Composer for Attuned Few Savors Bravos of the Many

Composer Aurelio de la Vega said it takes a special music lover to appreciate his sometimes complex style of serious modern music.

But, Thursday night, more of these musical aficionados than could fit in a recital hall at California State University, Northridge showed up to honor the internationally recognized composer on his 60th birthday.

De la Vega, a CSUN music professor, was alternately overwhelmed by and nervous about the event, which featured four of his avant-garde compositions performed by small ensembles of musicians playing flute, piano, violin, guitar, vibraphone and other instruments.

The balding man with wire-rimmed glasses found the birthday celebration gratifying, perhaps comparable to one of his better birthday presents: a box of Cuban cigars. De la Vega was born in Cuba.

The group also presented his wife, Sara, with a bouquet of yellow mums.

“It’s very touching to receive all this love from my colleagues,” De la Vega said before the evening began, as he paced between his office, his car and the back and front entrances of the recital hall.

To the gathering, he later joked, “I knew I had many enemies, but I didn’t know I had so many friends.”

As people were arriving for the concert, De la Vega worried about everything, from whether there were enough programs (there weren’t, and he would need to go home to pick up more during intermission) to whether there would be enough food at the reception following.

About 15 minutes before the program was to begin, it became apparent that one of the musicians had misplaced some sheet music.

There were hurried consultations to find the music, juxtaposed with De la Vega’s affectionate greetings of students and friends, some of whom had to wait until the intermission to be seated because the recital hall was so packed.

In the world of modern music, De la Vega has many admirers. Among his long list of honors, De la Vega is the only composer to have twice received the prestigious Friedheim Award of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in 1978 and 1984. Last year he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and spent six months teaching and doing musical research in Brazil.

William Toutant, a professor of music at Northridge who attended the birthday concert, said that, as a composer, De la Vega is considered an important force in contemporary music, both in the United States and in Latin America. But Toutant concedes that, to the untrained listener, De la Vega’s music “is an acquired taste.”

Serious modern music is to popular music what the work of novelist James Joyce is to supermarket tabloids, said John Blackburn, one of De la Vega’s former students who attended the performance.

“Aurelio de la Vega affirms to his students the nobility of writing music that is purely abstract, that is free of all cliches,” he said.

De la Vega explained that the music he writes can sound to listeners atonal and arrhythmic because there is no single melody or time signature that is repeated, as in popular songs that can be easily identified.

“When the music becomes complex, you end up losing millions of listeners,” De la Vega said of his work. “It’s like talking to people in Chinese.”

A student of De la Vega said the composer teaches his pupils that they must have courage and a “thick skin” if they want to survive as musical artists.

A single-minded commitment to music is the only shield to criticism and other obstacles, De la Vega said. His own parents were horrified to learn that De la Vega had decided to become a composer, and required him to earn a law degree in Cuba so that he would not starve, he said.

“I remember handing my diploma to my father and saying, ‘Here is your piece of paper,’ ” De la Vega said. “I wasn’t at all interested in the law.”

He has spent 26 years on the music faculty at Northridge after emigrating from Cuba in 1959. Teaching has provided De la Vega the means to support his work as a composer, he said.

In Europe and in Latin America, modern composers can devote all their time to their work, supported by government grants and subsidies, he said. In the United States, the choice is either to teach or to write commercial music, he said.

“Teaching is not perfect, but it is the best alternative,” De la Vega said.

With his retirement from the university, planned for 1987, De la Vega said he will have more time to compose.

“It is a very powerful art,” De la Vega said of music. “A painting you see, but music hits you in the body, the face, the hands, the ears, everything.”