Ned Rorem

Ned Rorem
File:Ned Rorem head shot.webp
Born	(1923-10-23)October 23, 1923 Richmond, Indiana, U.S.
Died	November 18, 2022(2022-11-18) (aged 99) Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
Occupations	Composer writer
Works	List of compositions

Ned Rorem (October 23, 1923 – November 18, 2022) was an American composer and writer of contemporary classical music. Best known for his art songs, which number over 500, Rorem was the leading American of his time writing in the genre. His other works include operas, concertante, piano music as well as choral, chamber and orchestral works. He won a Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1976 for his Air Music: Ten Etudes for Orchestra.

Life and career

1923–1940: Childhood and youth

Rorem maintained a life-long interest in the French Impressionist composers Claude Debussy (left) and Maurice Ravel (right)

Ned Rorem was born in Richmond, Indiana, US on October 23, 1923. Born to parents of Norwegian descent, he was their second child after his sister Rosemary. His father Clarence Rufus Rorem was a medical economist at Earlham College whose work later inspired the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, while his mother Gladys Miller Rorem was active in antiwar movements and the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Ned described his background as "upper middle-class, semi-bohemian but with a strong Quaker emphasis". On his Quaker background, Rorem later explained that "We were Quakers of the intellectual rather than the puritanical variety"; he described himself as a "Quaker atheist" throughout his life. The family moved to Chicago a few months after Rorem's birth, where he attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. Though not musicians themselves, his parents were enthusiastic about the arts, and brought their children to concerts by the pianists Josef Hofmann, Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Sergei Rachmaninoff, as well as the dance performances by Ruth Page, Mary Wigman and the Ballets Russes.

Rorem showed an early talent and interest in music, learning piano in his youth with Nuta Rothschild. Though he had other teachers before Rothschild, she was his first to make a lasting impression: she inaugurated his life-long enthusiasm for French music and culture, especially Impressionists such as Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. By age 12, Rorem began piano lessons with Margaret Bonds, who helped foster his interest music composition and introduced him to both American jazz and American classical music by composers such as Charles Tomlinson Griffes and John Alden Carpenter. The songs of Billie Holiday were also particularly impressionable. He began piano study with Belle Tannenbaum in 1938, under whom he learned and performed the first movement of Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto. Throughout his youth he also studied music theory at the American Conservatory of Music with Leo Sowerby, a well known church music composer of the time. He graduated high school in 1940, around when he began a close friendship with the future-writer Paul Goodman, whose poems he would later set many times. Rorem himself also found interest in literary activities, having kept a diary since his youth.

1940–1948: Emerging composer

Ned Rorem's institutional eduction timeline

---

American Conservatory (Sowerby): 1938–40

Northwestern University (Nolte): 1940–42

Curtis Institute (Menotti & Scalero): 1942

Juilliard (Wagenaar): 1943–46 (BA); 1946–48 (MM)

Tanglewood (Copland): Summers of 1946 & 1947

He attended the School of Music of Northwestern University in 1940, studying composition with Alfred Nolte and piano with Harold Van Horne. Under the latter he focused on standard repertoire by Bach, Beethoven and Chopin, but transferred to the Curtis Institute of Music in 1942. At Curtis he studied composition and orchestration under Gian Carlo Menotti and counterpoint under Rosario Scalero. He had numerous compositions premiered, including the The 70th Psalm (1943), a choral piece with orchestral accompaniment, and a Piano Sonata for Four Hands. Considering Scalero "too rigid and conservative", he left Curtis after a year; his parents disagreed with the decision and ceased providing him a regular allowance. Moving to New York in late 1943, to support himself he took a job as copyist for the composer Virgil Thomson, with whom he also studied orchestration and prosody. Via a mutual friend, he became aquatinted with the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein who introduced him to Aaron Copland. Rorem later attended two of the Tanglewood Music Center's summer sessions to study with Copland. He later remarked in an article of The New York Times: "Well, I took the job with Virgil, became an instant fan of Aaron and Lenny, and for the next 42 years with many an up and a down I've remained staunch friends with all three men. Some weekend!"

Later in 1943 he enrolled in the Juilliard School and studied composition with Bernard Wagenaar. Rorem graduated from Juilliard with a Bachelor of Arts in 1946 and a Master of Music in 1948. While a student he worked as a piano accompanist for performers such as the dancer Martha Graham and the singer Éva Gauthier. Due to his interest in literature he became increasingly interested in composing art songs, and also wrote incidental music, ballet music and music for a puppet show. In 1948, his song The Lordly Hudson on a poem by Goodman won the Music Library Association's "best published song of the year" award. That same year, his orchestral Overture in C won a Gershwin Prize and was premiered by New York Philharmonic under Mishel Piastro in May 1948. The positive reception of both these compositions was an important milestone in his career as an emerging composer.

