Former UCHS Orchestra Teacher; A Founder of the University City Symphony Orchestra Has Died

Norman Goldberg, former owner of Baton Music in University and MMB Music, one-time orchestra teacher at and a founder of the University City Symphony Orchestra, died Thursday, March 31, 2011. He was 93.

Among his students at U. City High were the late pianist Malcolm Frager and former principal violist of the National Symphony Orchestra Richard Parnas, his daughter Marcia Goldberg told University City Patch.

Norman Goldberg was nationally known for his efforts in music education. In 1968, he was one of the founders of the American Orff-Schulwerk Association which spreads the Orff Schulwerk, or Orff Approach to music education in the United States, according to the association’s web site. Developed by the German composer Carl Orff, the Orff Schulwerk combines music, movement, drama, and speech into lessons that are similar to child's world of play. MMB Music became the first distributor of instruments and literature used in the Orff approach in the United States.

An early champion of music therapy, Goldberg used MMB Music to spread information about it. The American Music Therapy Association honored Goldberg by naming its library after him, according to the therapy association’s web site.

Goldberg served as president of B’Nai El Congregation, said David Siegel, a member of the congregation’s executive board.

Norman Goldberg was born on March 11, 1918, in Belleville, Ill. His father ran a dry goods store. As a child, he studied piano and excelled at the clarinet. He graduated from Belleville Township High School at 16 and attended the University of Illinois where he earned a bachelor’s degree in music education and a master’s degree in conducting, Marcia Goldberg said.

Leon Burke, music director of the University City Symphony, said in a tribute to Goldberg last year,that he caught the attention of the music world as an undergraduate. He transcribed Howard Hanson’s Second Symphony for band which resulted in an invitation from renowned bandleader Harold Bachman to enter the Eastman School of Music and to play in the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.

“Unfortunately for Mr. Bachman, Rochester and Eastman, Norman had discovered something even more important,” Burke said, “his relationship with his beloved Ruth. It was not time for Ruth to move, so it was not time for Norman to move.”

Ruth Rodenberg married Norman Goldberg in 1940, a marriage that lasted until her death in 2009.

While a student, Goldberg summered at the Interlochen Center for the Arts where one of the instructors persuaded him to switch to bass clarinet. His playing in a clarinet choir so impressed, Frederick Stock, music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra that he offered Goldberg a position in the orchestra. As Goldberg’s friend, David Siegel, said at the tribute, “Maestro Stock could not compete with Maestro Ruth.”

After graduation, he taught one year in Iowa City public schools, then took a job closer to family in the Kirkwood Public Schools where he taught elementary orchestra students. He became orchestra director at University City High School in 1944. In his four years there, many of his students landed positions in major orchestras, Marcia Goldberg said. But in those days, public school teachers’ salaries hovered around the poverty level, and he was starting a family.

“I was getting 28 hundred dollars a year, and I went to the superintendent to try and get a raise,” Goldberg said in a January 2008 interview on the website of the National Association of Music Merchants. “He said we think so highly of what you are doing, we’re going to make it twenty-nine twenty, $10 a month more. So I said this has got to stop."

“That was in September. I resigned in January and started a business and for $300 put music in the back of my car and went around and peddled it. Finally, we ended up with a pretty good music store.”

That pretty good music store was Baton Music in the Delmar Loop at Westgate. Ruth worked with him in the store, as they sold sheet music and instruments, repaired instruments and gave out advice. Business was good, said Leon Burke who was a regular customer.

“My dad knew where to find things,” Marcia Goldberg said. “There are music publications all over the world, and he was knowledgeable about them.”

Siegel said Baton developed a national reputation for tracking down sheet music other dealers couldn’t find. He used the catchphrase, “If you can’t find it where you are, call Norman.  If Norman doesn’t have it, he’ll get it,” Siegel said.

In 1960, Goldberg led the effort to found the University City Symphony Orchestra to provide free classical music concerts to residents of the University City community as well as providing an outlet for local musicians, according to the orchestra’s web site. The orchestra honored him last August with its Lion’s Baton award for his service to the orchestra and the music community.

He continued to play, sitting in with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra when it needed a bass clarinet, Marcia Goldberg said.

He kept up with music education as an active member of the MENC: The National Association for Music Education. At a MENC conference in 1962 Goldberg heard a presentation about Orff Schulwerk, according to the Orff Schulwerk Association’s web site.

 “Inspired by what Goldberg called an ‘important direction in music education,’ he started organizing Orff Schulwerk workshops in the St. Louis area,” the web site says.

According to the website of the Minnesota Orff, in 1966 Goldberg became the first U.S. importer of Orff musical instruments. Thirty years after helping to found  the AOSA, in 1998, the association gave Goldberg its first Industry Award. Goldberg sold Baton music and devoted himself to distributing the Orff percussion instruments, expanding his business to publishing music for the classroom, according to the association’s web site.

Then Norman Goldberg added publishing new American music to the business of MMB Music, Burke said.

Burke said that Goldberg knew local composer Ed Applebaum. When one of his works was rejected by an established publisher, Goldberg read it, liked it and published it. Leonard Slatkin conducted the world premiere of Applebaum’s Symphony No. 2 and it went on to win the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award in Music Composition. And MMB became a successful publisher of American music.

MMB Music also branched out into distributing music therapy materials. “From 1997-1998, Norman was instrumental in facilitating collaboration between AOSA (Orff) and the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA),” wrote Mark A. Francis, a music teacher in Seattle and a member of the Orff Schulwerk Association’s History Committee on the association’s web site. “Today music for all ages as well as music therapy is an integral part of Orff Schulwerk conferences.

Goldberg worked hard to get two rival music therapy organizations to merge, Marcia Goldberg said. The merged American Music Therapy Association honored Norman Goldberg by naming its library after him.

“It’s unusual for someone to have a library named after him if they haven’t donated a lot of money,” she said.

In his last years, he lived at the Gatesworth in University City. He stopped going to the MMB office in Grand Center six years ago, but stayed in contact with the music education and music therapy, his daughter said.

In his last days in the hospital, his daughter, like her father, a believer in the healing power of music, sang to him. “Nice slow, calm music, that’s what he needed,” she said.

In addition to his daughter, survivors include his brother Bernard, retired as principal flutist of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, his granddaughter, Marnie, and great-granddaughter, Marina, and his son-in-law Warren Goldberg, who plays double bass with the St. Louis Symphony. A son, Marc, preceded him in death.

Marcia Goldberg said her father would say, “Beauty is our business, music is our means. In this continually dehumanized world we certainly need music, one of mankind’s most humanizing influences. I hope when I go, I will have left my own little corner of the earth a little more beautiful for having been here for awhile.”

Funeral services are set for Monday April 4 at 1 p.m. at B'nai El Congregation, 11411 N. Outer 40 Road. Burial will follow at New Mt. Sinai Cemetery, 8430 Gravois Road.