page 22

of the manuscript forms the only instance in the section

where Bloch does not follow the procedure of beginning with

identification of conflicting notes and ending with a com-

plete "sentence." The only musical material provided is an

example, in two versions, by Suzanne, and the only commen-

tary states simply

conflicting note is g~ = g.

In fact, there are signs of haste in the compilation of

these final pages. Fewer examples and annotations are pro-

vided, and the calligraphy also becomes uncharacteristic-

ally casual at times. Similarly, one does not sense a

degree of cogent continuity between the various stages of

the process in the demonstration of the modulation from a

minor to G major (on page 23).

 88 Applied H~ony--p. 22

't
.... ) .
. '
~------------------~

4.--
I
\
I
t i '~
I i
\.. I
c.

~ "

I
·~ "r"T1 _.,..,..... ,..._
; I.i@: 'II f.' 'I'·' I
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• •
II •
-
was: I.-h ?r,ffk:$1
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·+'-
,

I, __ • - ,
I

-l.
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.j.
-- =.:. + '
:. : .- J
i'
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I

...., ' --J . I

~
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I 4 I & 1 I l
I

I
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r 89

(
)
.I I . l;j
l /1

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 90

Bloch places greater--though still tacit--emphasis on the

concept of function. The modulation is facilitated by the

fact that the single neutral chord (I in the tonic minor)

is reinterpreted as a subdominant function (II) of the new

key; yet, Bloch provides no commentary. Pages 24 and 28,

designated for modulations between a minor to F major and a

minor to d minor, respectively, are left blank, and thus

with the examples on page 23 Applied Harmony comes to a

close.

Applied Harmony is the only manuscript in the col-

lection to represent Bloch's actual formulation for the

instruction in harmony. Its brevity stands in stark con-

trast to other sections, in which the sheer enormity of

documentation is often striking. One might describe it as

a retrospective summary. In its admirable economy, the

volume stands as Bloch's personal compendium of harmony

culled from both his own experience and from existing

practice, and recording only those principles he regarded

as essential.

The reader will look in vain for a systematic

discussion of inversions, the seventh chord, or chromatic

and enharmonic modulation. The work cannot be judged by

familiar standards. Hindemith and Schoenberg produced

extensive presentations of the discipline of harmony; but

they were writing textbooks. There is nothing to indicate

 91

this was Bloch's objective: Applied Harmony does not con-

vey the spirit of a text; though put to occasional use, it

is a collection of notes the composer wrote essentially to

himself. Its value is in revealing his pedagogical tenets

and the way he went about implementing them, and perhaps

above all in the orientation of Bloch's writing. Hindemith

stated in the preface to his book, A Concentrated Course in

Traditional Harmony:

No gift whatever for composition is required of the

student. Being limited strictly to the technical
process of connecting harmonies, this book makes it
possible for any musician or music-lover without the
slig~test 2reative idea to master the exercises it
provldes.
1

The statement is a reflection of Hindemith's delight in

facility--as an artist and a teacher; but it marks the end

of a long line of traditional writings produced by less

eminent authors. It is a tradition on which Bloch turns

his back: the premise of his teaching is that it addresses

the gifted and sensitive student.

 92

Footnotes
1
cf. Appendix, page 525.
2
The pagination of the volume requires further explana-
tion since it is two-fold. The page numbers marked on the
lower half of the pages, not in Bloch's hand, represent a
continuous page count. Bloch's own pagination (at the top
half of the pages) combines verso and recto sheets under a
single page number each, and it is to this scheme that the
volume's table of contents corresponds. Bloch happened to
omit designating a page 15, so that his pagination skips
from 14 to 16, but the accuracy of his index is not
affected by this oversight.
3Mathias Lussy, Musical Expression, Accents, Nuances, and
Tempo in Vocal and Instrumental Music, trans. M.E. von
Glehn (London: Novello and Company, Limited, n.d.), p. 44.
4 Iwan Knorr, Aufgaben fur den Unterricht in der Harmonie-
lehre (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1903).
5 Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 6th ed., s.v.
"Bloch, Ernest," by David Kushner.
6 Herbert Elwell, "Bloch at Seventy-Five," Manuscript,
Sibley Music Library, Rochester, NY. No further comment is
given as to what constitutes "second rondo form."
7 Knorr, Aufgaben, p. III. ". . ~ber theoretischen Unter-
richt sagte Meister Brahms mir einmal missmutig: Ach was,
Harmonie! Das kann man so--oder man lernt es doch nicht."
8 Ibid., p. 9.

9 Ibid.
10 That Applied Harmony must be understood as representing
an advanced approach to a "beginners" instruction is sug-
gested by the comparison with a Bloch manuscript at the
Library of Congress which contains his teaching of a young
beginning student. The volume in question is entitled
Theorie musicale et Harmonie elementaire, and Suzanne Bloch
has added to it the following note: "One of my very first
theory books written out for me by my father--about 1917 or
1918·" Included is discussion of major and minor triads,
proper spacing of chords in a four-voice texture, doubling
of intervals, and the elements of part writing.
11 Knorr, Aufgaben, p. III. "Geben sie nicht zumeist an
Stelle weniger 'Gesetze' eine Unzahl von 'Regeln', die
jedes Schaffen vereiteln w~rden--wen man sie befolgt!"
 93

12
Paul Hindemith, A Concentrated Course in Traditional
Harmony Book I, Revised ed. (New York: Schott, 1968), p.
iv.
 CHAPTER III

INSTRUCTION IN COUNTERPOINT

It is characteristic of the eminent composer that

he preserves the spirit of inquiry in didactic work, so

that the roles of teacher and student begin to merge. For

the accomplished artist the learning process is never ex-

hausted, and even the most fundamental exercise offers

occasion for endless discovery and renewal. Nowhere is

this quality so evident among Bloch's didactic writings as

in the manuscripts devoted to the study of counterpoint.

The collection contains twelve volumes of contrapuntal

studies--a larger number than that representing any other

aspect of his didactic work. Yet there is nothing to sug-

gest that any of these were intended for an actual teaching

situation; rather, they apparently emanated essentially

from Bloch's search to better his own skills as a composer.

Revealing is that all three of Bloch's major pedagogical

appointments are represented in these volumes. Again, in

no other branch of studies is there evidence of such contin-

uing concern. Two of the manuscripts were compiled during

Bloch's years in Cleveland. Bloch also used a section of

94
 95

one of these Cleveland volumes to preserve notes he made

while on the faculty at Berkeley. But by far the most ex-

tensive and significant studies date from the late 1920s,

when Bloch was in the final semesters of his tenure at the

San Francisco Conservatory.

Bloch's approach to counterpoint is firmly rooted

in the practice of the Renaissance masters. Suzanne Bloch

recalls:

All of Bloch's pupils were exposed to polyphonic

literature. . When any of them went down to the
Public Library to look up some of this music, the
librarian would way, "You must be a pupil of
Bloch's--no one else comes for this music."

This is consistent with the conviction, expressed so often

in his writings, that the masterpieces of musical litera-

ture are to be the final authority in pedagogical inquiry

of any kind. But his lifelong interest in sixteenth-

century contrapuntal technique suggests that Renaissance

polyphony was closer to Bloch's heart than any other body

of repertory. Roger Sessions reports Bloch's comment on a

work by Lassus:

I can conceive of a day when Beethoven will seem

old-fashioned; even Bach may one day seem
old-fashioned, while Wagner has begun io
seem so
already. But this can never grow old.
 96

Early Manuscripts

Bloch's reverence for Lassus and other composers of

the era was first shown in the two counterpoint volumes

dating from the Cleveland years, which he continued to use

both as a record and as a source of investigation of ex-

cerpts from the polyphonic repertory. The first of these

is a manuscript book measuring 9 1/2 inches by 7 3/8 inches

in oblong, entitled Counterpoint 2 Parts. There is no date

given for the volume, but there is some evidence that it

stems from the early years of Bloch's American career. For

instance, Bloch makes annotations in the manuscript in

English, French, and German, as he did in other manuscripts

compiled at this time. And further help in establishing

chronology comes from one of the musical entries Bloch

made: on pages 9-11 he copied material from a Wagner man-

uscript preserved in the Library of Congress. It is useful

in suggesting a date because we know from an article pub-

lished by Carl Engel, chief of the music division of the

Library of Congress at the time, that Bloch visited the
3
Library in June of 1922, and in one of the other docu-

ments in the collection, also from the summer of 1922,

Bloch makes a passing reference to these Wagner sketches.

 97

TABLE 1

EXCERPTS CONTAINED IN COUNTERPOINT 2 PARTS

Orlando di Lasso "Te deprecamur" . 1

Jacobus Kerle "Sanctus de la Messa 'Regina Coeli'" . 3

Blank . . 5

Orlando di Lasso "Aegra currit ad medicum" 7

Richard Wagner "Skizze zu 'Ring' in Bleistiftschrift''. 9

Blank . . 12

Claude Le Jeune "Debat la nostre trill?" . 13

"Si Madame enst . "
"Pourquoy te tiens tu loin Psaume X". 14

Eustache du Caurroy "Ce luy qui vondra" 15

Claude Le Jeune "Psalm 115" 16

Claude Le Jeune "Psalm Deum celebrate vocantes"

"Psalm 88 0 Seigneur J'Espars" 17

Claude Le Jeune "Le Printemps--Secondie Partie" 19

John Dunstable "Crux Fidelis" 23

Blank .

J.S. Bach "Kleines Harmonisches Labryrinth"

 98

Bloch's copy of the Wagner autograph, which consists

of sketches for short thematic passages from the Ring cycle,

seems curiously appended to a collection of examples from

sixteeth-century polyphony. But it does suggest something

of the true nature of the volume. Only initially was it

intended to be reserved for counterpoint in two parts; there-

after Bloch used it to record whatever material caught his

interest--indeed the concluding entries in the document are

excerpts from a three-part motet by Dunstable and a keyboard

work ascribed to J. S. Bach (see table 1). Evidently, all

of the examples, with the obvious exception of the Wagner

sketches, were copied from modern editions. Bloch often

specified the title of the published source and the exact

page from where the chosen excerpt was taken.

The volume contains no hint as to a practical reason

5
for compiling this material. Possibly Bloch used the ex-

cerpts in his teaching; if that is the case, however, his

critical observations about the examples were made in the

lectures or presentations, for--and this is most uncharacter-

istic of excerpts copied elsewhere in his writings--very lit-

tle commentary is included in the volume itself. What this

motley collection of examples perhaps illustrates more clear-

ly is Bloch's true scholarly bent. Certainly his interest

in the Wagner autograph and in Renaissance repertory came at

a time when practicing composers were as a rule not given to

scholarship. Yet the historical perspective is the founda-

tion of Bloch's understanding of the art of counterpoint.

 99

In the second of the two Cleveland volumes, a manu-

script book entitled Strict III Part-counterpoint, excerpts

from sixteenth-century polyphony are again used as the

basis for study; in fact, all musical examples in the seven

pages illustrating three-voice texture, are drawn from a

single collection: the Psalmi Poenitentiales of Lassus.

But in this case, Bloch's presentation of the material is

sufficiently methodical to offer a better view of how this

repertory came to guide his own approach to contrapuntal

writing. The initial three pages of the volume are devoted

to the examination of what Bloch calls "beginnings." He

starts by copying examples where voices enter chordally.

Next, imitative entrances are examined-- those in which all

voices enter on the same tone as well as entries separated

by the interval of a fifth. (Page numbers appearing along-

side individual examples indicate where the excerpts are to

be found in the published score.) As he progresses, Bloch

introduces imitative entries involving voice combinations

of increasing complexity. But there is no further sugges-

tion of systematic procedure applied to this collection of

examples; nor does Bloch comment on particular technical

problems involved. His implication is that only through

contiruous observation and practice will the essential

principles be revealed. He notes at the bottom of page 3:

All these beginnings are very different and have to

be studied thoroughly.
 100 S:tJUc:t II I PaJtt-
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 103

Bloch continues his examination of the Psalmi

Poenitentiales on pages 4-7 of the manuscript, dealing now

with excerpts representing various musical contexts. His

presentation of this material, most of which consists of

examples from two to three measures in length, is carefully

organized. Here, as elsewhere in his writings, Bloch made

annotations using different colors: he added arabic

numbers on the staff paper in red ink, indicating specific

passages for which he provided short comments on the

respective adjacent pages.

 104 S:tJUc;t II T PaJLt-
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 105

As in the previous pages of the manuscript, Bloch's

role is essentially that of the observer, seeking a more

fluent command of the contrapuntal idiom. The remarks

entered in this portion of the volume concern various

aspects of musical texture. For the excerpt on the first

system of page 4 Bloch offers three comments. He identi-

fies the opening sonority as a

chord without a 3d .

and he makes note of the direct motion in the second

measure of the lower voices to the interval of a fifth;

finally, he indicates that the third chord in the second

measure is a

chord without 5th (for melodic purposes)

For the example on the second system, Bloch notes again the

direct motion to a fifth, into the beginning of the second

measure; he also points out the succession of parallel

thirds towards the end of the excerpt and the "if'6" in the
penultimate chord.
No commentary is provided for the example on the

third system, though Bloch may have been intrigued by the

delayed parallel motion of the voices in the second

measure. For the example on the fourth system, he

comments:

observe the way of "escaping" consecutive fifths!!

 106

This refers to the motion between the outer voices in

measure 2 and in measure 3. Bloch selected the concluding

example on page 4 to illustrate:

escaping direct and consecutive 5th through crossing

the voices.

His transcription of this excerpt into short score, at the

end of the page, shows that in fact the progression from

the first chord to the second involves latent parallel

motion.
 107
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countenpo~nt--p. 5

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 108

The excerpt on the first system of page 5 contains

another example of

consecutive fifths (avoided through crossing--

melodic line) [also the] use of ~ 6 as final
cadence.

