Schelomo: Hebrew Rhapsody for Cello and Large Orchestra

Quick Facts

• Written in 1916
• Premiered in 1917 at Carnegie Hall with Hans Kindler on cello and Artur Bodanzky conducting
• Organization – one movement in three large sections
• Dedicated to Alexandre and Catherine Barjansky – Alexandre was a Russian cellist and Catherine, his wife, was a Ukrainian sculptor.¹
  • Bloch met the couple in 1915 and began writing a “poem” for cello immediately after hearing Alexandre play. Catherine was so moved by Bloch’s Jewish-inspired music that she gifted him a wax sculpture of King Solomon… and the rest is history 😉²

About the Piece

• The piece was inspired by the book of Ecclesiastes and the story of King Solomon (“Schelomo” is the Hebrew name for King Solomon). In Bloch’s score, Solomon’s voice is represented by the solo cello.
• In the music, Bloch doesn’t draw on traditional Jewish melodies or other ethnomusicological sources but rather from his own inner self-awareness and Jewish identify.
• Regarding the piece, Bloch wrote:

“It is the Jewish soul that interests me, the complex, glowing, agitated soul, that I feel vibrating throughout the Bible; the freshness and naiveté of the Patriarchs; the violence that is evident in the prophetic books; the Jew’s savage love of justice; the despair of the preacher in Jerusalem; the sensuality of the Song of Songs. All this is in us; all this is in me, and it is the better part of me. It is all this that I endeavor to hear in myself and to transcribe in my music; the venerable emotion of the race that slumbers way down in our soul.”³

• Schelomo represents the final work in Bloch’s “Jewish Cycle,” – “a group of works in which he tried to express what in interviews he described as ‘the soul of the Jewish people.'” Other works include Three Jewish Poems and the Israel Symphony.⁴

1. “Schelomo, B.39 (Bloch, Ernest),” IMSLP, accessed May 8, 2023, https://imslp.org/wiki/Schelomo,B.39(Bloch,_Ernest).
2. Klára Móricz, “Schelomo: Rhapsodie hébraïque, for cello and orchestra,” Boston Symphony Orchestra, accessed May 8, 2023, https://www.bso.org/works/schelomo-rhapsody-hebraique-for-cello-and-orchestra.
3. Nicolas Slonimsky, “Schelomo,” L. A. Phil, accessed May 8, 2023, https://www.laphil.com/musicdb/pieces/634/schelomo.
4. Klára Móricz, “Schelomo: Rhapsodie hébraïque, for cello and orchestra,” Boston Symphony Orchestra.