1949–1957: France and Morocco

The arts patron Marie-Laure de Noailles (1949, Van Vechten) who allowed Rorem to stay in her Paris mansion and introduced him to other cultural figures of the city

Rorem later remarked that the 1940s were formative for charting his future career and by 1950 he was certain of being a composer. With money from the Gershwin Prize, he left for France in early 1949, though spent much of the next two years in Morocco. He was hugely productive in the comparatively quieter Morocco, and produced a variety of compositions in rapid succession. He later explained that "The best influence for a composer is four walls. The light must come from inside. When it comes from outside, the result is postcard music." Among his earliest large-scale works, he wrote the ballet Melos in 1949, and both his Piano Concerto No. 2 and Symphony No. 1 1950. The ballet won the Prix de Biarritz in 1951, while the Symphony was premiered in Vienna on February 1951 by Jonathan Sternberg and the piano concerto in 1954 by Julius Katchen via French Radio. During this period he wrote numerous song cycles dedicated to a single textual source: Flight for Heaven (1950) to Robert Herrick; Six Irish Poems (1950) to George Darley; Cycle of Holy Songs (1951) to biblical texts; and To a Young Girl to W. B. Yeats. He composed his first opera, A Childhood Miracle, to Elliott Stein's libretto based on the The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Though written in 1951, the opera was not premiered until May 10, 1955 in New York. He later received two further honors: the Lili Boulanger Award in 1950 and a Fulbright Scholarship in 1951.

On the Fulbright Scholarship, in 1951 Rorem settled in Paris to study with Arthur Honegger, a representative from the Les Six group of neoclassicist music. Unlike most young American musicians in the city, he did not study with Nadia Boulanger, who was opined that her instruction might tarnish his already individual style. He became associated with the wealthy arts patron Marie-Laure de Noailles, at whose mansion he resided. Through her influence, he met with the leading Parisian cultural figures of his time, including other composers of Les Six, Francis Poulenc, Georges Auric and Darius Milhaud. Their proximity solidified the French influence of his style and he set numerous medieval French poems in the 1953 song cycle Poémes pour la paix. Other compositions written in Paris include: Piano Sonata No. 2 (1950); two ballets, Ballet for Jerry (1951) and Dorian Gray (1952); Design for Orchestra (1953); The Poet's Requiem (1955); and Symphony No. 2. A Paris concert in 1953 featured solely Rorem's compositions.

1957–1973: Return to the US

Rorem returned to the US in either 1957 or 1958 to further pursue composition. By now, his music had attracted the attention of several important American musicians and ensembles, and most of his compositions from the 1960s onwards were commissions. In 1959, the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy premiered Rorem's Eagles, a Whitman-inspired and dreamlike tone poem. His Symphony No. 3 (1958) was premiered by Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in 1959 to critical praise; the New York Herald Tribune's music editor Jay S. Harrison called it "lavish, luscious, and luxe". Conversely, his first full-length opera, Miss Julie, was not well received at its 1965 premiere at the New York City Opera. The opera's libretto was written by Kenward Elmslie, itself based on the play of the same name by August Strindberg. Rorem received commissions from organizations such as the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation, Ford Foundation and Koussevitzky Foundation among others. By this time, he was established as a neoromantic composer, who largely rejected a strict application of modernist techniques or emerging genres such as electroacoustic music.

Rorem held his first teaching position at the University of Buffalo from 1959 to 1960, during which he wrote 11 Studies for 11 Players. A few years later he taught composition at the University of Utah from 1965 to 1967. He later explained his short tenures, explaining that "this is the kind of assignment that should not last more than two years as a teacher begins to believe what he says after that long a time and becomes sterile". His compositions of the time included more instrumental music, although songs remained a central aspect of his activities. These songs were largely set to 20th-century American poets, though copyright issues sometimes prevented their immediate publication. Among these was the song cycle for mezzo-soprano and piano, Poems of Love and Rain (1963), written to texts by W. H. Auden, Emily Dickinson, Howard Moss and Theodore Roethke. Premiered by Regina Sarfaty and Rorem at the piano on April 12, 1964, it included two different musicals settings for each of the poems.