Bloch's purpose in selecting the example on the second

system is to illustrate again how part-writing can serve to

avoid consecutive fifths; directly beneath this excerpt, on

the third system, he shows

the same example reduced: one note against one

In the excerpt on the fourth system Bloch makes note of

consecutive fifths between the outer parts in the third

measure. Finally, the example on the lowest system

illustrates

Cons. Fifths by contrary motion

Bloch's remark ''(note the)= new sentence)" refers to the

caesura mark entered just prior to the last measure in this

excerpt. Since it suggests a structural division in the

composition, Bloch offers in this instance an explanation

for the composer's use of an ostensibly "forbidden"

progression.
 109 SbUc;t III Pall-t-
countenpo~nt--p. 6

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 110

The procedure of condensing elaborate counterpoint

into note-against-note motion is a technique vital to

Bloch's method of study, as is clearly shown by page 6 of

the manuscript. As in the reduction on page 5, essentially

all dissonance--whether the result of syncopation or florid

writing--is removed, leaving only the fundamental contrapun-

tal combinations. Bloch's bar lines in the reduction are

not to be understood as a strict representation of meter.

He merely used each "measure" to isolate the basic combina-

tions of voices. Indeed, the number of actual rhythmic

units represented in each of Bloch's "measures" varies

considerably. Bloch comments on page 6:

Study: One note against one note (Transcription from

page 28 [of the published edition] to show the
framework, supressing of course the Rhythm.)

(The fourth measure of the first system on this page repre-

sents apparently the same point in the composition as the

example Bloch introduced on the last system of page 5 of

the manuscript.) Bloch continues:

Notice first of all the clearness of the (harmonic)

line in spite of the suppression of the "musical
life" in it.

He then turns his attention again to specific details of the

musical texture. He remarks on the use of raised notes,

particularly "c:W' " on the second system. On the third

system, where he enters the mark "=tf," Bloch comments that

 111

. . the higher range of the tenor confers a new

character.

And he singles out certain features of the contrapuntal

writing:

Observe the few peculiarities noted as: CD

Par.
fifths in contrary motion [first system, measures
4-5 and fifth system, measures 7-8] CDincomplete
chord (without 3d) [tenth measure of the first
system] QD€D~ Hidden fifths [the final bars of the
first system; measures 2-3 of the third system;
fourth system, measures 7-9]

The use of reductions enabled Bloch to make novel

observations about the texture of sixteenth-century poly-

phony. But in fact, such reductions meant much more to

Bloch's method than mere stylistic analysis. They were

demonstrably the basis for his own approach to the study of

counterpoint by species. Bloch comments again about the

reduction on page 6:

After this scheme has been thoroughly studied, it

would be a good exercise to use it as a base for
two notes (or 4) against one--later syncopation--
Then free--Then compare and analyze the text of
Orlando di Lasso. This work ought practically to be
done with every .....
3 part ctp. or Fragments .

Bloch concludes this discussion with one further

page of excerpts from the Psalmi Poenitentiales. He

remarks that the passage on the first system of page 7 is a

Remarkable example on practically one chord e-g-b

crossing voices.
 112

He also notes that in the composition itself this particu-

lar point of imitation is repeated in measures 4-6. He re-

arranges the placement of the lower voices (to clarify the

voice crossing) on the third system of page 7, and beneath

both excerpts on this page he presents a schematic reduc-

tion of the three-voice texture.

(It would be excellent to work on the scheme--one

note against one, then ~' i; then syncopations and
florid.)
 113 SbUct II I paJz.t-
Qountenpo~nt--p. 7

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 114

Studies in Configuration

The seven pages of excerpts from the Psalmi

Poenitentiales constitute, as it were, a single, well-

defined pedagogical statement on the subject of counter-

point. This discussion, however, dating from the Cleveland

years, is only the first of two sections preserved in the

manuscript entitled Strict III Part-counterpoint. Bloch re-

turned to the volume later to record additional examples in

May of 1943 while he was on the faculty at Berkeley. Evi-

dently, when he resumed his teaching career after the dec-

ade in Europe, Bloch once again began to record his didac-

tic thoughts in writing. And one is newly impressed with

Bloch's sensitivity to his own pedagogical heritage and the

importance of completing a central body of manuscripts.

There are two other manuscripts dating from the

Cleveland period in which Bloch made further notes while at

Berkeley: just as he returned to the volume of Strict III

Part-counterpoint, he returned to a volume of fugal studies

yet to be discussed, and to the collection of notes enti-
tled La Forme musicale. Indeed, what we know of the chron-

ology of these three documents is due only to the fact that

Bloch, who had apparently grown more meticulous about pre-

serving his notes, dated the work he had done in Cleveland

upon taking up the pen in the 1940s--hence, for example,

the date of La Forme musicale, given as "(1921?) ."

 115

The notes that Bloch preserved as he returned to

the early manuscripts appear in each case under the title

"Studies in Configuration." There are, in fact, other

volumes in the collection, also from the Berkeley years,

which bear this title. In every case, these manuscripts

are devoted solely to the analysis of works by the great

masters--Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, and others. But to say

they are analytical studies does only partial justice to

the notes they contain, for Bloch pursued a range of

inquiry in these writings much broader than what is

commonly recognized as analysis.

We know something of what Bloch meant by configura-

tion from another document in the collection--a folder con-

taining notes for a series of thirteen lectures entitled

The Esthetics of the Musical Language, which Bloch deliv-

ered in the first term of his Berkeley appointment. "Config-

uration" is featured very prominently in these lectures,

but Bloch was apparently concerned that his students might

be baffled by the expression, for he was quite deliberate

in his attempts over the course of the sessions to supply

them with an appropriate definition. In the second lecture

of the series he read to his listeners the definition from

the Oxford English Dietionary, adding his own postscript:

Configuration=arrangement of parts or elements in a

particular form or figure; the form, shape, figure,
resulting from such arrangement ...
This is precisely the problem we will have to deal
with in music=The form given to musical thoughts.
 116

But it is evident from his subsequent discussion of con-

figuration that Bloch considered the dictionary explanation

not entirely adequate. He remarked later in the same

lecture:

These laws [of configuration] are, first of all of a

psychoTOgical order--and, possibly, physiological,
that is to say, they are motivated by the structure
of our body, of our senses, of our mind by our
possibilities and .... our limitations. You may
understand now . . . that they are much broader and
of a general order than purely "musical or harmonic"
problems .

It is clear from these statements that configuration

involved a decidedly philosophical dimension, and one can

appreciate that Bloch found a succinct definition of the

concept elusive. Yet his meaning emerges nonetheless: not

only was he concerned with identifying the particular. ideas

in a composition from an analytical perspective, but there

was also the matter of discovering what in the characteris-

tic shape, or "configuration," in which the composer's

ideas are cast makes them have a stronger or weaker impact

upon the audience. In short, the discussion of configura-

tion was intended to address the organic nature of compo-
sitional cause and effect.

Bloch may have justifiably felt that to obtain such

an understanding was to embrace the art of composition in a

way no "method"--i.e. no didactic discipline--could impart.

This is at the heart of his instruction and explains a grow-

ing tendency in the final years of his teaching career to
 117

make analysis the focus of his pedagogical writings. A

number of extensive analytical studies, apparently made for

his own use, date from the 1940s and 1950s, and they are

based on the same mode of inquiry that one finds in the var-

ious manuscripts explicitly labeled "Studies in Configura-

tion." And it is clear from the preserved documentation of

his instruction that Bloch was a strong advocate of such

work for his students as well.

There are many features to distinguish the work in

configuration from the ana~ytical studies written in Cleve-

land, as is immediately obvious from Bloch's presentation

of the material. In the opening pages of Strict III Part-

counterpoint Bloch is very sparing with his verbal annota-

tions; seldom does he comment more than briefly about an

example, and some excerpts appear without any commentary at

all. Bloch's annotations for studies in the 1940s, on the

other hand, are quite extensive--indeed (possibly in gather-

ing notes for lectures) even small details are commited to

writing. This is not to say that the later studies surpass

the earlier writings in significance; certainly, though,
they are more detailed, which is again consistent with

Bloch's greater interest in analysis during these years.

Nevertheless, one can find considerable continuity

between the Cleveland contrapuntal studies and those Bloch

appended to the volume some twenty years later. As in the

earlier section of the manuscript, in "Studies in

 118

Configuration" Bloch is particularly intrigued by certain

stylistic peculiarities of the musical texture. And

through the extended commentary of the Berkeley studies,

his purpose in these observations becomes clearer: he

wishes to demonstrate that behind each supposed trans-

gression of style there is a higher, ineluctable musical

logic.
 119 StJU.ct III Pcvd-
countenpo~nt--p. 8

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 120

Bloch begins the "Studies in Configuration" on page

8 of Strict Three Part-counterpoint with an excerpt from a

work by Josquin. His indication reads:

Example from Josquin des Pres (1445-1521) Motet 20

"Planxit autem David"-~Tertia Part (pages 100-- ... )

Bloch's remarks concern the opening ten measures of this

section of the motet, which he copied on the first three

systems of the page.

a) [measures 1-5] Imitation at the 8ve __ (Starting

lower voice, then upper) (at one measure distance!)
(2 voices--range different . . . ) (Direction
of melodic line--upward, ... then cadenth.)
b) [measures 5-10] Imitation at the 5 (Start
upper voice, then lower) (distance is 1/2 measure!!)
direction: downward--free inversion of a)
Unity--Repetition--Contrast with a) But see develop-
ment of design b) (£baqf) continuity and progression
rhythmically--in c [measures 7-8] and d [measures 8-
9] (shorter and shorter)

Now, let us analyze the two very free passages . .

(meas. 3 and 9lh· . . [measure 3, f1rst system] we
have a minor 9--, on a semistrong beat, the B~re­
solves in "a" truly--but the lower a is disconnect-
ed! goes to c--a "freedom" (licenseT absolutely "for-
bidden" in the "Treatises [orig.: Treatices]"!!
Let us attempt corrections!! Ex. 2 [fourth system]
we replace the a by f--which is "correct"--but which
spoils entirely-the melodic line--too many "f".! pre-
pares badly the conclusive f! Very poor-- Ex 3
[fourth system, third measure] connecting a-c with a
passing note is still "free"--but see how poor the
melodic line is now, rhythmically . . . Play them!
and see the Logic and beauty of Form--in Josquin!!

[The example in measure 9, third system] brings

three sevenths, consecutively, in two open Voices!!
Aga1n, completely forbidden in "Schools" . .
Undertakers!! We try to correct it, ex. 4 [fifth
system]--It becomes quite ridiculous--distorts the
logical thematics (continuity of an idea) puts a
stupid stress on the C-BP
 121

In concluding this comment, Bloch directs harsh

remarks at the scholarly community--"Dr. Beckmesser and

Cie!!"--arguing that it is the "non creative" who estab-

lish and propagate rules which are in conflict with the

works of the masters. His criticism shows the artist's

concern over the dichotomy between practice and theory--or

to use his own words, "Spirit vs. Letter"--and he included

an excerpt from one of Bach's keyboard fugues a particular-

ly vivid example of literature commonly abused by the

theorist.

The excerpt, which appears on page 9 of Strict III

Part-counterpoint, is from the C major fugue from Book Two

of the Well-Tempered Clavier. His commentary shows again

the spirit of his study of "configuration":

. . . it is not possible to analyze or explain this

passage in a logical way . . if one does not
consider it from a higher viewpoint, aesthetically
 122 S-t!Uc;t III PaAt-
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 123

On the first system of page 9 Bloch copies out the

initial eight measures of the fugue. He is particularly

interested in the sixth measure of the excerpt:

One may consider the marked d (in the Csubject)

[fourth sixteenth-note in the countersubject]tfis a
"changing note" but how about the following 9-?
[beat two of the sixth measure] . the c going to
d (9-8) [;] and how about the d c [last sixteenth of
measure six] "auxiliary note"!! ("nomencla-
ture" which does not explain anything!!)

Bloch makes "corrections," indicated on the fourth and

fifth systems of the page, and concludes:

. how absurdly poor and senseless becomes the

Csubject as a free melodic line! It falsifies every-
thing (save the Beckmersserish rules!) distorts and
interrupts the THEMATIC sense and progression.

Finally, on the bottom half of the page Bloch again writes

out the opening measures of the fugue. In this case, he

also provides a metrical reduction of the fugue subject and

countersubject, pointing out the inherent consistency and

logic in the structure of Bach's original.

Now see the analytic scheme below (Ex 3) and its

Logic--Bach relied--as always--on such higher
principles of Configuration. The hidden harmonic
sense is preserved--also the free continuity of the
melodic line. The principle is the same in
Josquin--as in Bach--as 1n any true work of Art!

Following his discussion of the fugue, Bloch re-

turns, on page 10 of the manuscript, to Josquin's "Planxit

autem David" for what constitutes his final entry in Strict

III Part-counterpoint.
 124 S:tJUc;t III PaAt-
~ounte~po~nt--p. 10

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 125

He resumes his examination of the motet where he left off

on page 8, with measures 10-21 of the tertia pars.

--Two other Voices [first system] take the same

ve
melody (as p.8, meas. 1.2.) one 8 lower. The
only change is the anticipation of a (m. 13) and the
conclusion (cadence in "phrygian mode"--13-14.)

--The sentence b), on the contrary [second system],

starts differently (a-ct~nstead of c-ct and the
1m1tation, instead of 5--, is at the 8~ . .
Note also the "freedom" (7-9) meas. 16. It is what
I would rather call a rhythmic freedom--similar to
meas. 9 (page 8) and Ex. 4 [page 8]

--Similarly, meas. 17 [end of the second system],

the Entrance of Sopr. on "a", for the sake of con-
tinuity and logic of Imitation . . . is absolutely
co~~rary t~h"Rules"!! producing a double dissonance!
(4-- and 9--!!) But how logical aesthetically.
(Harmonically, it could be analyzed as a free anti-
cipation of the next "chord"--Very frequent in
Bach! See also the famous passage in Eroica, return
of Th. I, as anticipation of a motif den1ed as a
"misprint" by Schoenberg! and w1th the 8 or 9
justifying sketches given by Nottebohm!)

