Norman Cazden

Norman Cazden (born September 23, 1914 in New York City , † August 18, 1980 in Bangor , Maine ) was an American composer .

The son of Russian immigrants studied at the Juilliard School of Music and City College and from 1944 at Harvard University with Aaron Copland and Walter Piston . As a student at the Juilliard School, he composed for the city's dance companies and wrote his first symphony . He performed as a concert pianist and was a piano teacher at the Juilliard School from 1934 to 1949. From 1941 he worked at Camp Woodland in the Catskill Mountains , where he was the musical director of Herbert Haufrecht from 1945 to 1960.

After graduating, he taught at the Peabody Conservatory , the University of Michigan and, since 1950, at the University of Illinois at Springfield . Due to investigations by the Committee for Un-American Activities , he lost this position in 1953 and was not given an academic position for the next 16 years. During this time he gave private piano lessons and worked on research on folk music. Since 1969 he has taught at the University of Maine .

Cazden composed an operetta , incidental music, two symphonies, two chamber concerts, a wind suite , a suite for oboe and strings, a wind and two string quintets, a string quartet, other chamber music works as well as sonatas and pieces for piano. He has also edited and edited a number of folk song collections: Folk Songs of the Catskills , Dances from Woodland , The Abelard Folksong Book , Three Catskill Ballads for Orchestra , A Book of Nonsense Songs , American Folk Songs for Children and A Catskill Songbook .