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Suzanne Bloch (August 9, 1907 – January 29, 2002)[1] was a Swiss-American musician and an influential pioneer of theearly music revival during the 20th century.[2][3]
Suzanne Bloch was born inGeneva in 1907 into the family of composerErnest Bloch. The family moved to New York in 1916 when Ernst Bloch took on teaching and conducting responsibilities there. She went to Paris to study music withNadia Boulanger in 1925, and decided to become alute player after hearing an early-music concert. She went on to study music in Paris and Berlin, and she metArnold Dolmetsch in England in 1933. Dolmetsch sold her a lute from 1600 that he had restored himself. In 1935 she performed at the Dolmetsch Early Music Festival inHaslemere, and soon afterward returned to New York, where she began her concert career.
Her career as a lutenist was cut short in the 1950s byrepetitive stress syndrome brought on by the modern heavily builtHermann Hauser lutes that she played, but her condition allowed her to continue to play early keyboards and sing. She was one of the founding members of theLute Society of America in the 1970s. She died inNew York in 2002.
After an earlier marriage ended in divorce, Suzanne Bloch married mathematicianPaul Althaus Smith in 1935. They had two sons, one of whom hadautism. She raised their autistic son alone, and was able to help him gain nearly total social functionality through self-designed art therapy. He eventually became an independent artist-painter.
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