Bloch was born in Geneva to Jewish parents and began playing the violin at age 9. He began composing soon after. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. He then travelled around Europe, moving to Germany (where he studied composition from 1900–1901 with Iwan Knorr at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt), on to Paris in 1903 and back to Geneva before settling in the United States in 1916, taking American citizenship in 1924. He held several teaching appointments in the U.S., with George Antheil, Frederick Jacobi, Quincy Porter, Bernard Rogers, and Roger Sessions among his pupils. See: List of music students by teacher: A to B#Ernest Bloch. In 1917 Bloch became the first teacher of composition at Mannes College The New School for Music, a post he held for three years. In December 1920 he was appointed the first Musical Director of the newly formed Cleveland Institute of Music, a post he held until 1925. Following this he was director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Musicuntil 1930.
In 1941, Bloch moved to the small coastal community of Agate Beach, Oregon and lived there the rest of his life. He taught and lectured at the University of California, Berkeley until 1952. He died in 1959 in Portland, Oregon, of cancer at the age of 78. His body was cremated and his ashes were scattered near his home in Agate Beach.
The Bloch Memorial has been moved from near his house in Agate Beach to a more prominent location at the Newport Performing Arts Center in Newport, Oregon.

Arthur Honegger was part of the Group des Six: an informal group of composer founded by Jean Cocteau, even though the individual members (of which Honegger, Milhaud and Poulenc were the most important) had little in common with each other. One of Honegger's best known works is modern-mechanic Pacific 231, in which the dynamics of an accelerating locomotive are depicted. A more personally engaged work is his Third Symphony, which bears the nickname Liturgique. With this work, Honegger wished to show his aversion against the modern, mechanised world. One of his most impressive works, however, is his Une Cantate de Noël, in which a potpourri of christmas carols breaks through the darkness.