daron aric hagen

'Good luck, boys,’ Michael Carrigan said as he handed us each a small envelope with thirty dollars in it. Stamped on each in a heavily-seriffed typeface that seemed to evoke the Ages were the words THE CURTIS INSTITUTE OF MUSIC. Below that was scrawled in loopy letters our name and the date — something-something-1982. Our train-fare and lunch money: we were Ned’s first generation of students at the Curtis; we were on our way to New York for our lessons.

Letter to Ned, 1 January 1983: ‘My mother died in my arms last night….’

We were punctilious about ringing the buzzer at precisely the appointed hour. To be early or late was to begin our lessons with explanations. Not good. I remember that I nearly always wore a suit and tie, because I understood that respect was due, and because I also understood that a lesson with Ned wasn’t just a lesson, it was a performance.

Ned’s Diary, 12 January, 1983: ‘Daron’s mother has died. …I still see her transparent skin, the eager eyes like candles as she leaned across the table in the Barclay bar, pride subduing fever. Daron at twenty lacks the protection that I at fifty-nine still retain from my parent, tant bien que mal.’

Lessons began with lunch laid out on the red dining room table. There was always a quiche from Soutine’s, Godiva chocolates, and sometimes berries. Always, there was a pitcher filled with liquid of indeterminate color that we dubbed Mystery Juice. Years later Jim revealed to me that it consisted of a mélange of whatever unfinished juices there were to be found in the refrigerator on the morning of our lessons.

Letter from Ned, 2 May 1984: ‘I read your whole diary in almost one fell swoop and was quite impressed. Diaries are dangerous, being the most subjective of literary forms (and subjectivity is boring), but yours makes it, and is the real thing.’

There were books everywhere; paintings of Ned on the living room walls. Jim might pass through on his way to an engagement. On the piano would be placed copies of whichever of Ned’s pieces Boosey had just put into print. Wallace the cat, fat, foul-tempered, and plagued by seizures set off by rhythmic sounds, would flit in from the bedroom, rub on our legs, and then hiss at us imperiously before stalking out.

My Diary, 22 October, 1987: ‘Over to Ned’s for tea and to play him the St. Louis Symphony performance of Fresh Ayre. ‘What a sexy piece,’ says Jim. Ned sighs: ‘Well, it isn’t entirely successful, is it? The orchestration is too thick, too subtle — can’t you get those sounds more easily?’ He’s right, of course, but how I hate that! Finished copying the Schuyler parts — my seventh copying job for Ned — how many more of his pieces will I copy over the years?’

Over lunch, Norman Stumpf, Robert Convery and I would be quizzed on the concerts we had attended, the music we had listened to, the books we had read, and whatever gossip had manifested itself at Curtis since our previous lessons. Ned didn't talk about himself. Although we were never explicitly instructed to do so, it was clear that we were expected to express ourselves as concisely and as articulately as possible. I was good at this part, so I relished it.

My Diary, 29 February, 1988: ‘Leap Year Day. A letter today from David Diamond, in which he admonishes me to ‘read, read, read, especially 19th-century novels, and be more introspective,’ and one from Ned saying, ‘Don’t try so hard to be Rastignac. A little more egoism would do you good.’

Talking Part finished, Ned would move into the living room and seat himself at the piano, followed by whoever had volunteered to go first. The rest of us would sit in the dining room at the table and talk quietly, or peruse Ned’s library. (It was considered an honor to be entrusted with a book for the week.) One squirmed (or not) on a little, uncomfortable cane-seated chair next to Ned as he played through whatever one had brought. Bringing sketches to a lesson could be disastrous — we had learned through bitter experience that an entire lesson could be devoted to cleaning up our notation if we didn’t bring our work in as immaculately notated as possible.

Letter to Ned, 30 March, 1994: ‘I was delighted with your students’ seriousness and technical facility when I taught them for you last week; they adore you and are good young men. I think I offered them a lot and felt both fulfilled and invigorated by the experience. I think that A. is the most talented, B. the most ambitious, and C. the most sweet-natured. But they’re all first-rate, aren’t they?’