Also more "freedoms"--- ~ ~ ~ (meas. 18-19) [third

system in full score, last system in short score--
first and second measures] all justified "aesthet-
ically" by the melodic lines and thematic
continuity.

The "Studies in Configuration" and the excerpts dat-

ing from the Cleveland period show how the polyphonic reper-
tory came to guide Bloch's understanding of counterpoint:
through conscientious investigation of the music he made

himself a true student of the Renaissance masters. Yet,

analytical studies actually form only one portion of

Bloch's didactic notes in the discipline of counterpoint.

He knew that analysis could take the student composer only

 126

to a certain point in his studies; ultimately, he would

have to write his own exercises, as is amply documented in

the collection.

The earliest of these consists of a number of short

two-voice canonic studies which Bloch drafted on four loose

sheets of staff paper. They bear no date, but they are pre-

served within the pages of Bloch's volume from the 1920s,

Counterpoint 2 parts. Bloch examined the principles of can-

onic writing quite methodically in these studies. He began

with a few exercises in canon at the unison, and then went

on to compose other examples, in which imitative entries

are separated by the intervals of the second, third, fourth

·and fifth, concluding with canon at the octave. It is

interesting to see Bloch proceed so systematically in his

presentation, for the physical appearance of the loose

sheets suggest that he did not intend these exercises for

any purpose other than his own occupation. They are writ-

ten in pencil--quite exceptional among Bloch's extant didac-

tic papers; moreover, the calligraphy of the exercises is

extremely casual, again unusual for the contents of the

collection. They seem to represent a range of activity

quite distinct from that which-produced the majority of the

preserved pedagogical writings--possibly the "daily bread"

in Bloch's efforts to work his hand at the fundamentals of

composition. They may have been preserved by chance, and

 127

one might imagine that there were many other exercises,

equally methodical and well-reasoned, that did not happen

to survive.

The San Francisco Notebooks

There is further documentation of Bloch's contra-

puntal studies in a series of manuscript books dating from

1928. In contrast to the canonic studies, however, the

examples included in these volumes were gathered with

extraordinary attention to the state in which they were to

be preserved. Indeed, nowhere else in the collection was

Bloch mqre deliberate in preparing his papers for posteri-

ty, or more aware of the nature and significance of his

pedagogical bequest. This quality becomes manifest in two

respects: Bloch is truly exhaustive in treating and

exploring the various aspects of sixteenth-century contra-

puntal technique; and he provides for a degree of organi-

zation of the studies that is one of the marvels of the

entire collection. In the end, Bloch had compiled seven
individual notebooks devoted almost exclusively to his own

examples in counterpoint, amounting collectively to over

400 written pages and to almost 1400 exercises. There are

also three other manuscript books that are closely related

to this series of volumes. But these were created at a

later point and will be discussed separately.

 128

In most cases, the precise origin of Bloch's writ-

ings from the 1920s are obscure. With the San Francisco

notebooks, however, we have help from several sources that

reveal the circumstances under which the volumes were com-

piled. In November of 1928 Bloch was awarded the grand

prize for his symphonic rhapsody, America, in a composition

contest sponsored by Musical America. The magazine devoted

special articles to Bloch's achievement, and these help

towards documenting his activities during the middle of

1928, when most of the work on the counterpoint volumes was

undertaken. Suzanne Bloch has also referred to this series

of manuscript books in a more recent article:

In his forty-eighth year he decided that he did not

know counterpoint well enough. With the classes he
conducted at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music
he started from the very beginning, going to the old
masters, studying the modes systematically, and
writing hundreds of examples. He then copied the
6
best of them in little notebooks.

But the most important information concerning the history

of this project comes from Bloch's own annotations in the

volumes. In a prefatory note to the first of the note-

books, Bloch gives this account:

The following exercises were probabl¥ begun when my

students began Double Ctp. at the 8v --I tried
myself and made the Ctp. on C.F. by Bellerman[n]--
Then I discovered it would be good to start again!
Hence the following studies on ~ own CF in all
modes. This study started around February 20,
1928. These exercises were copied later (June 1928)
but not corrected, in order to show improvement
coming later, through practice and "refinement."
 129

In short, all entries in the manuscripts were made

after the spring of 1928. Up to that point Bloch had been

regularly drafting exercises, but not until June, when he

began copying them into the notebooks, did this project

take on its present scope and character. Bloch spent much

of the summer of 1928 aboard ship, sailing for Marseilles

from San Francisco; and the project was so much a part of

his daily routine that the notebooks become a veritable

diary of the voyage. Above an exercise drafted on June 25,

for instance, Bloch notes: "1st day on board"; alongside a

study dated July 10 he remarks "Panama canal••; on July 24

(Bloch 1 s birthday) there is the entry: "Birthday on board,

Skyrockets, wine, champagne, presents, jokes, music, and

much friendship from the crowd .... 1800 feet above bottom!"

Finally, on August 2, Bloch notes "coast of Spain in

sight," and with his arrival in Europe the project came to

an end.

Thus, the San Francisco notebooks actually preserve

three layers of coexistent activity (Bloch is faithful in

providing indications that distinguish one from the other) :
first, there are the examples written in the spring of 1928

and copied into the volumes during the summer of that year;

a second layer consists of studies made in the spring, but

copied and corrected in the summer; finally there are exer-

cises newly composed in the summer. As his work progres-

sed, Bloch numbered the seven notebooks, and in most cases

 130

he provided a table of contents for the individual manu-

scripts as well. The contents of the volumes, however, do

not always follow one another in perfect sequence, so Bloch

also numbered the exercises, 1-1382, to put them in proper

and unmistakable order. As Bloch informs us in his prefa-

tory note, the San Francisco studies grew directly out of

his experience as an instructor of counterpoint. There

could not be a more vivid demonstration as to the merging

of Bloch's roles as teacher and student.

It is also clear from the introductory note that

Bloch used the counterpoint text of Heinrich Bellermann for

the instruction of students at the Conservatory, and this

fact has strong implications for his didactic orientation.

Bellermann's Der Contrapunkt, first published in 1862, is a

landmark in the history of the discipline because, as has

been mentioned (cf. p. 24, above), its author was the ear-

liest among nineteenth-century pedagogues to advocate an

approach to counterpoint derived from a faithful revival of

studies in the Renaissance style as represented by Johann

Joseph Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum (1725) . 7

Essentially, it was the mighty genius and the pro-

found artistic sense of a PALESTRINA and ORLANDUS
LASSUS by which pure A capella music was elevated to
that admirable Classical stature . . . . in their
works reigns a balance of form and above all a flow-
ing, singable quality in every individual voicg
which we see surpassed at no point afterwards.

Bellermann believed that the key to success was in a

 131

discipline of counterpoint which the modern student of corn-

position could obtain only by committing himself to "the

strict old manner"; he writes, "we should . . take from

them what we cannot learn through study of our modern

9
rnusic."

In preparing his text, Bellerrnann received decisive

guidance from Fux's celebrated work. In the decades follow-

ing its publication, Fux's text had met with unprecedented

favor; and one appreciates the significance of his achieve-

ment by considering that both Haydn and Mozart received

their contrapuntal training from the Gradus as well as

using it as a point of departure for their own teaching.

In the closing years of the eighteenth century, new peda-

gogical trends began to challenge the stylistic premises

upon which Fux had based his work. Albrechtsberger used

the Gradus in supervising Beethoven's studies, but he

adapted Fux's method and his modal cantus firrni to conform

to major and minor scales. In later years there were fur-

ther concessions in the teaching of counterpoint to contem-

porary practice.

During the nineteenth century, this tendency threat-

ened to occlude the tradition which Fux had represented.

The Renaissance style was no longer an accepted part of a

composer's training and it ceased to constitute the vital

influence that the stile antico had been for the student of

composition in former days. Theorists. were more concerned

 132

with presenting a norm than with preserving an "outdated"

art. These were the circumstances which marked the publica-

tion of Bellermann's Der Contrapunkt. Aligning his method

with that of Fux, he reasserted the didactic significance

of the characteristics of sixteenth-century practice. In

the preface to the fourth edition of his work, Bellermann

makes ironic comment on the fact that such demand existed

for a book that Hugo Riemann had criticized as representing

Fux's point of view, "which was obsolete in his own

.
t 1me.
nlO The argument actually represented Riemann's own

conflict between his roles of historian and theorist.

Bloch's use of Der Contrapunkt reveals his own

pedagogical priorities; indeed, his allegiance to the

didactic tradition of Fux is consistent with the concern

for integrity of style that characterizes his analytical

discussions. But despite his affinity for Bellermann's

method, there were aspects of the text by which Bloch could

not abide. Because the preservation of contrapuntal tech-

nique had become the domain of music theory, it came to

lack a certain creative dimension. Bloch's introduction to

the first of the San Francisco notebooks suggests that Der

Contrapunkt ultimately proved unsatisfactory to him. Bloch

the composer found the musica~ invention in Bellermann's

examples inadequate, and he determined to write better

exercises. Only upon undertaking his own studies did he

become aware of the true difficulty of the task before him,

 133

and this apparently gave the impetus for the compilation of

the seven notebooks now preserved in the collection.

The notebooks are of a uniform size, measuring

6 1/2 inches by 5 inches in oblong. Their contents show

that in exchanging the teacher's role for that of the stu-

dent, Bloch remained commited to a discipline of counter-

point rooted in sixteenth-century practice, for he pursued

his studies essentially in the manner laid down by Fux and

Bellermann: he began his work with two-part counterpoint--

indeed, the notebooks consist exclusively of exercises in

two voices; and in virtually every case, these exercises

are based on cantus firmi. Bloch was less exacting in his

application of species counterpoint. His main concern is

with florid writing and other more advanced techniques.

Yet, there are several examples of strict species writing

among the exercises, and we can be certain that the species

were in some fashion a part of his studies.

Bloch begins the first of the notebooks with a se-

ries of examples in double counterpoint at the octave based

on modal cantus firmi from Bellermann's Der Contrapunkt.

 134 Baak I--p. 1

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 135
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 138

Pages 1-2 of Book I contain four examples on a single can-

tus firmus in the Dorian mode, as well as a fifth exercise

on a different Dorian melody--one which Bellermann pro-

vided, as Bloch's annotation on page 2 indicates, to illus-

trate the "use of B~ and B~ ." On pages 3-5 of Book I

Bloch copied seven additional studies in modus dorius.

These are followed by three pages of exercises in the

Hypodorian and Phrygian modes, leading to four examples in

modus hypophrygius, on pages 9-10 of the notebook.

It was vital to Bloch's conception of this project

that the seven notebooks, in addition to preserving exer-

cises, would also chart the improvement of his contrapuntal

skills through the rigorous course of study. This attitude

is evident from the comment at the bottom of page 2, where

he writes about the second example on that page:

(compare this one so awkward with those made later!!)

The comments on pages 9-10 convey the same point:

(hard--and very imperfect! but I left it so)

See how later, I avoided all this!

And he writes at the bottom of page 9:

This is as bad almost as Bellerman[n] 's examples!!

There are very few verbal annotations in the note-

books. Where remarks do appear, they invariably convey

Bloch's critical perspective, but seldom specify on what

 139

basis he found his efforts wanting. Occasionally he pro-

vides markings, like those above the examples on page 9 and

10, that point to certain problemmatic features in the writ-

ing. In the second study on page 9, for instance, Bloch is

clearly questioning his repeated use of a rhythmic figure;

and the small notes stemmed down in measures 5 and 6 of

this example evidently represent an attempt to correct the

passage. Similarly, in the first exercise on page 10 Bloch

is dissatisfied with the repetition of the melodic turn in-

volving a rising fourth in measures 4-6. In many other

cases, however, the interpretation of such markings remains

neccessarily a matter of conjecture: with the second study

on page 2 of Book I Bloch provides one kind of mark, appar-

ently to emphasize the inflexibility of the rhythmic line

in measures 2-3; a second mark, in measures 3-4, seemingly

referring to the repetition of the dotted rhythms on the

last half of both measures.

On pages 11-17 of Book I Bloch wrote out examples

for the authentic and plagal forms of modus lydius and

modus mixolydius, bringing the total number of studies in
this section of the manuscript to forty-six. But these

exercises based on melodies by Bellermann stand apart from

the rest of the material in the notebooks; for as he became

further immersed in the San Francisco project, Bloch

generally made it a point to write and use his own cantus

firmi.
 140

The exercises based on cantus firmi from Bloch's

hand form a unified body of studies that occupy most of the

pages within the seven notebooks. Faithful to the tradi-

tion represented by Fux and Bellermann, Bloch wrote his

cantus firmi in strict accordance with modal practice--

specifically, with the system of six modes in their authen-

tic and plagal forms. Dates for individual exercises in

the notebooks suggest that consideration of modes also

governed the manner in which Bloch pursued his studies. It

was evidently his custom to invest a large block of time--

in some cases as much as three weeks--working exclusively

with cantus firmi of a particular mode. Consequently,

Bloch did not complete the series of exercises he had begun

in February until May. He took the same deliberate ap-

proach to compiling the fair copy of his work in the

notebooks. The initial entries were made in early June,

but it was mid-July before Bloch had worked his way again

through every mode.

