Discipline: Music Composition

Norman Cazden

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: NEW YORK and MAINE
MacDowell Fellowships: 1964, 1966, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975
More: www.normancazden.com
Norman Cazden (1914–1980) was an American composer. Born to Yiddish-speaking immigrant parents in the Bronx, NY, he began his study of the piano at a young age and gave a recital in Town Hall, New York City, when he was only 12 years old. Cazden attended the Juilliard School of Music, where he studied piano with Arthur Newstead and Ernest Hutcheson, and studied composition, musical theory, and history with Leopold Mannes, Charles Seeger, and Bernard Wagenaar. His best friend at Julliard, Herbert Haufrecht, would remain a close collaborator for life. Cazden also attended the School of Social Sciences at the City College of New York and went on to do graduate work at Harvard University under Walter Piston and Aaron Copland. Cazden was the music director of Camp Woodland in the Catskills Mountains from 1954–1960, where he collected traditional music. An academic, he taught at Juilliard School of Music, Vassar College, Peabody Conservatory, and University of Michigan. FBI investigations during the McCarthy era ended his position at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Cazden taught private lessons and conducted research until being offered a position at the University of Maine, Orono, where he taught from 1969 until his death.

Studios

Sprague-Smith

Norman Cazden worked in the Sprague-Smith studio.

In January of 1976, the original Sprague-Smith Studio — built in 1915–1916 and funded by music students of Mrs. Charles Sprague-Smith of the Veltin School — was destroyed by fire. Redesigned by William Gnade, Sr., a Peterborough builder, the fieldstone structure was rebuilt the same year from the foundation up, reusing the original fieldstone. A few…

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