A Ned Rorem Reader

by Ned Rorem, J.D. McClatchy (Foreword)

Approaching his 80th year, Rorem -- Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, unrivalled practitioner of the American art song, shamelessly candid libertine, ambivalent grandfather figure of gay liberation, pithy epigrammatist -- has assembled an anthology of his writings that chronicles the postures and passions of a breed of 20th-century artist. Among the collection's new material is a barbed interview with the poet J D McClatchy and excerpts from Rorem's five volumes of splendid literary diaries, irreverent and canny commentary on musical matters and loving, if occasionally scathing, remembrances of rivals and confidants from Aaron Copeland to Truman Capote. Rorem proceeds with the studied elegance of a dandy, the bravado of a dyed-in-the-wool contrarian and the dialectical bent of a classicist. Despite Rorem's renowned flair for high-cultural gossip, and his delight in scandalising, his true subject is nostalgia for a lost self and the transitory compensations of art and sex. -- Mark Levine, New York Times Book Review.

Genres: Music

1 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Ned Rorem (born October 23, 1923) is a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer and diarist. He is best known and most praised for his song settings.

Rorem was born in Richmond, Indiana and received his early education in Chicago at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, the American Conservatory of Music and then Northwestern University. Later, Rorem moved on to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and finally the Juilliard School in New York City.

In 1966 he published The Paris Diary of Ned Rorem, which, with his later diaries, has brought him some notoriety, as he is honest about his and others' sexuality, describing his relationships with Leonard Bernstein, Noël Coward, Samuel Barber, and Virgil Thomson, and outing several others[vague] (Aldrich and Wotherspoon, eds., 2001). Rorem has written extensively about music as well. These essays are collected in anthologies such as Setting the Tone, Music From the Inside Out, and Music and People. His prose is much admired, not least for its barbed observations about such prominent musicians as Pierre Boulez. Rorem has composed in a chromatic tonal idiom throughout his career, and he is not hesitant to attack the orthodoxies of the avant-garde.

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess I'm done with this. I bought it in December and have been nibbling on it ever since. I opened it recently and realized there's nothing in it I haven't read. Rorem is a first-rate composer, but much of his renown rests on his exhibitionistic diaries and bitchy music reviews. Some of his stuff can be thin, a little jejune, a little slack, but his musical writings are brilliant. He explains that Virgil Thomson, who set the tone for many other 20th American composers, filtered homespun melodies "through a chic Gallic prism." So true, not only of Thomson but of Aaron Copland, David Diamond, and Rorem himself. So much American classical music is suave pastoral, theatrical rusticity. It's Marie Antoinette dressed as a milkmaid. That's why I love it.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ned Rorem is (was?) a twentieth century raconteur and music composer, a guy who rubbed elbows (and apparently a bit more than that) with many famous and near-famous cultural figures. His memoir is a feast, something you read while curled up in a chair with a cup of filthy jasmine tea.

In the hands of a lesser writer, this kind of thing would amount to little more than narcissistic grandstanding. But Rorem's insights are keen and his prose is somehow lyrical and muscular at the same time. You don't have to know anything about music to enjoy his expositions on the subject. In fact, you don't have to know much about anything. Rorem will fill you in.

[Lyle]

P. 221
… the brainwashed public alerted to disrespect what it might understand or like.

P. 259
Quoting Julian Green: "If I do bring a message, then I'm like a messenger so is unable to read and whose message is incomprehensible to himself; I rather like a stenographer who cannot really reread his work because he only knows how to write."

P. 260
And he often said too – quoting Pascal quoting God – "You wouldn't seek me if you hadn't already found me."

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

"To live is to improvise variations on our own theme," writes composer and author Ned Rorem, "yet those improvisations are not random but (unbeknownst to us at the moment) formal and collective" speaks to me. I suggest A Ned Rorem Reader, Foreward by J. D. McClatchy to those who love exquisite literature and music.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

why does self-doubt comfort me?

[Richard Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable throughout.