Thus, the unified body of studies on Bloch's own

cantus firmi is in twelve sections--one each for the plagal

and authentic forms of the six modes. And on a given page

of a section one frequently finds two dates: the earl~er

date indicates the time at which studies for that mode were

originally undertaken; the later relates to the copying of

the studies, as well as to any additions or revisions Bloch

may have made. The first section begins on page 18 of

 141

Book I with examples in the Dorian mode. The original

exercises for this mode were drafted between February 27

and March 4. The compilation of the section commenced

around June 1, and the volume was completed on the twelfth

of that month. Bloch provides a brief table on the first

page of Book I:

[pages] [exercises]

Exercises on C.F. by Bellermann 1-17 1-46

15 c. F. by E. Bloch in MODUS DORIUS 18-19
Exercises " " " " " "
on 15 C.F. 21-50 47-188
49 Essays
on a C.F. by
L. Hodge head " " " 55-63 189-237

Lillian Hodgehead was an associate of Bloch's at the San

Francisco Conservatory. The use of her cantus firmus

stands out as an exception within the twelve sections that

otherwise represent entirely Bloch's own writing.

 Book. I - - p. 18
142

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 144 Book. I--p. 29

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 146

It was generally Bloch's practice to present his

cantus firmi at the outset of a section. Exercises based

on the melodies were then copied into the pages that fol-

lowed. On pages 18-19 of Book I, Bloch wrote out sixteen

cantus firmi in modus dorius, the last of which is the

melody by Lillian Hodgehead. Atop page 18 he notated three

cadential formulae to be used for cantus firmi in the

Dorian mode, and the sixteen provided melodies incorporate

these endings. Actually, only thirteen of the sixteen

Dorian melodies are used in the exercises of Book I. The

exercises appearing on pages 29-30 deal with the third of

Bloch's cantus firmi.

Bloch evidently approached the compilation of the

San Francisco notebooks with very specific objectives in

mind, for in taking up each cantus firmus he consistently

followed a three-fold plan of study that focused on a lim-

ited number of contrapuntal procedures. The contents of

pages 29-30 typify Bloch's work throughout these volumes.

The first stage of study involves exercises in florid

counterpoint, both above and below a cantus firmus. On page

29 Bloch notated his cantus firmus on the middle staff.

The florid lines on the other staves, which Bloch desig-

nates with the letters a-f, each form a two-voice texture

with the cantus firmus.

The material on page 29 offers a particularly clear

illustration of the various layers of activity that led to

 147

the preserved state of Bloch's studies. Bloch provided

markings along the left-hand margin of page 29 which cor-

respond to the annotations at the top of the page and by

this means he made a chronological record of his work. For

the exercises on the first, fourth, and sixth staves (Exam-

ples a-c), there is no marking; these were drafted in Febru-

ary. As he copied Example a into the notebook, however,

Bloch was apparently troubled by the recurrence of a

rhythmic-melodic formula, as indicated by the "){" above the

first staff. This resulted in the improved version, on the

second staff of page 29. The marking in the left-hand mar-

gin shows that the revision was undertaken in June. The

example on the third staff (marked "ossia") represents what

was evidently an intermediate stage in Bloch's work on Exam-

ple a. Bloch indicates that this version was written also

in February, but it anticipates some of the corrections he

was to make later. Finally, Bloch's markings show that the

examples on the lowest three staves (Examples d-f) were

newly composed--i.e. "additional"--when he was engaged in

the compilation of this section of the manuscript.

The examples in florid counterpoint were invariably

followed in Bloch's work on a particular cantus firmus by a

second stage of study, consisting of exercises in double

counterpoint at the octave or, less frequently, at the

twelfth. (On the first two systems of page 30 appear two

studies in double counterpoint, Examples g and h.) This

 148

phase of work, in turn, typically led to a third kind of

contrapuntal exercise, which featured florid writing in

both voices, one of these voices being an ornamented ver-

sion of the cantus firmus. For the study on the lowest

system of page 30, Bloch notated in the bottom staff a

florid line from page 29 (Example e); then in the top staff

he placed a counterpoint against it by embellishing the

cantus firmus. The top voice does not depart from the

basic contour of the cantus firmus; it connects in florid

motion the notes of the original melody. In this particu-

lar case, Bloch left an indication as to how he worked out

the ornamented versions. In the top staff of Example h

(second system), he notated the whole notes of the cantus

firmus in ink. The smaller notes are written in pencil,

and represent a sketch for the ornamented cantus firmus.

Bloch's marking directly above the treble clef sign for the

final example on the page indicates that the example was

written in June. The two studies in double counterpoint

were evidently drafted in February.

Bloch's commitment to a directed manner of study

was such that the procedures illustrated on pages 29-30 in

fact characterize his treatment of virtually every cantus

firmus among those preserved in the twelve sections of the

project. He referred to this unified body of studies at

several points in the notebooks as his "regular work."

Bloch used all pages of Book I in compiling the section

 149

of examples in modus darius. His first entries in the sec-

ond San Francisco notebook are concerned with material for

a different mode. Bloch provides again a brief table of

contents:

[pages] [exercises]

Modus Hy:eodorius 10 CF. by EB. 64[-65]

Exercises on II II II II
66-101 238-392
II
Phrygius 13 CF 102
Exercises on II II
103-131 393-522
II
Hy:eo:ehrygius [exercises] 132-143 523-582

He listed six cantus firmi in the Hypophrygian mode on a

loose sheet of staff paper which he numbered 11

132 bis. 11

This sheet is inserted in the exercises in modus hy:eo:ehry-

gius. The earlier group of studies contained in Book II

were written between March 2 and March 25. The compilation

of the notebook, with additions and revisions, was done

between June 14 and July 4. The pagination and the number-

ing of exercises continues straight through from the first

notebook to the second.

 150 Book. II --p. 66

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 154 Bo oh. II-- p. 84

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 156 Book. II --p. 101

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 159

On pages 66-67 of Book II Bloch copied studies

based on the first of his cantus firmi in modus hypodorius,

and we again see the characteristic aspects of his "regular

work." Exercises in florid counterpoint above and below a

cantus firmus, designated as Examples a-e, occupy the first

six staves of page 66. The cantus firmus is notated on the

fourth staff. The third of the exercises, Example c, is

particularly noteworthy. Bloch enters "Imitation" above

the third staff to indicate that the florid line forms a

canqn in diminution with the cantus firmus. The bracket

which is placed at the beginning of the fifth measure of

Example c corresponds to a similar marking in the sixth

measure of the cantus firmus, showing the point at which

the strict canonic relationship between the two voices

ceases.

At the bottom of page 66 appears Example f, which

is an exercise in double counterpoint at the octave. And

this is followed on page 67 by the third stage of study--

the exercises featuring florid writing in both voices. For

the studies notated on the first three systems of page 67,
Bloch uses florid lines derived from Examples a, b, and d

(page 66) in counterpoint against ornamented versions of

the cantus firmus. The material on the third system of

page 67 becomes in itself the subject of further study at

the bottom of the page, where Bloch drafts an exercise by

embellishing both voice parts of the preceding example.

 160

It is clear from Bloch's annotations atop pages 66

and 67 that all exercises on these pages were written in

March. Bloch enters an additional remark on page 67:

The melody is not integrally kept, as I did

later.

He is referring to the first two studies on the page, and to

the fact that the florid lines accompanying the ornamented

cantus firmus are only loosely based on the examples from

page 66. In later months, it was invariably Bloch's prac-

tice, as has been mentioned, to leave the florid line com-

pletely intact when transferring it to the third stage of

study; he also approached some of his earlier exercises in

this manner, as can be seen from the third example on page 67.

Bloch's interest in canonic technique as part of

his "regular work" is evident in Example c on page 66. But

this is by no means an isolated instance; indeed, while

working with cantus firmi Bloch occasionally wrote extended

studies in canonic writing.· The exercises based on his

sixth cantus firmus in modus hypodorius offer a particular-
ly impressive demonstration of contrapuntal skill. Bloch
began by devoting two pages of manuscript to his customary

series of exercises. He then provided a supplementary set

of studies on the sixth cantus firmus on pages 82-85 of

Book II. His annotation at the top of page 82 reads:

CF 6 (M. hypodorius) Add. June 22, 23

Canons on C.F. (very good!)
 161

The cantus firmus is written out on the first staff

of page 82. Directly below it, Bloch provides an exercise

(Example h) in canon at the octave. Example i, in the

fourth system, is a study in canon at the fifth. Another

study in canon at the fifth, Example j, appears in the last

system of page 82, extending to the top of page 83. The

second system of page 83 contains Example k, a canon combin-

ing an ornamented statement of the cantus firmus with its

inversion. Example 1, on the third system, is a study in

canon at the octave. Bloch notes that the canon for

Example m, at the bottom of page 83, is "by diminution."

The canonic studies continue on page 84 with an

exercise in canon at the fifth (Example n) . Above Example

o, Bloch writes "canon by upper fifth": the order in which

the voices enter is altered so that the higher voice pre-

cedes the lower, reversing the pattern of his previous

examples in canon at the fifth. Example p, at the top of

page 85, is a second study in canon at the upper fifth. On

the second and third systems, Bloch writes out Example q--

canon at the octave. And the studies on this cantus firmus

are concluded at the bottom of the page with an exercise in

double counterpoint at the twelfth.

In short, Bloch offers a thoro:1gh exposition of

canonic technique in this series of examples--indicative of

his desire to deal comprehensively with the various facets

of contrapuntal procedure. His annotation at the top of

 162

page 84 is also quite interesting: he labels the exercises

Canons and fantasies . . .

One is again reminded of the vital connection existing

b~tween Bloch's pedagogical activity and his work in actual

composition. This is even more evident in a small number

of exercises written without cantus firmi, which are inter-

spersed among the pages of Bloch's "regular work." These

are generally somewhat longer than the studies based on

cantus firmi; Bloch often refers to them as ''motets." His

final entry for the section of Book II containing examples

in modus hypodorius is one such exercise. Bloch writes at

the top of page 101:

Motet in double ctp. 8 (in imitation)

As the annotation indicates, the study on page 101

is based on the combined techniques of double counterpoint

at the octave and canonic writing. It consists of four

large sections articulated by cadences; and Bloch's ap-

proach is such that for the beginning of each section there

is a different interval separating the entrance of the

canonic voices. (Bloch indicates the interval of imitation

with a number enclosed in parentheses. The order in which

the voices enter is similarly varied.) The exercise is

begun with canon at the seventh. At the end of the first

system Bloch introduces canon at the fourth, leading to a

 163

passage in the middle of the second system which involves

canon at the third. In the last measure of the second

system, he takes up a new point of imitation in canon at

the second. Midway through the third measure on the third

system, the strict canonic relationship between voices is

discontinued in preparation for the final cadence.

Another of Bloch's "motets" appears on pages 130-

31 of Book II, among exercises in the Phrygian mode. Like

the example on page 101, this study consists of several

sections articulated by cadences. In this case, however,

in addition to using entrances at different intervals,

Bloch begins sections with different temporal intervals as

well. The opening measures of the "motet" on page 130 are

based on canon at the unison. On the second system (second

measure) Bloch gives an example of canon at the fourth.

The measure crossed out on the second system is easily

explained: Bloch had written out the ninth measure of the

study twice; only when he entered the lower voice did he

recognize his mistake, and, crossing out the duplicated

measure, he went on to the bottom system of page 130. In
the second measure of the bottom system, he introduces a

phrase in canon at the fourth, which is followed in the

next measure by a longer passage in canon at the fifth.

And in the third measure at the top of page 131, he works

with canon at the second. On the next system of page 131,

Bloch returns to the opening motive of the exercise, though

 164

at this point the voices are at the interval of a third,

with only the duration of a whole note separating them. A

concluding point of imitation (third system, second

measure) involves canon at the fifth.

Despite the sheer technical facility evident in

this study, it is the composer's imagination that leaves

the greatest impression. One notices, for instance, the

tension built by the sequential scale passages leading to

the cadence in the first measure of the second system on

page 131; and the return, immediately tpereafter, of the

imitative motive with which the "motet" begins.

It is also a remarkable feature of the San Francis-

co studies that even as he was at work on such complex con-

trapuntal procedures, Bloch never neglected the fundamen-

tals of the discipline. This is illustrated in the opening

pages of the third notebook, where he copies a series of

examples in species counterpoint on a cantus firmus in the

Lydian mode. The material in Book III that pertains to

Bloch's "regular work" was drafted from March 26 to March

31 and copied on July 4 and 5. Book III is begun with this

table:

[pages] [exercises]

Modus Lydius 8 CF 146

Essays in all species . 147-149 583-587
Exercises in florid on 8 CF 150-165 589-664
HYPOLYDIUS (start) 166-167 665-674
 165 Book. II 1- - p. 147

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 169

The presentation of studies in species counterpoint

commences on page 147, and for each species Bloch writes

out four examples--two above and two below the cantus

firmus. He begins with a group of exercises in note-

against-note motion, which he designates in the left-hand

margin a-d. (In the pages that follow, these letters are

used by Bloch to indicate that in some cases a given contra-

puntal line is based on that included in a preceding group

of examples.) Turning then to second species, Bloch pro-

vides two examples above the cantus firmus at the bottom of

page 147, and two below the cantus firmus atop page 148. A

group of examples in third species counterpoint appears in

the lower five staves of page 148.

The exercises at the top of page 149 show the

application of species writing in the context of triple

meter. This group of examples reflects a relatively recent

approach to instruction in counterpoint. Fux's stand,

expressed in his Gradus, was that the principles of writing

counterpoint in ternary time were self-evident as an exten-

tion of the second species; thus, as he says, there was no
11
reason "to arrange a special chapter dealing with it."

