Retirements Rob CSUN Music School : Three of four composition professors are leaving. With budget cuts looming, it’s uncertain whether they will be replaced.

When Cal State Northridge presents an evening of compositions by three of its best-known music professors Monday, the performances will mark the end of the Annual May Music Festival and the end of an era.

The concert will serve as a farewell to Aurelio de la Vega, Frank Campo and Beverly Grigsby, who have taught in the music school for a total of 84 years. All three brought international reputations as composers to the classroom. Now they have retired, leaving CSUN’s music program with an uncertain future.

“They are, in many ways, the parents of the composition department,” said Jerry Luedders, chairman of the music school. “This is a tremendous loss.”

That loss is made worse by statewide budget cuts. Though only one composition professor remains, it is unclear whether the vacated positions will be filled.

“What should happen at universities is that the senior faculty leaves and the Young Turks come in,” said Campo, head of the department since 1967. “They may not have the reputations of the older faculty, but they come in full of energy and ideas and redo everything and that’s healthy.

“We’ll see what happens at Northridge,” he said.

For the time being, the music school must improvise. Class sizes have been increased to accommodate for the cutbacks. The retiring professors--who officially left in August--taught part-time during this school year. Several other part-time professors have taken on additional courses.

And an old colleague has come to the rescue. William Toutant, a music theorist who left the music school five years ago to become the School of Arts’ associate dean, is teaching a class at night without pay.

“The students need the course to graduate,” Toutant said. “So you do what you have to do.”

But a piecemeal faculty does not serve a music department as adequately as it might an engineering or math department, Grigsby said. Arts curricula rely not only on principles and dogma, but also on an aesthetic that must be developed--perhaps over years--by the same core of professors.

So Monday night’s tribute may strike a worrisome note. It will feature testimonial speeches and musical works performed by an ensemble of faculty members and professional musicians. Daniel Kessner, the remaining composition professor and a noted composer, will conduct.

It is no coincidence that de la Vega, Campo and Grigsby departed at the same time. They took advantage of a retirement program offered by the university system.

“I’ve always hoped that I’d have time to sit back and do nothing but compose and here was an opportunity to do just that,” Campo said.

At CSUN, each of the professors brought a distinct aspect to the curriculum. The Cuban-born de la Vega, 68, composes music “of remarkably subtle coloristic effects and characteristically indefinite design,” Times reviewer Donna Perlmutter wrote. He twice won the prestigious Friedheim Award of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and, in 1985, received a Fulbright scholarship to teach and research in Brazil.

Campo, 66, tended to write for chamber music combinations that were underutilized by other composers, Luedders said. Times music critic Martin Bernheimer described the composer’s Serenade, Opus 68, as “neat, gentle and well-crafted.”

Grigsby, 65, studied with Ernst Krenek and organized the International Congress on Women in Music. Her works included computer music and an opera, “The Mask of Eleanor,” which premiered in 1987.

“I think the students got a lot out of being with three different personalities,” Grigsby said. “We were all strong-willed characters. There were moments when we could have torn each other into pieces. There were also a lot of laughs.”

Now CSUN must find composers to replace them in the classroom and the money to pay their salaries.

“There is both challenge and opportunity,” Luedders said. “I think of a composer like Stravinsky who wrote some of his greatest work during economic hardship during the First World War. Hardship does cause us to sharpen our focus.”

WHERE AND WHEN

What: Concert for retiring professors.

Location: CSUN Campus Theater, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge.

When: 8 p.m.

Price: $12 for adults, $10 for faculty, staff and seniors, $8 for students.

Call: (818) 885-3093.