On today’s date in 1959, the Swiss-born American composer Ernest Bloch died in Portland, Oregon, about a week short of his 79th birthday.

Bloch first came to America in 1916, when he was 36 years old. His music made an immediate impression, and a year later an all-Bloch orchestral concert in New York presented the premiere performance of his most famous work, a rhapsody for cello and orchestra entitled “Schelomo,” after the Hebrew name for King Solomon.

The success of that concert led to a contract with the publisher G. Schirmer, who published Bloch’s compositions with what was to become a trademark logo—the six-pointed Star of David with the initials E.B. in the center, an imprimatur that firmly established for Bloch a Jewish identity in the public mind.

In 1924, Bloch became a naturalized American citizen, and taught in Cleveland and San Francisco. In 1928, he composed this music: an orchestral piece entitled “America,” which was selected as the winner of a Musical America competition for the best symphonic work glorifying American ideals.

In the 1930s, Bloch returned to Switzerland for a time, but, with the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany and Italy, Bloch returned to America, and eventually settled in Agate Beach, Oregon. He lived in semi-retirement, continued to compose, and to pursue his lifelong hobbies of photography and mushroom collecting, plus a new Oregon coast hobby: collecting and polishing agates.