By D.C. Brooks
The old saying “What cannot kill you only makes you stronger” summarizes the trials and tribulations of professor Herbert Arnold Deutsch. The composer had suffered through poverty’s paradise, as music was the brilliance in the surroundings of the unfortunate.
The hypnotic melodies of the piano were the crutch that carried Deutsch through the dog days of the 1930s and 40s. He received his first lessons at the age of 4 with the influence of his mother, Miriam Deutsch. When he was 5, his brother and sister were already enrolled in high school at the ages of 11 and 12, respectively. The piano, and later the trumpet when he found a love for jazz, occupied his time without having any siblings his age to relate to. Encouraged by his mother to play the piano, she sang various songs including “Old Negro Spirituals,” African American folk songs.
“I was put to sleep every night with all these tunes and they became part of my life…you could imagine, you know, a white boy being brought up on Long Island and a white mom singing, ‘Nobody knows, the trouble I’ve seen,” he sang with pleasure, leaning back in the chair inside his office at the Music Department.
Reminiscing on the past he never forgot the struggle of his upbringing. The Deutsch family lived poor, but he refused to allow low-income to beat him down. The 72-year-old composer applied his musical talents to escape the family’s struggle; a struggle that began when he was seven years old.
The family owned a chicken farm on Seamen Avenue in Baldwin, Long Island. They lived as a cohesive family, but then tragedy struck.
“My father had a heart attack,” he said slowly while glancing down at the floor. “He couldn’t work, he stopped working and that’s when we lost the house.”
The heart attack prevented his father from working as a mailman and they sold the chicken farm. The family lost the house when he was nine and they had to endure an eviction. Deutsch spent a year living on a second floor of a Chinese restaurant while his mother supported the family.
A family with a mother working was rare in the mid-1900s but the scarcity of money paved the way for a revolution; a revolution of women employees working in defense factories to support their families during World War II.
The family continued to live poorly until Deutsch entered high school. A ray of light shined from the other side of the tunnel when the family were able to get back on their feet by the way of his uncle’s finances. Deutsch graduated from high school, but didn’t have any funds to finance college.
Regardless, he still hustled his way to further his education. “I had to pay my own way to school. [The family] didn’t even know about sending me any money for college,” Deutsch said.
Determined, he worked two full jobs to self-finance his education. He started his day working at the now defunct newspaper, Nassau Daily News, in the composing room from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m.
If working seven hours at one job was too much for the average person it wasn’t for Deutsch. Determined to pay his own way through college, he worked another full time job at Double Day, a publishing company still running in Garden City, doing manual labor in the packing room.
Deutsch continued this work regimen with only five hours of sleep each night for a year and a half. He saved enough money to attend the University when he turned 21.
But the hard work didn’t start there as he refused to take college for granted. He fell in love with the music department and received a full-time music scholarship. Deutsch determination is like a rose growing through concrete while not allowing any obstacle undermine his ambitions.
“[Struggling] been helpful to me as a human being because you experience so much that people are not experiencing in today’s society, and you get a better sense of understanding everybody,” Deutsch said.
Deutsch graduated from the University in 1956 at the age of 24 and served in the Army until 1958. He started teaching at the University in 1961 and took a leave of absence to play an influential part with Moog Music, which distributed the original model synthesizers. He later departed from the music business and remained on the staff at the University. He retired from teaching full-time in 2001 but still taught a couple courses part-time.
Deutsch left an impression on many people at the University, students and faculty alike. “Deutsch will always be remembered as an extremely dedicated teacher with various of talents with a permanent impact on the face of contemporary music,” said Music Department professor Kathleen Blixt.
“He’s a good teacher and a nice person even though I had unfavorable run-ins with him,” said junior music department major Deleigh Ryan.
Deutsch also has several projects in the works including working with children who are aspiring composers in a program through the New York State School Music Association. He is also an active president of the Long Island Composers Alliance of professor composers, a non-profit organization.
After experiencing stumbling blocks earlier in life, Deutsch flourished as a musician while writing numerous compositions and musical pieces. He also participated in a 3-mile marathon in Eisenhower Park at East Meadows early October. He finished third in his age bracket, but was reluctant to release his time.
“My time was [so] slow,” he laughed out loud. “That we ran two laps around the course, so when I was finishing the first lap the winner lapped and passed me for his second lap. He was running twice as fast as I was.”
Besides finishing in 33 minutes Deutsch also planned on running another three-mile marathon in a few weeks at Massapequa.
Before leaving the department for his next engagement Deutsch contemplated about his passion and drive for creating music. He paused a moment before departing the room with words of wisdom.
“If you make music you want people to hear and as long as I can get my music heard then that’s the satisfaction.” And that’s satisfaction guaranteed.