A fifth group of exercises is concerned with

counterpoint in the fourth species. As before, Bloch

copies out four examples--two above the cantus firmus at

the bottom of page 149, and two below the cantus firmus at

the top of page 150. But in this case, his contrapuntal

 170

writing is more complex. The uppermost example above the

cantus firmus duplicates the contrapuntal line appearing

immediately below the cantus firmus (designated by Bloch as

Example c) at the octave through the first three measures

of the exercise. Beginning with the fourth measure, the

same correlation exists between Example c and the second

upper line. In other words, Bloch has come close to creat-

ing double counterpoint at the octave. Only on the upbeat

to the penultimate measure and the following downbeat is

the strict inversion of parts discontinued--by necessity

because the inversion of the tone d in Example c (upbeat to

the penultimate measure) would result in a freely intro-

duced fourth against cantus firmus.

The group of exercises illustrating florid

counterpoint, in the second system on page _150, consists

only of two examples above the cantus firmus, and with this

Bloch concluded the series of examples in species writing.

The study at the bottom of page 150 features the cantus

firmus in canon by diminution.

Bloch completed the section of examples in modus

lydius on page 165 of Book III, and began a new section, by

copying out two pages of studies in the Hypolydian mode.

At this point, however, his work on Book III came to a

halt, and some forty pages of the notebook remained unused.

He was to return to these empty pages later for the purpose

 171

of preserving a series of contrapuntal exercises which he

refered to as "special studies." Prior to entering the

"special studies," he placed this annotation at the bottom

of page 167:

See continuation of Regular Work (Hypolydius CF 2)

Book D (IV) page 208

There is more to this interruption than is at first

apparent. As has been discussed, Bloch's dating of "addi-

tional" exercises contained in Books I-III suggests that

the compilation of these three volumes was undertaken over

a span of thirty-five days: his initial entries in Book I

are dated June 1; material pertaining to the "regular work"

in Book III was copied out on July 4 and July 5. But in

the succeeding volumes devoted to the "regular work," Books

IV-VI, one finds only two dates mentioned in connection

with "additional" exercises--July 6 and July 7. We know

from the dating of other volumes in the series that by

July 10, and perhaps as early as July 8, Bloch had begun to

work in earnest on the "special studies," which were evi-
dently intended as a supplement to the "regular work." The

"special studies" will be discussed below. What is signifi-

cant in the present context, however, is the clear indica-

tion given by the various dates entered in the notebooks

that after compiling Book III, Bloch spent approximately

two days (July 6 and July 7) working on Books IV-VI.

It is highly unlikely that he could have compiled

 172

three completely new volumes containing some 650 exercises

over so short a period of time. One concludes that these

notebooks did not originate in the manner of Books I-III,

but were among the very manuscripts in which Bloch had

originally drafted his contrapuntal studies some months

earlier. Certain features of the manuscripts support such

a conclusion. In Book IV, for instance, many entries were

originally recorded in pencil; in the course of his work on

the manuscript, Bloch either wrote over these or, when nec-

essary, made erasures. In addition, the last five pages of

Book IV contain a number of annotations--eight cantus

firmi; the opening measures of a fugal exposition through

several drafts; random verbal formulations--that play no

role in the contrapuntal studies proper. Furthermore, the

volume lacks some of the organizational details which are

standard among the preceding manuscripts--such as a table

of contents. In short, one does not sense the same purpose

of writing in the fourth notebook that is characteristic of

Bloch's work in the preceding volumes of the series.

It appears, then, that Bloch's decision to leave
Book III uncompleted signals a change in his approach to

the entire project: from this point on, instead of using

new notebooks to record a fair copy of his work, he incor-

porated into the series those manuscripts already on hand.

According to Bloch's annotations, Book IV was largely

drafted between April 1 to April 21. In returning to the

 173

notebook in the summer, he paginated it and numbered his

exercises to put pages and examples in sequence with the

contents of Books I-III. Bloch's dating suggests this work

was done on July 5 and July 6.

Bloch numbered the exercises so as to lead directly

from the conclusion of his "regular work" in Book III to

the first entry in Book IV. However, he paginated the

entire Book III, including the section that had remained

unused, before beginning with page 208 in the fourth note-

book, and he added an annotation below the exercises on the

first page of Book IV:

Continuation fr. III (p. 167) (from Ex. 674)

MODUS HYPOLYDIUS (CF 2)

Exercises in the Hypolydian mode are numbered 675-710, and

are preserved on pages 208-18. On pages 219 and 220, Bloch

wrote out six cantus firmi each in modus mixolydius and

modus hypomyxolydius. Pages 211-34 of Book IV contain

examples 711-74 in the Mixolydian mode. Examples in modus
hypomixolydius, numbered 775-841, appear on pages 235-50.

On page 251 Bloch begins a series of studies in the Aeolian

mode, exercises 842-96. With the last of these examples,

on page 262, Book IV comes to a close.

 174 Booll IV--p. 217

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 176

That Books IV-VI represent a stage of activity dif-

ferent from the preceding volumes in the series, is also

evident from the way in which the contents of the respec-

tive compilations are presented. In copying examples in

florid counterpoint for Books I-III, Bloch consistently

uses a format in which the cantus firmus is notated once on

a page, and the florid melodies are written on the staves

above and below it. He occasionally applies this format in

Books IV-VI; but just as frequently his method is that

illustrated on page 217, where each florid line is notated

with the cantus firmus separately. The former method is

clearly more efficient for copying finished exercises; the

latter method offers obvious advantages in working at a

given one.

The examples on page 217 are designated a-d. On

page 218 appears Example e, a study in double counterpoint

at the octave. This is followed on the lower three systems

of the page by exercises combining florid writing with

ornamented versions of the cantus firmus. In the first of

these, Example f, the embellished cantus firmus is on the
top staff. Above the next exercise, Example g (in the

third system), Bloch writes "to E.G.!!" Clearly, this

refers to Edvard Grieg, for the opening measures of the top

voice resemble the opening of "In the Hall of the Mountain

King" from the Peer Gynt Suite. In the exercise in the

bottom system, Bloch places the florid line from Example a

 177

on page 217 against the ornamented cantus firmus. Above

this exercise, he indicates that it is one of his "addi-

tional" examples:

Add. a (July 7)

Because he was now dealing with manuscripts which had been

compiled several months earlier, Bloch faced a definite lim-

itation in entering new exercises in Books IV-VI: they

could only be inserted where there was a previously unused

syst~m or page. Consequently~ there are far fewer added

examples in these notebooks than in Books I-III.

With the exception of the exercise designated "Add.

a," the examples on pages 217-18 were originally notated in

pencil. This may be indicative of the general manner in

which Bloch worked at his studies. The pencil version was

advantageous as a first step because it could be easily cor-

rected; and when he had arrived at a satisfactory draft,

Bloch confirmed the final version of the examples by copy-

ing over them in ink. Yet for the majority of the exer-
cises in Books IV-VI, there are no markings in pencil. Pos-

sibly he developed these exercises on a loose sheet before

using pen to enter them into the notebooks. Alongside a

very small number of examples, Bloch, with evident pride,

makes the comment "directly in ink."

The contents of Book V were drafted between April

21 and May 23. On July 7, Bloch added a few new studies

 178

and numbered the pages and exercises. In this case he had

space to notate a table of contents as well:

[pages] [exercises]

MODUS AEOLIUS 263-269 897-907

M. HYPOAEOLIUS CF 269
Exercises 270-296 908-1013
MODUS IONIUS 2~n-318 1014-1108
II
HYPOIONIUS 319-325 1109-1141
 179
Book. V--p. -i.Ct7

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 181

Pages 297-98 of Book V contain the first thirteen

examples in an extended series of studies on a cantus fir-

mus in the Ionian mode. It is interesting to find Bloch so

attentive to this particular cantus firmus because the

first four notes of the melody represent the same motif

that is featured prominently in his Sacred Service. In one

of his later counterpoint notebooks, to be discussed below,

there is explicit evidence of a connection between the con-

trapuntal studies and the Sacred Service. But it is sig-

nificant that this motif appears to have fascinated Bloch

in the "regular work" as well. In fact, in the course of

Books I-VI he composes cantus firmi starting with the motif

not only in modus ionius, but also in the Hypoionian, Lydi-

an (with B~ ) , and Mixolydian modes. On page 297 he enters

eight exercises, marked a-h, above the cantus firmus. Four

examples below the cantus firmus, i-1, appear atop page

298. The bottom system contains Example m, in double coun-

terpoint at the octave. Bloch finally uses the cantus fir-

mus in his third stage of studies and for canonic exercises

in the pages which follow.

From May 14 to May 24, Bloch drafted exercises on

the opening pages of Book VI, completing the examples in

modus hypoionius. On May 25, he began a new series of exam-

ples devoted to the study of double counterpoint at the

twelfth, and with this section the "regular work" comes to

an end. Book VI was paginated, and the exercises it

 182

contains were numbered on July 7. No examples marked "addi-

tional" appear in the particular volume; there is, however,

a brief table of contents:

[pages] [exercises]

Hypo-ionius (suite)
(from 114 2-) . . . h 326-349 1142-1235
Double Counterpoint at the 12t
Studies in all modes 350-384 1236-1277
 &wk. .YI--p. 350
183

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 189

As has been mentioned, Bloch gives little attention

to the writing of double counterpoint at the twelfth in pre-

vious pages of the notebooks. That he devotes a final sec-

tion of the "regular work" to this phase of study attests

again to his aim for a comprehensive exposition of contra-

puntal technique. On page 350 of Book VI, Bloch· outlines

the basic principles of the technique in preparation for

the exercises to follow: he notes that the interval of a

sixth between the voices is to be handled with particular

care; it must be

. used as a passing note, or prepared .

He then points out that the notation of the studies is best

handled by using clefs separated by the interval of a

fifth. Next, he makes mention of the fact that the dis-

tance between voices should not exceed the interval of a

twelfth. Finally, he offers the simple scheme by which the

parts can be inverted:

One may transfer a [the lower voice] (an octave

above) [and] b [the upper voice] a fifth below = Qg

or b an octave below and a a fifth above = QD

These principles are illustrated in the exercises

on page 351. The procedure which Bloch has designated Qg

is used for the example in the top system: in the fourth

measure, what was initially the lower voice appears on the

top staff, one octave higher than originally notated; at

 190

the same time, the upper voice is transposed down the inter-

val of a fifth. In the second system, he demonstrates the

use of urr midway through the example the lower voice is

transferred to the top staff, raised by the interval of a

fifth, and the upper voice is written an octave lower.

Bloch puts to use the convenience of choosing clefs a fifth

apart as a matter of practical convenience; by notating the

respective parts in tenor and bass clefs, for instance, the

voice which is transposed by the interval of a fifth is

merely copied; it occupies the same position on either

staff. Bloch's mention of the rule not to exceed the inter-

val of a twelfth between voices reverts to the typical con-

sideration involved in double counterpoint at the twelfth:

inverted, the twelfth results in the unison, and if the

voices rise above or fall below the twelfth the object of

inversion is forfeited.

At the top of page 351 Bloch writes:

(after Orlando di Lasso--no. 23)

In drafting this study, Bloch used as a model a two-part

instrumental piece from the edition of Lassus's Complete

Works (Volume I, edited by Franz Haberl). The instrumental

piece is in itself an example of double counterpoint at the

twelfth. With regard to phrase length, disposition of

voices, and rhythmic motion, Bloch's exercise on the first

system of page 351 follows Lassus's work closely. But

Bloch freely alters the melodic writing.

 191

The whole-note melody appearing in the lower voice

at the beginning of the first example on page 351 serves as

a cantus firmus for the initial studies in this section of

Book VI. Below the pair of exercises in double counter-

point at the twelfth on page 351, Bloch enters a single ex-

ample in double counterpoint at the octave. With the exer-

cise at the top of page 352, he returns to the inversion at

the twelfth, and this remains his exclusive concern in the

studies that follow.

On page 353, Bloch drafts an example for the specif-

ic purpose of addressing technical problems involved in

using the interval of a sixth between voices. Unlike other

consonant intervals, the sixth results by the inversion of

double counterpoint at the twelfth in a dissonance (a sev-

enth) and thus must be treated with special care. In the

example on page 353, Bloch makes a mark (+) to indicate

intervals of a sixth between voices in measures 2, 3, and

4. His writing of the lower voice in these cases is such

that when the parts are inverted, the resulting sevenths

(in measures 6, 7, and 8) are properly prepared andre-

solved as 7-6 suspensions. Conversely, the sixths which

represent the resolution of the suspensions in measures 6-8

are variously inverted to a seventh as a passing tone

(measures 2 and 3), and to a second tone in a cambiata

figure (measure 4).

In a concluding series of examples in double

 192

counterpoint at the twelfth, which begins on page 359,

Bloch introduces greater rhythmic activity in the voices.

He writes at the top of the page:

Exercises free in both parts (no CF)

The section of Book VI devoted to the study of

double counterpoint at the twelfth was completed on May 31,

and with that Bloch concluded his original draft of the

exercises constituting "regular work." The next day, he be-

gan the process of copying these exercises into notebooks,

adding to them the newly composed examples which he refers

to as "additional.'' Over a period of several weeks he thus

compiled the series designated as Books I-III, and put into

final shape three volumes already on hand (Books IV-VI).

On June 25, Bloch left for a holiday in Europe; and thus it

was aboard the vessel "Fella", that he made his final entry

in Book VI (in the lower right-hand corner of page 384),

confirming that the copying and the compilation of the

"regular work" was completed on July 7.

Perhaps as early as July 8 a new contrapuntal proj-

ect was begun--the "special studies"--that was to occupy

Bloch for the remainder of the month. The second exercise

in the series of "special studies" is dated July 10, so it

is likely that the first of these exercises was written one

or two days earlier. With his characteristic concern for

designing a compact body of documents, Bloch began entering

 193

the "special studies" in the pages of Book III which he had

left unused a week or so earlier. He makes a supplementary

annotation in the volume's table of contents:

[pages] [exercises]

Special Studies in Two Part Counterpoint

. Imitations by augmentation
after Josquin des Pres . . 168-175 1278-1287

Agnus Dei (after Josquin d. P.)

