Cazden, Norman

Cazden, Norman, American pianist, musicologist, and composer; b. N.Y., Sept. 23, 1914; d. Bangor, Maine, Aug. 18, 1980. He studied piano with Ernest Hutcheson and composition with Bernard Wagenaar at the Juilliard Graduate School (teacher’s diploma, 1932); then attended City Coll. in N.Y. (B.S., 1943); he later studied composition with Piston and Copland and took courses in musicology at Harvard Univ. (Ph.D., 1948, with the diss. Musical Consonance and Dissonance). From 1926 he was active as a pianist. He taught at the Univ. of Maine in Orono (1969–80). He wrote A Book of Nonsense Songs (N.Y., 1961), and, with H. Haufrecht and N. Studer, Folk Songs of the Catskills (Albany, 1982). His compositions reflect some interesting technical ideas in a general format of acceptable modernity.

Works

DRAMATIC: The Lonely Ones, ballet (1944); Dingle Hill, dramatic cantata (1958); incidental music to The Merry Wives of Windsor (1962) and The Tempest (1963). orch.:6 Definitions (1930–39); Preamble (1938); On the Death of a Spanish Child (1939); 3 Dances (1940); Stony Hollow (1944); Sym. (1948); 3 Ballads (1949); Songs from the Catskills for Band (1950); Woodland Valley Sketches (1960); Adventure (1963); Chamber Concerto for Clarinet and Strings (1965); Viola Concerto (1972). chamber: String Quartet (1936); Concerto for 10 Instruments (1937); 3 chamber sonatas for Clarinet and Viola (1938); Quartet for Clarinet and String Trio (1939); String Quintet (1941); Horn Sonata (1941); Flute Sonata (1941); Suite for Violin and Piano (1943); Suite for 2 Trumpets, Horn, Baritone Horn, Trombone, and Tuba (1954); Quintet for Oboe and String Quartet (1960); 2 Elizabethan Suites for 2 Trumpets, Horn, Trombone, and Tuba (1964) and for String Quartet (1965); Wind Quintet (1966); Piano Trio (1969); Bassoon Sonata (1971); English Horn Sonata (1974); Tuba Sonata (1974). other: Choral works and folk-music arrangements.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire