MeMoMu_HOHI_012 NED ROREM
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From 2010 onwards, Rorem essentially ceased composing, explaining that "I've kind of said everything I have to say, better than anyone else".[41] Two exceptions were the 2013 song "How Like a Winter", based on Shakespeare's Sonnet 97,[42] as well as his final work, Recalling Nadia, a brief organ piece written in 2014.[43] Regardless, Rorem himself noted that by then he didn't receive commissions, "but then, nobody I know does".[37] His last years were instead spent in the care of his niece, playing piano, doing crossword puzzles and walking through Central Park.[44] Rorem died at home in Manhattan on November 18, 2022, at age 99.[1]
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"To the young, sex is what grown-ups do. To the old, sex is what the young do."
Ned Rorem
#BornThisDay – October 23, 1923
Ned Rorem's PARIS DIARY (1966) and his various other diaries brought him notoriety because he was so candid about his gayness and the sex lives of his friends, describing his liaisons with Noël Coward, Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Samuel Barber, John Cheever, and Virgil Thomson, and along the way, outing at least a dozen other famous figures. Gay THE NEW YORKER writer Janet Flanner called his diaries "highly indiscreet".
Rorem composed symphonies, piano concertos and other orchestral works, chamber pieces, 11 operas, choral works of all sorts, ballets, and music for the theatre, plus literally hundreds of songs. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He published 20 books, including six volumes of those diaries, along with collections of lectures and criticism. Now, he is remembered for his art songs, typically for a single voice and piano using the poetry of writers such as John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Howard Moss, Sylvia Plath, Wallace Stevens, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Walt Whitman.
Rorem lived an extraordinary life. As a beautiful talented young flaneur he found himself moving in a social circle of gay artists such as Jean Cocteau and John Cage. His diaries don't hold back in name dropping, gossip, or scandals, with Rorem recalling many of his naughty exploits. They also offer a remarkably frank insight into the creative process.
Rorem wrote this about our own modern gay times: "I don't approve of gays in the military. I'm a pacifist and a Quaker. To spend all of that time to get into the military so you can kill people, rather than spending the time to get rid of the military, is not what gay men, or all men, should be doing. I don't approve of gay marriage. Well, I don't approve of any marriage, except if it can help legally with adoptions, to legally inherit and that sort of thing. But to fight to be legally married, I don't think it's very important."
He died in November 2022 at 99 years old.
Photo: Rorem in 1953 in Paris, photographer unknown Kuva vähem
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