Ernest Bloch recalled:
For years I had a number of sketches for the Book of Ecclesiastes
which I had wanted to set to music, but the French language
was not adaptable to my rhythmic patterns. Nor was German or English,
and I hadn't a good enough command of Hebrew. Thus the sketches accumulated
and ... lay dormant.
Eventually the sketches were turned into the Schelomo: Hebraic Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra. The Library recently
acquired the complete autograph score of the work, on whose title page
is: "Schelomo Rhapsodie hébraïque pour Violincelle Solo
et Grand Orchestre par Ernest Bloch Partition ... Pour Alexandre et
Catherine Barjansky." At the end of the sixtythree-page manuscript,
with erasures, corrections, and alterations in pencil and blue, black,
and brown crayon, the composer inscribed: "Ernest Bloch Janvier-Febrier
1916 Geneve."
Bloch was thirty-six years old when he completed his
masterpiece in his native city. Later his work took him to the United
States, to France, and back to America. A good portion of his oeuvre
was on Jewish themes, among them Trois Poemes Juifs (1913),
the Israel Symphony (1916), and Avodath Hakodesh ("Sacred
Service") (1933).
Bloch recalled how he turned sketches which lay dormant
into the Schelomo:
One day I met the cellist Alexander Barjansky and his
wife.... I played my manuscript scores for them, Hebrew Poems, Israel and the Psalms, all of them unpublished and about which nobody cared.
The Barjanskys were profoundly moved ... Finally in my terrible loneliness,
I had found true and warm friends. My hopes were reborn, and also the
desire to write a work for this marvellous cellist. Why shouldn't I
use for my Ecclesiastes-instead of a singer limited in range, a voice
vaster and deeper than any spoken language-his cello? ... The Ecclesiastes
was completed in a few weeks, and since legends attribute this book
to King Solomon, I named it Schelomo.