Robert Bloom: The Story of a Working Musician (review)

This compendium of oboist Robert Bloom's life and pedagogy provides an interesting glimpse into American music-making in the twentieth century as it tells the story of Bloom's career as a noted performer, creative composer, and teacher who influenced scores of oboists. Aptly titled, the book illustrates the experience of a "working musician," providing insight into what it was like to work with renowned conductors and how a musician could earn a living as a freelance player in 1940s and 1950s New York. Bloom belonged to the first generation of American-trained oboists who established a precedent in tone and expression that has shaped the sound of American wind players and orchestras. This book describes for general readers the larger impact of Bloom's characteristic "singing" style while providing a more specific audience of oboists with the details behind Bloom's sound. As a music historian, I found this work to provide a fascinating window into the development of American musical institutions including symphony orchestras and music schools, but also into the development of American listening habits. As an oboist who can trace her own pedagogical lineage back to Bloom via two generations of his students, I discovered how Bloom's legacy informs both my sound and musical ideas, and I will use this volume as a practical source of specifics for playing, teaching, and reed-making. Music libraries will want to consider adding this book to their collection because of its usefulness for both general audiences and oboists, but they may also find it a useful book for teaching research methods. Indeed, libraries without access to a large primary document collection might find this book helpful for introducing students to what they may encounter doing historical research in music.

Perhaps best described as a Bloom "archive," this work tells Bloom's story through a variety of formats: published profiles, interviews, and reviews of concerts and recordings; Bloom's unpublished book of oboe pedagogy, his published articles, unpublished lectures, notes on teaching, and thoughts on performance practice; an extensive discography illustrating the length and breadth of Bloom's career; and excerpts from Sara Lambert Bloom's book-in-progress on the history of the Bach Aria Group. Reproductions of original photographs, telegrams, concert programs, employment contracts, letters, notes, and newspaper clippings bring the book (and its subject) to life and provide a rich source of primary documentation for Bloom's career. In addition, we also encounter him beyond the music: we hear stories and see photos of his woodworking hobby and of the Maine island retreat where he spent many summers with his family. All of this diverse material has been organized, framed, and sometimes explained by Bloom's wife and former pupil, Sara Lambert Bloom. (The section about Sara Bloom's life beginning on p. 455 is also its own interesting story and well worth reading.) Since her retirement from teaching oboe at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music, Sara Bloom has helped preserve and share her late husband's musical legacy via The Robert Bloom Collection, a forty-two volume set of scores and parts (including some original compositions by Bloom as well as his edited versions of key works in the oboe repertoire) and the seven-CD anthology The Art of Robert Bloom, the former reviewed by oboist Daniel Stolper for this journal in September 2001.

The book is comprised of thirteen chapters, two of which can be found on the accompanying CD-ROM, a choice that seems to have been made to help keep the size of the volume more manageable and the price accessible. Bound in the same burgundy covers as the Collection and CD anthology, the book represents the final volume in Sara Bloom's substantial documentation of her husband's legacy. The book itself is large at 9 x12 inches and is nicely produced (with the exception of a distracting...