Dr. HUGO NORDEN

                                                          

Prof Norden: photo taken in April 1986
by Rav Avraham at Boston College campus

          
Now that I had found my jazz teacher, I needed to find a classical theory teacher (harmony, counterpoint, and so on).  I started browsing through books on music theory, and soon felt the same dissatisfaction I had with my music school tutor.  Again the focus was on what you couldn’t, shouldn’t, don’t dream of doing, laid out in the form of proscriptive rules.    One common rule forbade writing more than two consecutive thirds in the same voices in a row.  (For example, it was forbidden to write c/e - b/d - a/c, where the first note of each third was always in the Soprano voice, and the second always in the Alto. This was forbidden because it would destroy the feeling of two independent voices: the parallel thirds would sound like one voice.
            But suppose you WANTED a break from sound of independent voices?  Maybe even a form where chains of parallel intervals alternated with sections of independent voices moving in counterpoint?  Where alternation of texture was part of the design of the composition? And I was sure I had heard music like this both from jazz and classical masters.
            Then one day I noticed in the music school bookstore a whole section of books by Dr.  Norden. Opening his textbook “Fundamental Harmony”, I noticed this phrase in the Preface:
                        “…the present volume is intended more to serve as a sort of ‘launching pad’ whereby the young       composer will give wings to his musical ideas rather than to provide him with a catechism of outdated and all too often inhibiting theories.”
            And also this, earlier in the Preface:  
                     “… Harmony in the traditional sense becomes self-defeating. This is so because no matter how many rules and specific exceptions with supporting illustrations are provided, one need not look far in the music of the great masters to encounter ingenious and artistically valid harmonizations that defy these long honored teachings.” 
            The bookstore clerk told me that Dr. Norden lived near Boston and taught in a conservatory here, so I mustered my courage and ‘cold called’ him at his office.  He responded politely, then asked why I felt the need to study with him in particular.   I replied quoting the ‘launching pad’ paragraph and Dr. Norden immediately exclaimed “Yes! You must study with me.”  And he then set up lessons, and told me to come to his private house for them rather than to his conservatory office.
            Dr. Norden’s house was way out in the suburbs of the suburbs of Boston – around an hour trip involving two buses and a subway.   But it was well worth it!   Dr. Norden was one of those teachers who just ignore the clock – lessons might be only an hour, but more often would run to two or even three hours!  For a break his wife – who appeared as a classic North European hausfrau – would bring in a tea set: tea or coffee, sweet rolls, toast and jam, with enough butter to satisfy Julia Child. 
            And when winter rolled in, Dr. Norden would actually drive over from his office to my Beacon Hill slum apartment and give me a ride all the way to his house.   And the finishing touch? If there was rain or snow, he would bring an umbrella and hold it over my head until I got in his car, while his head was getting soaked.
            Dr. Norden, it turned out, was a Christian – very much a practicing one.  He never tried to hide his good deeds or boast about them, just treated them as everyday things that anyone would do.   For example, in his brief philosophical treatise “Form: the Silent Language”, when discussing how someone should plan the division of his day, Norden says that the average person has to apportion his day so that there is a time for sleep, a time for work, a time for eating, and a time for giving charity.   Only Dr. Norden would think that the average person gives charity on a daily basis!  It is said that everyone sees the world as a reflection of themselves:  so a thief sees a world full of thieves, a murderer sees a world of violence, a liar sees a world of dishonesty – and Dr. Norden saw a world full of people giving charity every day! What a mensch!
            Sometimes Dr. Norden would take a little break from his ruthlessly mathematical analysis of Bach chorales and tell a story about his past – he had played piano for the 1940s jazz singer Blossom Dearie-,  or make some generalizations about music    Two I remember; “the best melody wins”, and “music composition is really drawing erotic pictures, because music structures are based on curves. “
.   Once, to illustrate a point, he picked up his violin and played a straightforward, simple “do-re-mi” scale.  He put so much power and passion into each note, and so much drama in how one note went to the next, that I was just blown away!  There have been only 3 times in my life when a soloist has taken my breath away like that:  along with Dr. Norden’s ‘do re mi’, when Hank Williams’ sister Irene sang an unaccompanied blues she had written, “Red Shoes”; and when saxophonist Arnie Cheatham managed to play a five minute solo staying within the range of just one octave and never repeating himself.