II
Benedict us 176-181 1288-1291

Study of Motet
Study of First Sentence in all modes
(Darius, Phrygius, Lydius, Mixolydius)
continuation in book VII
p. 387 182-207 1292-1337

The "special studies'' may be divided into three

sections, each of which is devoted to a distinct aspect of

the contrapuntal art. The first section is concerned with

imitation by augmentation. The second section contains

only a few exercises, and in these the primary emphasis is

on strict canonic writing at the unison. In the final sec-

tion, the longest and most substantial of the three, Bloch

examines a variety of procedures under the heading "study

of motet." Bloch made it clear by including these sections

in Book III that he intended them as a continuation of the

"regular work"; and indeed, this material may be viewed as

a more extensive treatment of procedures Bloch had dealt

with in the earlier series of exercises. At the same time,

there is a certain orientation evident in the new project

 194

that has no parallel in the 1277 exercises leading up to

it. In the "regular work," Bloch's attention is centered

upon special technical aspects involved, as a rule, in com-

bining of contrapuntal voices with a cantus firmus. The

thrust of the "special studies," on the other hand, is

toward aspects of musical structure relevant to the course

of actual composition.

The "special studies" emerge as a section distinct,

not only from the preceding material in the notebooks, but

from the entire body of Bloch's contrapuntal writings. In

the "regular work" we see Bloch pursuing his own contrapun-

tal exercises, while the manuscripts dating from Cleveland

and the "Studies in Configuration" contain analyses of the

Renaissance repertory. In the "special studies" these two

areas of inquiry are merged. It seems that Bloch examined

a given composition for the purpose of receiving instruc-

tion in a particular contrapuntal procedure, and then

worked out his own sample of the technique, incorporating

whatever aspects of the original composition he found inter-

esting. Such aspects, however, generally do not involve

the thematic or rhythmic details one might naturally expect

to find as references in comparing exercise and model.

Bloch was invariably intrigued by more subtle features of

the musical texture, and these became the basis for the

examples included in the "special studies."

 Book. III--p. 168
195

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 198 Book III-- p. 177

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 202 Book III--p. 206

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 204

The first of the three sections constituting the

"special studies" begins on page 168 of Book III. Bloch

introduces the section with this remark:

. Imitations by augmentation /
from Josquin des Pres Missa L'Homme Arme
(Benedictus p. 24)

He found in the "Benedictus" an excellent example illustrat-

ing the technique of canon by augmentation. Josquin sets

this passage of the mass text in a two-voice texture. The

voices enter at the same time, and the contrapuntal line

which is stated in the first eight measures of the lower

voice appears in augmentation over the course of sixteen

measures in the upper voice.

This description serves for Bloch's example on

pages 168-69 as well. Bloch also responds to several other

features of the "Benedictus" in writing the exercise. The

exercise begins on d and is concluded on a, or as Bloch

expresses it on page 168, "(dorius--aeolius) ." In the

upper right-hand corner of page 169, he writes "8+8+(2) .''

This refers to the phrase structure--one eight-measure

unit, followed by a second eight-measure unit, after which

the final tone is held out for two measures. There is a

further point of structural articulation, as Bloch's brack-

et above the lower voice indicates, in measures 4-5 on page

168: because the two voices move in strict canon, this

cadential gesture also provides structural definition in

 205

the upper voice, measures 8-9. In all these respects,

Bloch's exercise is identical with the excerpt from the

Missa l'Homme armt. Perhaps the only way in which the

exercise and its model differ with respect to structure is

that the points of arrival in measures 5 and 9 in the study

emphasize i, while in the corresponding measures of the

"Benedictus" the contrapuntal lines conclude on a. Yet,

there are no prominent similarities between the exercise

and the excerpt with regard to melodic or rhythmic

conformation.

Bloch makes a further comment pertaining to this

example on page 169:

In Josquin the_subject is kept integrally

By this he means that in the "Benedictus" the slower voice

adheres strictly to the melodic pattern introduced in the

faster voice. At the end of his own example, however,

Bloch does not maintain such a strict relationship between

the two voices. The bracket which he enters on page 168

above the lower voice (second system, first measure) marks

the point corresponding to that at which he eventually dis-

continues the canon (third measure, page 169) in order to

bring about a cadence. In a later notebook, where Bloch

also examines the writing of canon by augmentation, he com-

ments that the greatest difficulty of the technique is in

bringing the canonic texture to a satisfactory conclusion.

 At the bottom of page 169, Bloch applies the prln-

ciples extracted from Josquin's work in designing another

exercise. In this case, as his annotation indicates, a

pair of three-measure phrases in the lower voice is extend-

ed by augmentation to two six-measure phrases in the upper

voice "(3+3--6) ." He concludes the first section of the

"special studies" with eight more examples of imitation by

augmentation.

On page 176, begins the next section of exercises,

and for these B~och uses two movements from another mass by

Josquin as a model:

Agnus Dei (after Josquin - Missa Gaudeamus - p. 77)

/
The Missa Gaudeamus and the Missa l'Homme arme are con-

tained in a single volume of the edition of Josquin's

Complete Works, the page numbers of which are referred to

by Bloch. He drafted four examples based on the Missa

Gaudeamus. Two of these, both modeled after very short

passages from the "Benedictus," are freely contrapuntal.

The other two studies--based on the "Benedictus" and the

"Agnus Dei"--are exercises in strict canon at the unison.

Josquin's "Agnus Dei" is a rather long movement in canonic

s~yle, and Bloch's exercise on pages 176-77 represents a

considerably condensed version of the original design.

There are, however, general similarities so far as melodic

material is concerned.
 207

In the third section of the "special studies" Bloch

uses compositions by Lassus as the basis for a series of

examples appearing under the title "study of motet." He

found models for his work in two sources. The first was a

series of two-part motets and instrumental pieces published

as Cantiones Duarum Vocum in the first volume of the Haberl

edition (Lassus's Samtliche Werke) which he had previously

drawn material from (in Book VI) for his studies in double

counterpoint at the twelfth. The other source for exer-

cises in this section is Lassus's Psalmi Poenitentiales.

Again, his reference to specific page numbers suggests that

he had Haberl's edition in his posession on board the

"Fella."

Bloch's practice in notating this portion of the

"special studies" was to copy out the opening measures of

the model into the notebook, and then to take up exercises

examining the characteristic features of the excerpt in the

subsequent pages. Bloch used his manuscript copy of the

motet solely for analytical observations, and thus the

"special studies" include analyses in greater detail than
those contained in any other section of the contrapuntal

writings. His principal concern in these pages continues

to be with various technicul aspects of contrapuntal

writing. But he also devotes considerable attention to the

question of modes.
As he did in the "regular work," Bloch presents
 208

the examples representing the "study of motet" in order by

mode. In the earlier series of studies, the classification

of examples by mode was based on consideration of the melod-

ic structure and range of the respective cantus firmi. The

discussion of modal structure in the polyphonic repertory

involves entirely different criteria. Bloch tends to deal

with modes in a manner which reflects a theoretical orienta-

tion of his time: modal centers are regarded essentially

as tonal centers; he refers to "modulations" from one mode

to the next, and to "tonic" and "dominant." At the same

time, he seems to have sensed the inappropriateness of such

analysis for sixteenth-century music, and his efforts to

come to terms with the nature of harmonic structure in

Renaissance polyphony result necessarily in a dichotomy of

terms.

Bloch's discussion on page 194 (Book III) of the

fifth motet in the Cantiones Duarum Vocum is a case in

point. At the outset, he designates the excerpt as an ex-

ample in the Phrygian mode. In the upper right-hand corner

of the page he uses solfege syllables to demonstrate that,

in actuality, it is "Phrygian transposed"--on a with a key

signature of one flat. On the uppermost staff, Bloch

writes out a transposed Phrygian scale, and uses it for a

schematic outline of the beginning of the motet. He places

a mark (X) above the tone a, and (to the left) designates

a as final of "Phrygian." The same mark appears above the

 209

tone £, which is designated (to the right) as final of

"Aeolian." This pair of marks, in turn, corresponds to

Bloch's markings above the opening of the lower and upper

voices: thus, the lower voice, which enters on a, is to be

understood as ~Phrygian"; conversely, the upper voice, en-

tering on d, is "Aeolian." Bloch refers again to the open-

ing measures of the motet ("Starts:") on the left-hand side

of the second staff, where he notates the tones on which

the voices enter. But in this case, he further designates

the "Phrygian" final (~) with a "T," meaning tonic; the

"Aeolian" final (d) is labeled "(U-d) ,"or Unter-dominante.

Thus, in considering the excerpt from the stand-

point of mode, Bloch regarded the "Phrygian'' final as the

most important-tone in the musical texture and accordingly

placed the excerpt among other examples in the Phrygian

mode. (The end of the motet, not included in the excerpt

given here, is also on the "Phrygian" final, ~-) But on

the right-hand side of the second staff, he makes annota-

tions showing the "modern" interpretation. He reduces the

first melodic line of each voice to a schematic diagram.

(For the purposes of this diagram only, Bloch's notation is

"in C"--i.e. transposed so that it appears without sharps

or flats in the key signature.) In this case; he marks the

"Aeolian" final with "T," and above the "Phrygian" final he

writes "D," or dominant. Accordingly, in his harmonic

interpretation it. was the "Aeolian" final d which struck

 210

Bloch as the most prominent tone. Hence, his comment (at

the bottom of the page) that the motet

Can be considered "Aeolian"

And as for the ending of the entire motet on the "Phrygian"

final a:

(ends then on V (Phrygian)

The rest of Bloch's observations have to do with

certain details of the musical texture. He notes that

there are subtle differences between the initial phrase in

the upper and lower voice: in the lower voice, the range

of the opening contrapuntal line extends a second above and

a fifth below the first tone of the first measure; the

range of the upper voice, on the other hand, covers a third

above and a fourth below its first tone. Bloch comments:

Thus, the imitation contains in germ the future

TONAL answer of the fugue.

He is also intrigued by Lassus's use of a variety of inter-

vals between imitative entrances of the two voices, as is

indicated by the numbers appearing between the two staves

throughout the excerpt. He notes that in the first system

the imitative points are separated by the interval of a

fourth, a fifth, and again a fifth. In the second system,

imitation proceeds by the interval of a sixth, an octave

and a fifth. He draws a schematic diagram of this

 211

procedure at the bottom of page 194:

All of the structural details pointed out in the

excerpt are used for the exercise on page 195. Bloch notes

a similar variety of intervals between the points of

imitation:

. th th th th th
(about Same pattern!) 4 5 5 6 8 coda
'----J L....l ~

In the opening phrase the upper voice forms a "tonai

answer." And the entire exercise moves from Phrygian a at

the beginning to a final cadence on Aeolian d.

On page 196, there are two more examples after the

fifth motet in Cantiones Duarum Vocum. In these exercises

Bloch is less concerned with examining the established se-

quence of intervals between points of imitation. But the

study at the top of the page again features a "tonal

answer" in the upper voice, and both examples on page 196

illustrate the characteristic motion from Phrygian to
Aeolian. About the example at the top of the page Bloch
remarks:

(Aeolian . . . more than Phrygian nt start)

For this reason, he chooses for the opening point of imita-

tion in the last example on page 196 a motif from the

 212

section of exercises in modus phrygius contained in the

"regular work" (Book II, page 106, exercise 410).

The exercises for the Phrygian mode in the "study

of motet" are preceded by a series of examples in modus

dorius which are studies after excerpts from six different

motets. The examples in the Phrygian mode are based on

four excerpts from compositions of Lassus. In taking up

studies in the Lydian mode, Bloch makes this comment:

(no good ex. in 0. d. L.)

Thus, for modus lydius he composes three short exercises not

based on models.

Pages 206-07 contain the study of a single excerpt

in the Mixolydian mode. In the first system on page 206

Bloch copies out the initial six measures of the tenth motet

from Cantiones Duarum Vocum. He notes that the upper voice

enters on the fifth degree of the scale ("5") and that the

lower voice enters on "T." But what appears to have cap-

tured his interest above all is the "harmonic" motion in the

excerpt, beginning in Mixolydian and concluding in "dorian."

He then pursues this particular aspect of the motet in a se-

ries of seven exercises, a-g, on pages 206-07 which are

introduced as

Ex. by EB. End in diff. modes

What is particularly challenging about the task Bloch has

 213

set for himself is that the material in the first four meas-

ures of each exercise is essentially the same--clearly de-

rived from the opening measures of the motet. It then be-

comes a matter of successfully guiding this material to a

different mode in each exercise over the course of two or

three measures. On page 206, Bloch indicates that Examples

a and b conclude in the Dorian mode, and that Example c

forms a cadence in the Phrygian mode. His first two exer-

cises on page 207, Examples c and d, end in the Aeolian and

Ionian modes, repectively. For Example f, he designates

the final cadence as being in the Phrygian mode. (The last

two measures of the lower voice were erroneously notated a

third too low.) The final exercise of the series, Example

g, concludes in the Ionian mode.

With the exercises on page 207, Bloch used up the

space that had been available in Book III. He continues

his examination of excerpts in the Mixolydian mode in Book

VII, which he prefaces with this annotation:

[pages] [exercises]
Ctp. 2 Voices Study of Motet (cont)
First Sentence (modus Mixolydius)
cont. fr. Book III 387[-413] 1338[-1382]

(The numbering of the exercises continues from the "special

stuaies" contained in Book III, but the pagination of Book

VII continues from Book VI.) Bloch drafts exercises in

modus mixolydius after two excerpts from works by Lassus,

 214

and these are followed by a series of studies in the

Aeolian mode. With the section of examples in modus

aeolius he notes:

(no ex. in 0. d. Lasso)

The exercises in the Aeolian mode are therefore again not

based on any model. The final section of the "study of

motet" consists of exercises on excerpts from five dif-

ferent motets in modus ionius.

