Composers: The Ballad of Big Bud

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4¢per Performance. Deciding that he "had to make it on his own," he quit his job, divorced his first wife, and set out to get his music heard any way he could. In time, he says candidly, he became "the father of contemporary music in commercials," writing the same kind of music for toothpaste and spaghetti (Ipana, Buitoni, Noxzema) that he did for the concert hall. Commissions for documentaries and TV shows started to roll in, and in one year he made $30,000. That enabled him to devote more time to symphonic music —and the race track. In 1958, with a $1,000 killing he made at Aqueduct, he recorded his Concert Ballet and badgered conductors to lend an ear. One did, and it resulted in the premiere of Short Symphony with the Washington National Symphony. That led to further performances of other compositions; 14 have been played so far this season.

Although performances of his major compositions give him a big thrill, Bazelon does not deride the itty-bitty things he writes for the commercial trade. Take the four-note rhapsody that he turned out for NBCTV: it's not Beethoven, but the network plays it as the theme for every special news program, and Bazelon gets 40 in royalties each time it is played.

Now 43, "Big Bud," as his second wife Cecile calls him, is plotting new adventures. "Overwhelmed" by the experience of seeing his first Kentucky Derby, he exclaimed last week: "Stravinsky wrote the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto. I would like to write the Churchill Downs Concerto."