            And he won my total allegiance when I asked him who was the best contrapuntist  in today’s  music, he instantly and emphatically reppicturepicturepicturelied “Duke Ellington!”  From that point on Dr. Norden could do no wrong in my eyes. 
            Dr. Norden’s basic concept was that music was built on ratios and all music that was any good had an underlying mathematical structure.    In particular, Dr. Norden thought that the Fibonacci ratio system was the most important ratio pattern in music.  (The Fibonacci ratio is made by adding the previous number to the number you are on:  thus, start with 1, add 1 you get 2; then add the 2 and its preceding 1 to get 3; then add 3 and the preceding 2 to get 5; 5 and the preceding 3 to get 8; 8 and the preceding 5 to get 13; etc.  This all could be expressed in this (formula?): 1:1:2:3:5:8:13:21 etc.)
            One of Dr. Norden’s assignments was to see how many Fibonacci ratios the student could find in nature. Right away look at our hands and feet; 3 long digits, 2 short digits. Then our face: 2 eyes, 1 nose; 2 ears, 1 mouth.  The formula for a molecule of water; H20.   I would watch birds sitting on a telephone wire, and it seemed that they also followed the Fibonacci ratio: 2 birds on one side, 3 on the other.
            I didn’t have enough of a mathematical brain to find examples of the higher orders of the Fibonacci system:  the highest I went was 8:13:21 – but someone with a more mathematical brain could go up to the higher numbers.  However, the lower part of the Fibonacci ratio system is easy to grasp; you just start counting fingers and toes (3 longer, 2 shorter), 2 eyes I nose, and so on).  I enthusiastically looked for Fibonacci ratios everywhere, from birds to car parking patterns to anything I could see.
            And once I started getting more students, I made teaching it a core part of my lessons, from Boston to Los Angeles (I stopped teaching  them in Seattle, because all the students there wanted was hands-on practicing on the keyboard; play, play, play and practice to get better).   A few students had some real world success with using the Fibonacci’s.  One young woman in Los Angeles was a graphic designer of a greeting card/calendar company.  She hadn’t had much luck in getting her design ideas acce   pted by the head of the company, until she used a simple application of Fibonacci:  there was a group of people at a Thanksgiving or Christmas gathering, and she arranged them so that there were 2 on one side of the room, 3 on the other side, and a single person – the host – standing in the middle.  Her idea was immediately accepted, the card sold very well, and she got a promotion and a raise.   She sent me a card about it giving all thanks to Fibonacci.
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            Dr. Norden’s lessons consisted largely of analyzing Bach chorales and other Baroque compositions, demonstrating the system of Fibonacci ratios that could be found in them.  In his assignments the student was supposed to compose a piece - a two-part invention, a fugue, a ballad – using Fibonacci ratios and showing Dr. Norden where they were in the piece.  
            Here is an example of his teaching, as far as I can make it out (this notebook is 48 years old, and spent 11 years in my Pilipino music room, a converted outdoor veranda which I discovered to my horror was home to a multitude of creatures that liked to eat or use paper:  ants, termites, spiders, rats, cockroaches, and two species of bookworm: one the traditional thin wire type, the other an unusually fat and slimy worm!  So with the passing of time and the numerous attacks by various hungry species,  only around a third of my Norden and Banacos notebooks have survived, and with minimal legibility,.)
            Anyway, here are two musical examples of Fibonacci ratios.  A simple one that I made up just now, and one surviving example by Dr. Norden, his own illustration of Baroque use of the Fibonacci ratio, the other his critique of homework I did for him.
            Example 1:  make the motif of a rock instrumental piece using a sequence of three different note patterns:  first, a ‘call’ in which a harmonic interval of two notes a second apart is repeated twice; then in the middle 3 sets of parallel 3rds; then close with two notes but now a fifth apart, repeated 5 times for the response (combining the African call-and-response concept with a basic Fibonacci 2-3-5 pattern).  
             Example:             
                                 A) c and d; c and d (2 seconds) 
                               B):  a-c + b-d + c-e   (3 thirds)
                                 C):  f and c; f and c; f and c; f and c; f and c;  (5 5ths)
 It could be realized as a rock fanfare, played on 2 electric guitars in unison, with the C (response) phrase dramatically louder than the first two phrases. 
            Example 2: Dr. Norden’s example (his handwriting was much more legible back in 1974 when this was written: also, this is what time and bookworms have left me)
            His comments: 
1) the first three measures all start with a Db chord
       2) each of the first three measures start with two 3^rd intervals between the two voices 