 215 Book VII--p. 403

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 216 Book.. VI I-~ p •. --~04

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 217 Book VTT--p. 405

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 219

The last of the five excerpts in the Ionian mode, a

passage in two-part texture from Lassus's Psalmi Poeniten-

tiales, appears on page 403 of Book VII, and it is intro-

duced with this remark:

(very curious and uncommon)

In examining the example Bloch divides it essentially into

two sections. He notes that the first five measures of the

excerpt are written in double counterpoint: the two contra-

puntal lines in measures 1-3 are inverted at the twelfth in

measures 4-5. And he points out that Lassus also changes

the order in which the voices enter. In measures 1-3 the

entrance of the upper voice precedes the entrance of the

lower voice by a full measure; in measures 4-5, however,

this order is reversed, as the original lower voice (now

inverted to the upper voice) begins one-half measure before

the other one.

The passage in double counterpoint gives way to a

different contrapuntal texture in the sixth measure, and

this marks the start of what Bloch regarded as the second

section of the excerpt. Here the writing consists of free

imitation characterized by short melodic patterns which are

interchanged in the two voices in relatively rapid succes-

sion. Lassus also frequently altered the interval separat-

ing the imitative voices, as well as the order in which the

voices enter. Bloch's observations on the excerpt address

 220

these various aspects of texture. He indicates that in the

first point of imitation, beginning with the end of the

first system, the lower voice follows the upper voice at

the interval of a seventh. In the third measure of the

second system, as he points out, the contour of the first

imitative line ·is inverted: "Contrary--." His brackets in

the last two measures of the second system identify a new

point of imitation--one which (as his markings show) is

begun at the interval of a sixth, and subsequently widened

to an octave. In the third system (third and fourth meas-

ures) Bloch notes that the imitation is at the interval of

a fifth. The marks (~/) in the concluding measures of the

third system give evidence of his attention to the espe-

cially lively contrapuntal exchange between the voices at

that point. He uses another mark ( ~) to point out

chromaticism (such as d~ and a~ in the third system).

The excerpt contains many similar contrapuntal

details to which Bloch makes no explicit reference; it was

merely the general character of this passage from the

Psalmi Poenitentiales that intrigued him. His interest is
documented in two exercises which appear on pages 404-06 of

Book VII. The first entry on page 404 (top three staves)

is a diagram examining the order in which the voices enter

in measures 1-3 of the excerpt. He remarks:

note the time of possible imitation

 221

The remaining space on page 404 is used for the first of

his two exercises. The exercise begins with nine measures

of double counterpoint at the twelfth, followed by sixteen

measures of free imitative counterpoint. As in the work by

Lassus, the first point of imitation (second system) shows

the two voices separated by the interval of a seventh. In

the fourth measure of the second system, the point of imita-

tion is melodically inverted. In the fifth and sixth meas-

ures of the second system the writing--particularly the em-

phasis placed on d~ --closely resembles a passage from the

excerpt (end of the second system on page 403). Bloch

frequently introduces the raised fourth a~ as well.

The second exercise based on this excerpt appears

on pages 405-06. Again, the study begins with a passage in

double counterpoint at the twelfth. Free imitative writing

is featured beginning with the second measure in the second

system, and it continues for the remainder of the exercise.

In this case the first imitative line is answered immediate-

ly by its inversion, and throughout the two imitative

voices are separated by the interval of a seventh.

The exercises appearing on pages 404-06 represent

the essence of Bloch's approach to the polyphonic repertory

in "study of motet." One sees clearly that it was not his

intention to use the excerpts literally in designing his

exercises. His examination of the models was rather guided

by a his creative orientation, and his observations led to

 222

independent studies in composition. This orientation shows

a certain parallel to the parody technique of earlier

eras. There are three additional examples by Lassus that

Bloch copies out on pages 407, 409, and 413 of Book VII,

presumably to serve as the basis for further contrapuntal

studies. But no corresponding exercises were undertaken,

and the pages following the respective examples are blank.

Thus, it is with the exercise on pages 405-06 (exercise

1381 in the numerical order given) that the San Francisco

studies come to a close. Bloch's annotations show that the

examples on pages 404-06 were written on August 1 and

August 2, coinciding with his arrival in Europe. They

represent the conclusion of a project which had occupied

the composer over the course of six months.

There are, however, three further notebooks of

contrapuntal exercises which are of the same size as the

seven volumes containing the San Francisco studies of

1928. From Bloch's dating, we gather that these three

manuscripts were compiled in January and February of 1930.

The earliest of the three contains examples in two-part

counterpoint. On the cover of this volume Bloch entered

the number IX. Thus, there was an eighth notebook to

precede it. In fact, in reviewing the contents of the

notebooks at some later date, Bloch made an annotation (in

pencil) at the bottom of page 109 of Book II:

 223

See additional book VIII

The eighth notebook seems not to have survived. But, like

Book IX, it was evidently a later addition to the series of

volumes containing two-voice contrapuntal studies. After

the completion of the "study of motet" Bloch left a substan-

tial number of pages in Book VII empty; had he done further

work in counterpoint during August of 1928, he would have

used the available space in Book VII, in accordance with

his habit, prior to beginning a new manuscript.

As for Book IX, Bloch makes it clear from his anno-

tations that its contents were intended as a supplement to

the earlier studies. The new exercises are largely devoted

to the same technical procedures he had examined in the

"special studies" included in Book III. Bo6k IX is intro-

duced with a table of contents: (Bloch does not number the

exercises contained in Book IX, and its pagination is inde-

pendent of the seven preceding manuscripts.)

[pages]
Additional Counterpoint
Special Studies in Two Parts (after Josquin)
Add. to Book III--page 168--Example 1278
(27 new examples in all modes) 1-18
Ex. in basso Ostinato in all modes (15 Ex.) 19-30

Imitationes strictes a l'unisson (d'apres

Josquin Missa Gaudeamus) (add. to B.III
ex. 1288) new ex. in all modes (22) 31-50

Add. to Ex. 1289-90-91 (After Josguin)

----(Benedictus same mass) (6) 51-54
 224
Book. IX--p. 1

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 225
Book IX--p. 2

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 233

The contents of Book IX may be divided into four

sections, three of which are directly related to portions

of Book III. Bloch begins with three studies in canon by

augmentation (pages 1-2):

Imitations by augmentation (unisson) Jan. 9 1930

Add. to Example 1278--(Book III)

The first exercise appears in the upper two systems of page

1. The second exercise, which is written out in the third

and fourth systems of the page, is marked "Dorius-Aeolius,"

i.e. the exercise begins on ~ and ends on a. A third exer-

cise appears in the first three systems of page 2, and here

Bloch encountered a problem. In measures 13-15 of the exer-

cise the two voices cross a number of times in succession.

Following the conclusion of the exercise (in the third and

fourth systems of page 2), he enters a revision:

ossia fromtF to change the range of voices around

Yet, in measures 13-15 the upper voice consists of material

stated previously in the lower voice, and Bloch realized

that if the canonic relationship between the voices was to

be maintained, any change in the top voice would have to be

anticipated in the preceding statement of the canon. Conse-

quently he saw himself compelled to revise the concluding

eleven measures of the exercise, and he placed the mark4F

above the last measure in the first system on page 2 to

 234

indicate the point at which the corrected version is to be

inserted.

Bloch's main attention in these exercises goes to

the problem of coordinating canonic voices with an overall

structure. This is particularly evident from his annota-

tions for the third exercise. In this study the augmenta-

tion of the canonic line becomes the object of the upper

voice. The whole exercise is organized in two symmetrical

parts: the first half (measures 1-8) leads to a cadence at

mid-point; the second half (measures 9-17) leads to the

final cadence. In the first half, the lower voice consists

of two four-measure phrases which are, as Bloch points out,

articulated by cadential gestures. He notes:

observe + E9 for cadences

He places one of these marks (~) above the cadential turn

in the lower voice (measure 4); the second mark (+) appears

at a corresponding point in the lower voice, (measure 8).

Bloch seems to emphasize that the first eight meas-

ures in the lower voice provide, in effect, the structure
of the entire example. The first phrase in the lower voice

(measures 1-4) is extended by augmentation in the upper

voice over the first half of the study (measures 1-8), and

when the cadential formula introduced in the lower voice

(measure 4) appears in the upper voice (measure 8), it

gains structural significance. Similarly, in the second

 235

half of the study (measures 9-17) the upper voice presents

the augmentation of the phrase which had initially appeared

in measures 5-8 in the lower voice, and the cadential turn

in the lower voice (measure 8) becomes the final cadence.

(In measures 9-17 the lower voice, having already stated

both phrases of the canon, consists of a free contrapuntal

line against the canonic melody in the upper voice.) What

makes this emphasis of structure significant is that it

suggests a formula for the construction of the canons by

augmentation. The same procedure is found in Josquin's

"Benedictus" on which Bloch's initial studies examining

this technique were based (in Book III), so that he appar-

ently devised this approach in conjunction with his analy-

sis of the excerpt from Josquin's works.

Bloch wrote a total of twenty-seven examples in can-

on by augmentation in Book IX as a supplement to the exer-

cises devoted to this technique in Book III. Conversely,

the next section of exercises in Book IX, which begins on

page 19 of the manuscript, has no counterpart in the ear-

lier studies. It contains exercises placing a free contra-

puntal line in the upper voice against an ostinato figure

in the lower voice. Bloch notes on page 19 that he found

an example for this work in Josquin's Missa La Sol FaRe

Mi.

The most interesting exercises of those contained

in this section of Book IX appear on pages 23-26; in fact,

 236

having been on display at one time for this reason, they

suffered damage that has somewhat impaired their legibil-

ity. suzanne Bloch added an explanatory note:

1h 1!/.JJt. /w., }o c.Ji/.> vit-tt. rnwtltc.:fzJ. w ~:4.

m /Jd ~vt itv A~,u- )?Ia.~.
0
:f.~tVJ'I~ ~t:, L;E:~LJJJ;-!J-, A/.'f.~.,
/t-~ o~ ltj{, 7 ,;-- t.i-,1 4wul.. l'it.l
Stvfohp:,e·L). ~1;Ju •i. c.~ C<V=>e__ W>4l
j''fr/t~ lodr.eJ > :Jr;.,t:"-L. 4,._; t;.rc~ 1:-,J fL-nll_
Wnut~" Jc,rt;L rw tkudj ~ !zz ~/c' !.-
-'<! cwu. tfZ 0 A. n<-ru .(r"'f ~ tf4 _ }"-L. w.._,_
tLn-. '--' 1It /J ~1- n.':J ).evt->J;,m_..;, ,.., ~ &n~ Jt<_
"-4'7 ,.:> ~ f.- '14fc. If_ wuJ;:u;.t ~ -
5t!ja,~~ ....8/Dt/~

Affected were only the le ft - h an d S ide of' page 23 and the

right-hand side of page 24.

 237

Pages 23-26 are noteworthy because they represent

one of the cases in the contents of the collection where we

find an explicit connection between Bloch's pedagogical

writings and his own compositions. The exercises on these

pages feature a six-note ostinato bass in the Mixolydian

mode. Bloch comments on this Mixolydian melody at the top

of page 23:

(for possible Jewish Service) Jan 15th 1930

He did, in fact, make this six-note passage a fundamental

melodic component in his Sacred Service, completed in 1933.

Bloch writes out the ostinato on the first staff

(page 23), and he uses it as the basis for three exercises

in duple meter. He does not deviate from the melodic pat-

tern of the ostinato, but he continually varies its rhythm.

The exercises, designated a-c, begin on page 23, continue

to the first system of page 24, and are concluded at the

bottom of page 24. Exercise a appears on the staff direct-

ly above the bass. Exercise b is written out on the second

staff from the top. The notes on the latter are notated in

tenor clef (not immediately apparent due to the present

state of the manuscript) . The uppermost staff contains

Exercise c, which begins in imitation of the melodic pat-

tern of the ostinato. On pages 25-26, Bloch adds three

exercises, again marked a-c, in triple meter against the

same Mixolydian melody in the bass. Exercise a, which is

 238

written directly above the bass, begins in imitation of the

ostinato line. Exercises b and c appear on the upper two

staves.

The second section of Book IX contains a total of

fifteen exercises based on four different ostinato figures.

With the third section of exercises, which begins on page

31 of the manuscript, Bloch returns to studies to supple-

ment material in Book III:

Add. to No 1288 Imitations ~ l'unisson (after

Josquin--Missa Gaude~wus p.7).
Modus Darius (Jan 17 )

Exercise 1288, which is based on the "Agnus Dei" from the

Missa Gaudeamus, appears on page 168 of Book III. It is

the only study in Book III devoted to the technique of

strict canon at the unison--possibly the reason why Bloch

undertook these supplementary studies (numbering twenty-two

exercises in all) in Book IX.

As in the "Imitations by augmentation," Bloch is

concerned with the problem of cadential structure. He

comments atop page 32:

The end cadences are the most difficult part of it.

Here are a few examples in modus darius

The three exercises appearing on page 32 (also marked a-c)

seem to represent only the concluding measures of what were

presumably longer studies in canonic writing. Bloch draws

brackets above the canonic lines in each exercise to

 239

emphasize the way in which the strict relationship between

the voices is maintained throughout and in which the ca-

dence concluding the exercise must be anticipated by the

preceding statement of the canonic material.

On page 37 appears a study in strict canon at the

unison in modus lydius. Bloch writes at the top of the

page in pencil:

used in Sacred Service end of III!

