53 Facts About Ned Rorem

Ned Miller Rorem was an American composer of contemporary classical music and a writer.

Best known for his art songs, which number over 500, Rorem was the leading American of his time writing in the genre.

Ned Rorem developed a strong enthusiasm for French music and received mentorship from Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson, among others.

Ned Rorem returned to America in around 1957, establishing himself as a prominent composer and receiving regular commissions.

Much of Ned Rorem's life was spent with his lifelong partner James Holmes, between his apartment in New York and house in Nantucket.

Ned Rorem wrote the large-scale song cycle Evidence of Things Not Seen to 36 texts by 24 writers, for the New York Festival of Song.

Ned Miller Rorem was born in Richmond, Indiana, US on October 23,1923.

Ned Rorem's 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.

Ned Rorem described his background as "upper middle-class, semi-bohemian but with a strong Quaker emphasis".

Ned Rorem later explained that his family was more culturally but not religiously Quaker; he described himself as a "Quaker atheist" throughout his life.

Ned Rorem showed an early talent and interest in music, learning piano in his youth with Nuta Rothschild.

Ned Rorem began piano study with Belle Tannenbaum in 1938, under whom he learned and performed the first movement of Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto.

Ned Rorem graduated high school in 1940, around when he began a close friendship with the future-writer Paul Goodman, whose poems he would later set to music.

Ned Rorem found interest in literary activities, having kept a diary since his youth.

Ned Rorem attended the School of Music of Northwestern University in 1940, studying composition with Alfred Nolte and piano with Harold Van Horne.

Ned Rorem had numerous compositions premiered, including The 70th Psalm, a choral piece with orchestral accompaniment, and a Piano Sonata for Four Hands.

Ned Rorem later attended two of the Tanglewood Music Center's summer sessions to study with Copland.

Ned Rorem graduated from Juilliard with a Bachelor of Arts in 1946 and a Master of Music in 1948.

Ned Rorem later remarked that the 1940s were formative for charting his future career and by 1950 he was certain of being a composer.

Ned Rorem was hugely productive in the comparatively quieter Morocco, and produced a variety of compositions in rapid succession.

Ned Rorem composed his first opera, A Childhood Miracle, to Elliott Stein's libretto based on The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Ned Rorem later received two further honors: the Lili Boulanger Award in 1950 and a Fulbright Scholarship in 1951.

Ned Rorem became associated with the wealthy arts patron Marie-Laure de Noailles, at whose mansion he resided.

Ned Rorem received commissions from organizations such as the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation, Ford Foundation and Koussevitzky Foundation among others.

Ned Rorem held his first teaching position at the University of Buffalo from 1959 to 1960, during which he wrote 11 Studies for 11 Players.

Ned Rorem attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and used Antabuse, to little success.

Air Music would win the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1976; Ned Rorem later noted his surprise from the award, having been convinced that his music would not be accepted by "those stuffy Pulitzer people".

Ned Rorem accepted his third teaching post in 1980 at the Curtis Institute, his alma mater, where he headed the composition department with David Loeb until 2001.

Ned Rorem wrote compositions for varied genres, including The Santa Fe Songs song cycle for baritone and piano quartet and the String Symphony, a recording of which by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra won the 1989 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Recording.

In 1993, Ned Rorem wrote the Piano Concerto No 4 for Left Hand and Orchestra for his Curtis colleague with an injured right hand, Gary Graffman.

The music critic Peter G Davis called it "one of the musically richest, most exquisitely fashioned, most voice-friendly collections of songs", while Rorem himself lauded it as his best work.

From 2010 onwards, Ned Rorem essentially ceased composing, explaining that "I've kind of said everything I have to say, better than anyone else".

Regardless, Ned Rorem himself noted that by then he didn't receive commissions, "but then, nobody I know does".

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

Ned Rorem wrote in a generally tonal manner, Grove Music Online asserts that he did so with considerable diversity, complexity and potency.

Ned Rorem is best known for his art songs, of which he wrote more than 500.

Ned Rorem stressed the importance of a cycle's overall structure, paying close attention to the song order, progression of keys and transition between songs.

Ned Rorem emphasized theatricality, aiming to convey an overarching message via a unified emotional affect or mood.

Ned Rorem named songs by Monteverdi, Schumann, Poulenc and the Beatles as particular favorites.

The vast majority of Ned Rorem's songs are set in English and he has criticized American colleagues who prioritize setting other languages over English.

Ned Rorem often composed entire cycles to the poetry of a single writer: John Ashbery, Witter Bynner, Demetrios Capetanakis, George Darley, Frank O'Hara, Robert Herrick, Kenneth Koch, Howard Moss, Sylvia Plath, Wallace Stevens, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Walt Whitman, to whom he dedicated three cycles.

Many of Ned Rorem's songs are accompanied by piano, though some have mixed instrumental ensemble or orchestral accompaniment.

Ned Rorem sometimes uses the Renaissance-derived ground bass technique of a slow and repeated bassline in the left hand.

Holmes explained that Rorem himself "contends that song specialists cannot automatically turn out good operas any more than opera composers can turn out true songs: a gift for tune and a gift for tragedy do not always join hands".

Ned Rorem revised it for a more successful revival in 1979; it was again revived again in 1994 at the Manhattan School of Music Opera.

Ned Rorem wrote his own libretto for his 1958 opera based on Chaucer's "The Pardoner's Tale", The Robbers.

Ned Rorem wrote the one-act Bertha to a libretto by Kenneth Koch.

Ned Rorem's three numbered symphonies were written in a span of eight years during the 1950s.

Ned Rorem later arranged the Scherzo movement for wind orchestra in 2002.

From 1948 onwards, Ned Rorem wrote numerous pieces for solo piano, usually dedicated to relatives or close friends.

Ned Rorem's earliest published piano work was the 1948 set A Quiet Afternoon, written for his sister's children.

Near his death, Ned Rorem was described as the "elder statesman of American art song, prolific prose writer, [and] pioneer of gay liberation".

Ned Rorem wrote extensively about music as well, collected the anthologies Music from Inside Out, Music and People, Pure Contraption, Setting the Tone, Settling the Score, and Other Entertainment.