                  of the bass clef ( = 3 plus 2):
               3)  In the first measure, the bass line is a descending 3d, in the second measure an
                  ascending 3^rd, and in the third measure a descending 3 third again (a 3-2-3 pattern)                                               
          4) and the phrase ends with a 3^rd  in the upper clef, but a 5^th now in the bass clef
             (In the first measure, there is a 4^th and 5^th in the upper clef, and 3rds in the lower clef)           

 

 

 

 

 

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  I studied with Dr. Norden for several years; then he went to Europe for a summer, being invited to conduct some of his compositions as played by a Berlin orchestra (what an honor!  How often have German classical groups presented compostions of a relatively unknown music professor!  And I was so proud that it was an ELLINGTON fan being so honored).
             Unfortunately, on the way home he stopped in Ireland, contacted a bad case of food poisoning there, and after some weeks in hospital he returned to Boston blind in one eye and health shaken.  However, there was some good news for Dr. Norden as on his return he was appointed the Chair of the Composition Department of a major Boston university.
            By this time I had moved to Los Angeles, so my only further contact was mailing Dr. Norden a couple of compositions – which he was very pleased with, both classical homework and my fusion jazz ‘Wah-Wah-Ko’. But then on the same 1980s trip to Boston where I met my old student Ginny, I met Dr. Norden for lunch at a cafeteria.  When I told him that I had changed my major from Composition to Music History (Musicology) he exploded in anger!  He shouted something like “What! A student I taught all my secrets to is no longer a musician, real but one of those people (he now sneered) who writes gossip about real musicians.”  And he ordered me out of the restaurant.  I wish I had first told him the ‘why’ for my change: how the Music Department race-war forced this change of study, how it was no longer possible to be just a simple composer and instrument teacher in community colleges or high school, and the other trials and tribulations with which California politics and college racial politics burdened and crippled my life (see Chapter X, “The Halls and Horrors of Academia”).   (And actually, all of these forced moves wound up giving me the reputation to get hundreds of private students and a fourteen year church job in Seattle, both of which generated the income base for the Social Security pension on which I now live.)

            I am sure if Dr. Norden had known all the circumstances he would have forgiven me – it was not in his nature to hold a grudge, and opposed to his deeply held Christian beliefs to refuse to make peace.  Dr. Norden passed away in 1986, but not before the Lord gave him a parting gift which must have delighted him.   His very last student was a Hasidic Rabbi from Brazil, a man just as charitable and dedicated as Dr. Norden was.   Dr. Norden was old and sick then, just a few months away from his death.  But Rabbi Avraham was a perfect musical and spiritual companion and disciple of Dr, Norden,  His last lesson was literally in the hospital at Dr. Norden’s bedside – truly a gift from the Lord for this wise, charitable and modest man. 
 (Text and photo taken with permission from Rav Avraham’s SoundCloud site: link below)
https://soundcloud.com/achacham/to-dr-hugo-norden-my-teacher  - the Soundcloud copy of Rav Avraham’s 4-Part Fugue in F, “To Dr. Hugo Norden my Teacher”
A 4-Part Fugue in F Major. Work composed while I was the last private student of Dr. Hugo Norden. Dr. Norden was the most renowned composition teacher in the United States, particulary in the areas of counterpoint and J. S. Bach studies and complex musical structures. I studied under his supervision until the summer of 1986. He (and Dr. William Maloof, the chair of composition department at Berklee College of Music) wrote my recommendations letters to the Florida State University for my Music Composition Master course. Dr. Norden was a true inspiration, and we became quite close, for he used to write me from his hospital bed, making sure I studied hard, while he always, to the last month of his life, tried his absolute best to see me and teach. This dedication became ingrained in my own teachings as an orthodox rabbi with many students and works. He was a righteous man.