Peter Bloom

Who is Peter Bloom?

Peter Bloom is a professor of musicology at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. He obtained his BA in music at Swarthmore College, his Ph.D. in musicology at the University of Pennsylvania, and studied the oboe at the Curtis Institute of Music.

Professor Bloom has taught at Smith College since 1970. He specializes in European romantic composers of the 19th century and has published on Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner, and Claude Debussy, but he is best known for his books, editions, and essays on the life and work of Hector Berlioz.

In 2003 he was a member of the Comité international Hector Berlioz that among other things attempted to have Berlioz’s remains transferred from the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris to the Pantheon, to join other prominent heroes and intellectuals of French history. However, then-President of France Jacques Chirac, after initially agreeing to the transfer, changed his mind.

In March 2012, Bloom was an adviser to "Debussy's Paris: Art, Music, & Sounds of the City," an aural and visual art exhibit at the Smith College Museum of Art on composer Claude Debussy and Paris during the Belle Epoque.