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Robert Bloom

American oboist, composer, arranger, and teacher

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ11350591
Source-derived summary

Robert Bloom (May 3, 1908 – February 13, 1994) was an oboist with an orchestral and solo career, a composer and arranger contributing to the oboe repertory, and a teacher of several successful oboists. Bloom is considered seminal in the development of an American school of oboe playing.

At the Curtis Institute of Music Bloom was a pupil of Marcel Tabuteau for three years. In the 1930s he played English horn in the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski and first oboe in the Rochester Philharmonic under José Iturbi. He was the principal oboe in Arturo Toscanini's NBC Symphony Orchestra from 1937 to 1943. Bloom plays on recordings by the Columbia Symphony and the RCA Symphony.

In 1946 Bloom was one of the founding members of the Bach Aria Group, with which he played until 1980. Recordings by the Bach Aria Group featuring Bloom started appearing from the late 1940s. Bloom transcribed and elaborated 18th-century masterworks for the oboe. His own compositions include a Sonatina for oboe and piano.

Editorial summary

“Robert Bloom” enters the record as american oboist, composer, arranger, and teacher. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Robert, Bloom and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1908, 1994, 1937, 1943—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Robert, Bloom and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Robert Bloom” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Robert, Bloom and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11350591. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1994, 1937 and 1943.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Robert Bloom”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Robert Bloom primary sources, Robert Bloom archive and Robert research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Robert Bloom”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Robert Bloom” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.