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, Rorem struggled with alcoholism. He commented that "The minute a drop of wine touches my lips I begin to be this other person—an infantile regression takes place", though he insisted that he was "not be categorized as an alcoholic because [he had] such a puritanical sense of order". Although he scheduled it carefully, he admitted to feeling a strong sense of guilt when drinking, which he considered detrimental to his artistic creativity. Rorem attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and used Antabuse, to little success. In late 1967 he became partners with the organist James Roland Holmes, who offered enough stability for Rorem to abandon alcohol completely. The two would stay together until Holmes' death from cancer in early 1999.

1974–2022: Later life

In 1974 Rorem and Holmes bought a summer house in Nantucket, Massachusetts. There Rorem worked on seven different commissions concurrently between 1974 and 1975 for the American Bicentennial. One of these was Air Music: Ten Etudes for Orchestra for Thomas Schippers with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, where each movement was limited to different combinations of instruments.

Rorem accepted his third teaching post in 1980, at his alma mater, the Curtis Institute. His students at Curtis included Daron Hagen and Jennifer Higdon.

Rorem died at home in Manhattan on November 18, 2022, at age 99.

Music

See also: List of compositions by Ned Rorem

Songs

External videos
4 Poems of Walt Whitman (1957)
Performance by Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano) and Malcolm Martineau (piano)

Rorem is best known for his vocal art songs, of which he wrote more than 500. Many are coupled into some thirty or so song cycles, written from the early 1940s to 2000s. Many of his earliest songs remain unpublished; his first published cycle is the Flight for Heaven (1950), a setting of nine poems by the lyric poet Robert Herrick, along with a piano interlude. In general, Rorem stressed the importance of a cycle's overall structure, paying close attention to the song order, progression of keys and transition between songs. He also emphasized theatricality, aiming to convey an overarching message via a unified emotional affect or mood. Like in other genres, the musicologist Philip Lieson Miller remarked that "Rorem's chosen field of song is not for the avant garde and he must be classified as [...] conservative", and that "he has never striven for novelty". Miller elaborates that this conservatism is not extreme enough to allow for convenient formal analysis. Rorem's strict definitions of what constitutes a song has molded them to be typically be single-voice and piano settings of lyrical poems of moderate length. He named songs by Monteverdi, Schumann, Poulenc and the Beatles as particular favorites. To obtain certain effects, however, Rorem has experimented with more modernist effects, such as intense chromaticism, successive modulations and alternating time signatures.

Rorem's main interest in the art song is the setting of poetry, rather than the human voice. Numerous commentators have lauded his abilities in prosody, with Grove Music Online noting that he "sets words with naturalness and clarity, without compromising the range and scope of vocal lines". The vast majority of Rorem's songs are set in English; he has expressed concern over the difficulties of composing in other languages in regards to having his compositions performed. In his early years, he was particularly devoted to the poems of his friend Paul Goodman, and later set many works by Theodore Roethke. Rorem composed numerous cycles to the poetry of an individual writer: John Ashbery, Witter Bynner, Demetrios Capetanakis, George Darley, Frank O'Hara, Herrick, Kenneth Koch, Howard Moss, Sylvia Plath, Wallace Stevens, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Walt Whitman, to whom he dedicated three cycles. His few settings in other languages include French poems by Jean-Antoine de Baïf, Jean Daurat, Olivier de Magny, Henri de Régnier, Pierre de Ronsard, as well as ancient Greek texts by Plato.

Many of Rorem's songs are accompanied by piano, though some have mixed instrumental ensemble or orchestral accompaniment. A pianist himself, his accompaniment parts for the instrument are often less secondary to the voice and more a "full complement to the melody". They include motives to emphasize textual elements—such as rain and clouds—and are wildly diverse in sometimes responding to the voice in counterpoint or simply doubling the vocal line. He often uses the Renaissance-derived ground bass technique of a slow and repeated bassline in the left hand. Reflecting on his piano accompaniments, the writer Bret Johnson describes Rorem's musical hallmarks as "chiming piano, rushing triplets, sumptuous harmonies".

Operas

Only two full-length operas were written by Rorem, Miss Julie (1965) and Our Town (2005), a chamber opera. Our Town was first performed by the Indiana University Opera in Bloomington in 2006.

Orchestral works

Rorem's Symphony No. 1 (1950) is cast in four fairly brief movements: I: Maestoso, II: Andantino, III: Largo, and IV: Allegro; and is scored for full orchestra. Rorem wrote of this work: "There are as many definitions of symphony as there are symphonies. In Haydn's day it usually meant an orchestral piece in four movements, of which the first was in so-called sonata form. But with Bach, and later with Beethoven through Stravinsky, Symphony means whatever the composer decides."

