Jerry Bock, Tony-Winning Composer of Fiddler on the Roof, Dies at Age 81

Jerry Bock, the Tony-winning Composer of Fiddler on the Roof, Fiorello!, She Loves Me and other musicals, passed away on November 2, nine days after the death of Fiddler librettist Joseph Stein. Bock was 81 years old had attended Stein’s memorial service a week before his own death.

Born on November 23, 1928, in New Haven, Connecticut, and raised in Queens, Jerrold Lewis Bock wrote his first musical while attending the University of Wisconsin, then spent three summers at the Tamiment Playhouse in the Poconos. He made his Broadway debut in 1956 with the score of Mr. Wonderful, starring Sammy Davis Jr. and featuring a young Chita Rivera.

After forming a partnership with lyricist Sheldon Harnick on the unsuccessful musical The Body Beautiful in 1958, Bock found enormous success with the team’s 1959 musical biography of New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Fiorello!, winner of both the Best Musical Tony and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Bock’s collaborations with Harnick include Tenderloin (1960), Man in the Moon (1963), the now-beloved She Loves Me (1963), The Apple Tree (1966, which received a Best Composer and Lyricist Tony nomination and featured a book by Bock) and The Rothschilds (1970, which received a Best Score Tony nomination).

Bock and Harnick achieved their greatest popular success with Fiddler on the Roof, the musical story of the baker Tevye (Zero Mostel) and his family in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Featuring a book by the late Joe Stein, Fiddler opened on September 22, 1964, and ran until July 2, 1972. The show was revived on Broadway in 1976 (again starring Mostel), 1981 (Herschel Bernardi), 1990 (Topol) and 2004 (Alfred Molina). Fiddler includes now-classic tunes by Bock including “Sunrise Sunset” (featured in Sex and the City 2), “If I Were a Rich Man,” “Tradition” and “Matchmaker, Matchmaker.”

Beloved by Broadway performers, Bock’s songs were featured in Broadway solo shows starring Barbara Cook (the original star of She Loves Me) and Chita Rivera. He was inducted into both the Theater Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. No information on the cause of death or survivors was immediately available.