Listening to somebody else’s lesson was as illuminating as one’s own; eavesdropping when Ned periodically took a phone call to talk business was equally enlightening. It took me a couple of weeks to realize that I was fortunate to have read all of his books before joining his studio, because he occasionally vamped — or was he testing us? we never could tell — by making points that he had already made in his published writings. We called this ‘playing tapes’ and it seemed to please Ned when we caught him at it.

'Instruction is not offered, it is seized,’ Ned would explain, pulling a pencil from the juice glass on the piano.

Letter to Ned, 29 August, 1996: ‘Young Eli, on the other hand, is a pleasure — very sweet and serious. He works harder than this school deserves, though not more than I deserve. I have encouraged him to take a tutorial with Bill Weaver and to seek out Ashbery when he’s a senior. Bill says he’ll take him as a student. A very good kid….’

I had a habit back then which probably annoyed Ned enormously. If he asked me whether I had read something I hadn’t, I would say that I had, and then read the book the following week. Needless to say, I ended up reading a lot of books. I was eager to impress, and too eager for him to get to the point, to (I thought at the time) risk having my lesson derailed by my lack of erudition. It took me a few too many rather nasty, embarrassing moments to be cured of this character failing. Twenty-seven years later, it irritates me when my students do it to me with an intensity only possible in one once guilty of the same thing.

Letter from Ned, 5 July, 1997: ‘Yaddo tells me about October 23. I said no. I simply can’t do things like that anymore. Then they asked again, and said that you and Lowell would do all the work, perform all the songs — that all I had to do is curtsy. So I said yes. About your songs: Do bees make sandwiches?’

I also liked to try to impress Ned by bringing in what I thought were finished pieces. ‘Ah, another fait accompli,’ he would sigh. ‘Of course, it’s finished, so nothing I say matters.’ Beat. ‘On the other hand, there’s always something to criticize; that’s why I'm here,’ he would say, drawing a pencil from the juice glass like a stiletto.

Ned’s Diary, 14 January, 1999: ‘Daron at 3 A.M. came into my sleep-sodden room to say quietly, ‘We think you should get up.’ With Sonny and the cats beside him, Jim lay there….’

He was at his best with me when he was the most brutal, and the better my music was, the more merciless his critique would be. He never pretended to be an academic; he was a mid-career professional. Consequently, his reactions were like dispatches from the creative and intellectual front lines, uninflected, and deadly serious. I often disagreed with Ned, but I never for a moment doubted that he was speaking from vast experience and from the gut.

Letter to Ned, 12 July, 1999: ‘Gilda visited me at Yaddo today … and showed me the letter you wrote her about her songs. What a lovely note, and boy, what a generous gesture: she was excited, honored, and grateful to hear from you.’

Afterwards, Norman and I usually walked down Broadway to Times Square together, talking about our lessons. I remember that we did enjoy being Young and we talked about it, as well as the romance of Manhattan and our excitement at feeling as though we were on a meaningful journey. As ubiquitous as Starbucks is now, Brew and Burger was then; we would step into one and spend our lunch allowance on a pitcher of beer and burgers, wrangle like pups over the Big Issues, Music, Tonality, Modernism, Minimalism, and —isms in general. We laughed a lot, and the Big City on those evenings opened for us like Pandora’s Box. We were Young though, and Resilience and Hope always sustained us.

I remember when Norman took his life a few months later. I know that Ned does, too; the symphony I wrote in Norman’s memory at Curtis; Ned sitting with Norman’s weeping parents in the hall as I conducted his classmates in its single performance

Birthday Piece from Ned, 1 November, 2002: ‘Coming or going, our names are forever intertwined. Betwixt us we share eight musical letters: two D’s, three E’s, two A’s, one G, from which for your birthday, I have composed this rhapsody … the remaining letters spell RNOGRH NROR which, in ancient Celtic, means ‘Love Forever’.’

Music has intertwined our lives contrapuntally for over a quarter of a century. I was hurt by the way Ned portrayed me in his diaries. But I understood that an author inevitably hurts the people around him when writing memoir well, and forgave him. We've remained ever in touch, and he's respected my privacy. Ned is one of the few people I know who 'gets' me; that's more important, as he would say, even than friendship, in the end.

Letter from Ned, 7 August, 2006: ‘Very dear Daron—My heart and soul are with you now and forever. Too tired to write more. Always—Ned.’