His Symphony No. 2 (1956) is cast in 3 movements of unequal proportion; the 2nd & 3rd combined being less than half the length of the first; I: Broad, Moderate; II: Tranquillo; III: Allegro. The Second Symphony is probably the composer's least performed. Composed in 1956 it was only performed a handful of times and has remained dormant since 1959 until, as the composer puts it, "José Serebrier resurrected" it 43 years later.

The Third Symphony (1958) is cast in five movements: I: Passacaglia, II: Allegro molto vivace, III: Largo, IV: Andante, V: Allegro molto. It is perhaps the best known of Rorem's numbered symphonies, having been premiered by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, April 1959. Rorem later arranged the Scherzo movement for wind orchestra in 2002.

His suite Air Music: Ten Etudes of Orchestra, first performed in Cincinnati on December 5, 1975, earned him the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Literary activities

A dedicated diarist, Rorem wrote candidly on his and other men's sexuality, describing his relationships with Leonard Bernstein, John Cheever, Noël Coward and Tennessee Williams. Rorem wrote extensively about music as well, collected the anthologies Music from Inside Out (1967), Music and People (1968), Pure Contraption (1974), Setting the Tone (1983), Settling the Score (1988), and Other Entertainment (1996).

Writings

Books

• Rorem, Ned (1966). The Paris Diary. New York: George Braziller. OCLC 220705.
• —— (1967). The New York Diary. New York: George Braziller. OCLC 419642.
• —— (1967). Music from Inside Out. New York: George Braziller. OCLC 637907.
• —— (1968). Music and People. New York: George Braziller. OCLC 449570.
• —— (1970). Critical Affairs: a Composer's Journal. New York: George Braziller. ISBN 978-0-8076-0569-1. OCLC 91619.
• —— (1974). Pure Contraption. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ISBN 978-0-03-011021-4. OCLC 622504.
• —— (1974). The Final Diary. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ISBN 978-0-03-012251-4. OCLC 914568.
• —— (1978). An Absolute Gift. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-22666-4. OCLC 3516613.
• —— (1983). Setting the Tone: Essays and a Diary. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan. ISBN 978-0-698-11234-6. OCLC 869040899.
• —— (1984). Paul's Blues. New York: Red Ozier Press. OCLC 13481014.
• —— (1987). The Nantucket Diary. San Francisco: North Point Press. ISBN 978-0-86547-259-4. OCLC 16902949.
• —— (1988). Settling the Score: Essays on Music. New York: Doubleday. OCLC 915855727.
• —— (1994). Knowing When to Stop: a Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-72872-4. OCLC 30593756.
• —— (1996). Other Entertainment: Collected Pieces. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-82249-5. OCLC 34623876.
• —— (1997). Dear Paul, Dear Ned: the Correspondence of Paul Bowles and Ned Rorem. New York: Elysium Press. OCLC 37781932.
• —— (2005). Wings of Friendship: Selected Letters, 1944-2003. Washington: Shoemaker & Hoard. OCLC 57625802.

Articles

• Rorem, Ned (Spring 1963). "Poulenc: A Memoir". Tempo (64): 28–29. doi:10.1017/S0040298200028035. JSTOR 943868. S2CID 145116275.
• —— (December 1968). "The Music of the Beatles". Music Educators Journal. 55 (4): 33–34+77–83. doi:10.2307/3392348. JSTOR 3392348. S2CID 143918646.
• —— (June 1974). "Why I Write as I Do". Tempo (109): 38–40. doi:10.1017/S0040298200055534. JSTOR 944099. S2CID 145320328.
• —— (December 1978). "Messiaen and Carter on Their Birthdays". Tempo (127): 22–24. doi:10.1017/S0040298200018374. JSTOR 945956. S2CID 145322090.
• —— (November 10, 1985). "Aaron Copland: 'He Is Like a Song-Filled Rock of Gibraltar'". The New York Times.
• —— (December 1990). "Leonard Bernstein (An Appreciation)". Tempo (175): 6–9. doi:10.1017/S0040298200012559. JSTOR 944575. S2CID 145197594.
• —— (1992). "Young Caeser". Grove Music Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.O907008. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
• ——; Robbins, Jerome (2000). "'Ballet for Jerry': Three Letters from Jerome Robbins to Ned Rorem". Dance Chronicle. 23 (3): 263–273. doi:10.1080/01472520008569391. JSTOR 1567981. S2CID 191581741.
• —— (2001). "Flanagan, William". Grove Music Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.09782. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
• —— (2013). "Goodman, Paul". Grove Music Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.A2282988. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0. (subscription or UK public library membership required)