The remark, obviously added at a later time, refers to his

use of this material in the section at the end of the third

part of the Sacred Service entitled "Lecho Adonoy," another

explicit connection between the contents of Book IX and the

Sacred Service. But this case is somewhat different from

the exercises on pages 23- 26. Bloch's use of the Mixo-

lydian ostinato figure in the earlier studies occurred

clearly in view of beginning work on the Sacred Service,

and the studies on the ostinato served as a preliminary

investigation of contrapuntal possibilities inherent in the

six-note melody. But initially he seems to have had no

intention that the exercise on page 37 would be included in

the Sacred Service, his decision to use this material aris-

ing at some later date and at a more advanced stage of work

on the composition: the two-voice texture is incorporated,

exactly as it appears on page 37, in the orchestral score

at the culminating measures of part III of the Sacred

 240

Service, the only changes being that the original note

values were halved, and that the entire canon was

transposed to c (with a key signature of one sharp).

Bloch completes the studies in strict canon at the

unison on page 50 of Book IX. Pages 51-54 constitute the

final section of the manuscript, identified as follows:

Add to Nos. 1289-90-91 (after Benedictus by Josquin

from Missa Gaudeamus) (Book III)

This notation refers to six examples which, like exercises

1289-91, are freely contrapuntal. Bloch's dating indicates

that Book IX was completed on January 24. But it seems

that as early as January 19 he had begun a new project, de-

voted to the study of three-part counterpoint. The exer-

cises in three-part writing are contained in the last two

notebooks, identical in size with the others. Bloch desig-

nated them as Books I and II [of three-part counterpoint] .

In the first book Bloch undertakes a remarkably

thorough exposition of species centerpoint. The volume

opens with a brief table of contents:

[pages]
III Part Ctp. Essays Jan 19 1930
Modus Dorius 1-34
Modus Phrygius 35-56
 241 Book I--p.

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 250

On the first staff of page 1 Bloch writes out a melody in

the Dorian mode, and it is used as a cantus firmus in the

exercises that follow. Pages 1-2 contain eleven examples

in first species: for Exercises 1-4 Bloch enters the anno-

tation "CF above"; for Exercises 5-8 his indication is "CF

middle"; for Exercises 9-11 (page 2) he notes "CF. in

Bass." At the bottom of page 2 he writes out examples in

second species counterpoint. He remarks:

Two notes ag. one--(using examples 1-11 when

possible)

As his comment suggests, Bloch returns frequently to the

first eleven studies in working out the subsequent exam-

ples. For instance, the first study in second species, on

page 2 (Exercise 12), is based on Exercise 1 from page 1;

similarly, Exercise 13 is based on the second example from

the preceding page. In these cases, Bloch devises studies

in various species essentially by embellishing the exer-

cises in note-against-note motion.

The studies in second species counterpoint are con-

eluded with Exercise 24. Beginning with Exercise 25, on

page 5 of the first book, Bloch takes up studies in triple

meter:

Three notes ag. one

In Exercises 25 and 26 the cantus firmus appears in the

upper voice. At the far right-hand side in the second

 251

system Bloch gives an alternate ending for Exercise 26

("ossia") which incorporates an instance of syncopation

(adjusted to the triple meter pattern) in the middle voice.

This alternate version was added to correct an augmented

fourth between the lower voices--~~against g--in the

penultimate measure of the original ending. Bloch had

entered a mark (~) to indicate his doubt about the dis-

sonance introduced on a turning note, as he also did in the

first exercise on the same page. Markings of this kind

appear with relative frequency in the first book, though

not with consistency.

The last study in triple meter, Exercise 31, is

notated on page 6. Exercises 32-37 (pages 7-8) are devoted

to third species counterpoint. For the examples on page 7,

Exercises 32-34, the cantus firmus is in the middle voice.

A mark ( ~) appears above cambiata figures in Exercise 33.

In completing Exercise 34, Bloch noticed parallel fifths

between the outer voices leading to the penultimate meas-

ure, and he places a revised version (stems up) on the

lower staff:

ossia to avoid direct fifth between extreme parts.

On page 9 Bloch begins a series of six studies,

Exercises 38-43, in which the cantus firmus appears in

whole notes against quarter-note motion in one voice and

half-note motion in the other. These are followed on page

 252

11 by exercises in fourth species counterpoint. Exercises

44-45 consist of whole notes in two voices and "Syncopa-

tions (and 2 notes here and there)" in the third voice.

Alongside Exercise 46, on page 11, Bloch notes that the

third voice now involves "only syncopations." He continues

the study of syncopation on page 13. Exercises 52-54

introduce a new texture: the cantus firmus is stated in

whole-notes and the other two voices feature syncopations

and half-note motion, respectively. He remarks:

Sync. and 2 notes (v. diff!)

He further notes of Exercise 53, in the second system:

rather theoretical! and ugly

He uses ditto marks to record the same comment next to the

exercise in the third system, but adds:

(somewhat more possible!)

His final studies in syncopation begin on page 15 with Exer-

cise 59. These examples involve quarter notes in one voice

and syncopations in the other against a whole-note cantus

firmus. They are concluded with Exercise 66.

In Exercises 67-103 Bloch is concerned with fifth

species counterpoint. These studies are introduced on page

18:

FLORID--(in one-two-three parts).

 253

Exercise 67 (page 10) deals with florid writing in the

middle voice against whole notes in the outer parts. In

Exercise 68, he writes an alternate version of the pre-

ceding example ("ossia") with a different florid line in

the middle voice. In turn, Exercise 69 (at the bottom of

the page) is an embellished version of Exercise 68; it con-

sists of florid writing in both the middle and the lower

voices against the cantus firmus in whole notes.

With Exercise 103, Bloch completed his work on this

first cantus firmus. He then turned to additional studies

in florid counterpoint--Exercises 104-12--on a second Do-

rian melody. And, according to annotations in the manu-

script, on February 3 he began with examples in note-

against-note motion on a Phrygian cantus firmus. By Feb-

ruary 14 he had worked his way again through all species,

resulting in 59 exercises which complete the contents of

the first book. It is not clear if Bloch intended to work

out a similar series of studies on cantus firmi in the

other modes; if so, he must have abandoned his plans, for

the second notebook of studies in three-part writing is

devoted solely to excerpts from the polyphonic repertory.

Nevertheless, with the exercises in the first book he

explored virtually every possible combination of rhythmic

motion in a three-part texture, and in this respect the

volume indeed seems to exceed any traditional exposition of

. . 12
specles counterpolnt.
 254

Bloch provided no dates for his work in Book II of

three-part counterpoint; but this second supplementary

manuscript was likely undertaken soon after the compilation

of the first. It contains excerpts from works by a number

of sixteenth-century masters. (A complete listing of the

contents of the second book is given below in Table 2.)

The composer represented most frequently is Lassus; Bloch

copied out passages from the Psalmi Poenitentiales and from

the Cantiones in three voices which were published in the

first volume of the Haberl edition. The excerpts in the

second book appear under the title

III Part Counterpoint Study of Beginnings

 255

TABLE 2

EXCERPTS CONTAINED
IN BOOK II OF THREE-PART COUNTERPOINT

Lass us Psalmi Poenitentiales (p. 5) 1

Lass us Psalmi Poenitentiales (p. 28) 2

Lass us Psalmi Poenitentiales (p. 21) 3

Lass us "Christus resurgens" (Cantiones #27) 4

Lass us "0 Maria, clausus" (Cantiones #30) 5

Lassus "Domine Deus" (Cantiones #33) 6

Lassus "Cantate Domine" (Cantiones #41) 7

Lassus "Ecce, ecce" (Cantiones #47) 8

Lassus "Ego dixi" (Cantiones #50) 9

Lassus "Convertere, Domine" (Cantiones #51) 10

Lassus "Verum caro" (Cantiones #54) 11

/
Josquin Missa l'Homme arme "Kyrie"
"Et in terra" 12
"Et in Spriritum Sanctum". 13
"Agnus Dei" 14

Josquin "Solomon autem ('from a motet')" . 15

Goudimel Missa le Bien que j'ay "Et ressurexit" . 16

"Benedictus" 17

Guerra Missa Puer qui natus est nobis "Benedictus" 18

Victoria Missa Ave Maris Stella "Et ressurexit" . 19

"Benedictus" 20

Palestrina Missa 0 Regem Coeli "Crucifixus" . 21

"Benedictus" . 22
 256 Book. II--p. 11

,__
;_,._
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 257

The excerpt appearing on page 11 is from one of the

three-part Cantiones by Lassus, and Bloch's observations

are concerned with various aspects of the texture.

Initially he notes:

With such narrow range Imitation can may[?] be

rudimentary

and he continues:

Observe free rhythm at start

As his diagram on page 11 shows, this comment refers to the

change in the temporal interval of imitative entrances. He

then turns his attention to the harmonic structure of the

example:

Cadences too (Dorian-Lydian-V of Dorian-Aeolian)

Thus he notes that the excerpt begins in the Dorian mode

and makes reference to cadences on other modal degrees in

measures 5, 8, and 12. A final comment appears at the

bottom of the page:

Observe especially crossings and (5th 6th 7th

measures) mutations of "chords" triads by means of
standing third especially

He was intrigued by the relatively static harmonies in meas-

ures S-6, where the writing consists primarily of the ex-

change between voices of tones representing triads on d and

f.
 258

The second book contains a total of twenty-two

excerpts from the literature. Bloch's object in compiling

the manuscript was to study passages representing the open-

ing of a work, or of a section of a work (as it had been in

a similar collection of material in the manuscript dating

from the early 1920s--Strict III Part-counterpoint). But

there is no further indication of any systematic choice;

rather, Bloch's plan seems to have been to examine a wide

variety of contrapuntal techniques. There are few annota-

tions in the excerpts in the second book. The extended com-

ment on page 11, which has been discussed, is an exception.

Book II of three-part counterpoint forms the con-

clusion of the series of ten notebooks devoted to the study

of contrapuntal technique, in which Bloch gave his major

attention to writing his own exercises. Such an extended

course of study would represent an admirable achievement on

any count. That Bloch decided to undertake this project in

the fifth decade of his life, having gained international

prominence as a composer as well as a teacher of composi-

tion, is even more revealing of the premise of his work:

it was clearly not a question of mastering the "rules" of

counterpoint; rather, the notebooks were compiled in

pursuit of an ever-growing artistic interpretation of the

discipline, and this orientation is the determining aspect

in Bloch's approach to the instruction of counterpoint.

 259

Footnotes
1
Suzanne Bloch, "Ernest Bloch--Student of Choral Music,"
American Choral Review 10 (1968): 52.
2
Roger Sessions, "Ernest Bloch," Modern Music 5 (1927-
28): 11.
3 carl Engel, "Bloch and the Library of Congress," Musical
America 48 (Nov. 10, 1928): 6.
4
The authenticity of this work, BWV 591, is doubted.
5
Nevertheless, we do know something about Bloch's use of
the excerpts in Counterpoint 2 Parts because they are
referred to in a Bloch manuscript housed at the Libra~ of
Congress. This volume, catalogued under the title Theorie
musicale pt. 2 Counterpoint el~mentaire, has a rather com-
plex history. Apparently, it was compiled, as its title
indicates, as a continuation of another manuscript at the
Library of Congress, Theorie musical et Harmonie
elementaire No. 1 (which volume, as has been explained, was
written for the elementary instruction of Suzanne Bloch;
see Chapter II of the present study, footnote 9.) This
assumption is supported by a number of considerations: for
example, Bloch dated the cover of Th~orie musicale Pt. 2
"Dec. 1918"; and commentary in the initial pages is
entirely in French.
It seems Bloch decided at some later point to use
the volume for a more extensive discussion of contrapuntal
procedure. Thus, commentary in its second half is in
English; one finds examples by pupils from the Cleveland
Institute; and Bloch erased the earlier title from the
cover, replacing it with "Counterpoint II Parts." He then
added comments to examples throughout the manuscript book,
referring to the various excerpts from the literature that
he had copied out in Counterpoint 2 Parts.
The contents of Counterpoint II Parts offer a
complete exposition of the basic principles of two-part
writing--including the five species and imitative and can-
onic procedures. Among the students represented by illus-
trative examples are Bernard Rogers, Theodore Chanler, and
Suzanne Bloch. The instruction provided, like that in the
companion volume Theorie musicale et Harmonie elementaire,
is clearly intended for the beginning student, and the fact
that these two manuscripts were separated from the prin-
cipal collection suggests that Bloch may not have regarded
them as essential to the definitive writings he himself
compiled.
6 suzanne Bloch, "Ernest Bloch--Student of Choral Music":
53.
 260

7
Johann Joseph Fux, The Study of Counterpoint, trans.
Alfred Mann (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1971),
pp. vii -xvi.
8 Heinrich Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt (4th ed.; Berlin:
Verlag von Julius Springer, 1901), p. VI. "Hauptsichlich
war es aber das gewaltige Genie und der tiefe kunstlerische
Sinn eines PALESTRINA und ORLANDUS LASSUS, wodurch der
reine A-capella-Gesang zu jener bewunderungswurdigen Klassi-
citat emporgehoben wurde. . in ihren Werken hersscht
ein Ebenmass der Form und vor allem ein Fluss in dem Ge-
sange einer jeden einzelnen Stimme, wie wir ihn von keinem
sp~teren ~bertroffen . . . sehen."
9 I b.1 d ., p. VII . " w1r
. so 11 en . . von 1. h r anne h men, was
wir durch ein Studium unserer heutigen Musik nicht erlernen
konnen."
10 .. . . "
"der selbst schon fur se1ne Ze1t veraltet war. after
the entry "Bellermann" in Riemann's Musiklexicon.
11 Fux, The Study of Counterpoint, p. 49.

12 Fux presents an exerc1se

. com b.1n1ng
. th e var1ous
. .
spec1es
at two points in his writing, and recommends this texture
on account of its beauty. But he leaves it to the student
to make a full examination of these combinations. See Fux,
The Study of Counterpoint, p. 93; 137.