Selected recordings

Selected recordings of compositions by Ned Rorem

Year	Album	Performers	Label
2000	Songs of Ned Rorem	Susan Graham (mezzo), Malcolm Martineau (piano)	Erato 80222
2002	Gotham Ensemble Plays Ned Rorem	Thomas Piercy (clarinet) Rolf Shulte (violin), Judith Olson (piano), Angelina Réaux (soprano), Humbert Lucarelli (oboe), Delores Stevens (piano)	Albany Records TROY520
2003	Three Symphonies	José Serebrier (conductor), Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra	Naxos Records 8.559149
2006	Songs of Ned Rorem	Charles Bressler (tenor), Phyllis Curtin (soprano), Gianna D'Angelo (soprano), Donald Gramm (bass), Regina Sarfaty (mezzo-soprano), Rorem (piano)	Other Minds Records 1009-2

Awards and honors

• 1951: Fulbright Fellowship
• 1957: Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1968: Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters
• 1976: Pulitzer Prize for Music
• 1977: Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2003: ASCAP's Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2004: Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

References

Citations

Primary

This list identifies each item's location in Rorem's writings.

Sources

Books

• Ewen, David (1982). American Composers. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 978-0-399-12626-0.
• Gruen, John (1972). The Party's Over Now: Reminiscences of the Fifties -- New York's Artists, Writers, Musicians, and Their Friends. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 978-0-670-54129-4.
• Henry, Leon Austin Jr (1986). The Song Cycles of Ned Rorem: a Technical Survey (MA Thesis). Louisiana State University. Docket 4240.
• McDonald, Arlys (1989). Ned Rorem: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-25565-6.

Articles

• Griffiths, Paul (2011). "Rorem, Ned". In Latham, Alison (ed.). The Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-957903-7.
• Holmes, James (2002) [1992]. "Rorem, Ned (opera)". Grove Music Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.O007340. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
• Holmes, James (2003) [2001]. "Rorem, Ned". Grove Music Online. Revised by Anthony Tommasini and Arlys McDonald. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.48611. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
• Johnson, Bret (June 1985). "Still Sings the Voice: A Portrait of Ned Rorem". Tempo (153): 7–12. doi:10.1017/S0040298200059386. JSTOR 946231. S2CID 146297830.
• Lewis, Daniel (November 18, 2022). "Ned Rorem, Composer Known for Both His Music and His Diaries, Dies at 99". The New York Times.
• Miller, Philip Lieson (December 1978). "The Songs of Ned Rorem". Tempo (127): 25–31. doi:10.1017/S0040298200018386. JSTOR 945957. S2CID 144600309.
• Page, Tim (November 18, 2022). "Ned Rorem, Pulitzer-winning composer and noted diarist, dies at 99". The Washington Post.
• Tommasini, Anthony (January 9, 1999). "James Holmes, 59, Composer, Choir Director and Organist". The New York Times.

Further reading

See McDonald (1989, pp. 105–242) for an extensive bibliography

• Atack, Sharon A. (1969). Ned Rorem and his Songs (MA Thesis). University of Nebraska. OCLC 7753382. Docket 990.
• Barone, Joshua (November 20, 2022). "In Life and Music, Ned Rorem Was Unwaveringly Himself". The New York Times.
• Beck, Eleonora M.; Rorem, Ned (September 1993). "On Music and Politics: An Interview in Celebration of the Composer's Seventieth Birthday". Current Musicology. 54: 24–37.
• Mass, Lawrence D.; Rorem, Ned (1994). "A Conversation with Ned Rorem". In Brett, Philip; Wood, Elizabeth; Thomas, Gary C. (eds.). Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology. New York: Routledge. pp. 85–112. ISBN 978-0-415-90753-8.
• Provenzano, Therese A. (1994). The Choral Music of Ned Rorem (PHD Thesis). Boston University. OCLC 32190277.
• Peyser, Joan (May 3, 1987). "Ned Rorem Delivers a Solo on the State of Music". The New York Times.
• Smith, Steve (October 25, 2013). "Celebrating Ned Rorem's 90th Birthday". The New York Times.

External links

• Official website
• Profile for Ned Rorem at Boosey & Hawkes
• "Ned Rorem collection, 1935–2006". Washington, DC: Library of Congress.
• Interview with Ned Rorem on WNIB Classical 97, Chicago, April 24, 1986
• Ned Rorem discography at Discogs
• Ned Rorem at IMDb