Tag: Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning musician

  • Ned Rorem, prize-winning composer and author, dies at 99

    By way of Related Press

    NEW YORK:  Ned Rorem, the prolific Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning musician identified for his huge output of compositions and for his barbed and now and again scandalous prose, died Friday at 99.

    The scoop used to be showed via a publicist for his longtime track writer, Boosey & Hawkes, who stated he died of herbal reasons at his house on Long island’s Higher West Aspect.

    The good-looking, vigorous artist produced a thousand-work catalog starting from symphonies and operas to solo instrumental, chamber and vocal track, along with 16 books. He additionally contributed to the rating for the Al Pacino-starring movie “Panic in Needle Park.”

    Time mag as soon as referred to as Rorem “the arena’s easiest composer of artwork songs,” and he used to be notable for his masses of compositions for the solo human voice. The poet and librettist J.D. McClatchy, writing in The Paris Overview, described him as “an untortured artist and rushing narcissist.”

    His track used to be most commonly tonal, regardless that very a lot trendy, and Rorem didn’t hesitate to try his published phrases at different distinguished contemporaries who espoused the dissonant avant-garde, like Pierre Boulez.

    “If Russia had Stalin and Germany had Hitler, France nonetheless has Pierre Boulez,” Rorem as soon as wrote.

    He had a fundamental motto for songwriting: “Write gracefully for the voice — this is, make the voice line as observed on paper have the arched glide which singers love to interpret.”

    Rorem received the 1976 Pulitzer for his “Air Song: Ten Etudes for Orchestra.” The 1989 Grammy for exceptional orchestral recording went to The Atlanta Symphony for Rorem’s “String Symphony, Sunday Morning, and Eagles.”

    His 1962 “Poems of Love and the Rain” is a 17-song cycle set to texts via American poets; the similar textual content is ready two times, in a contrasting means.

    Born in Richmond, Indiana, Rorem used to be the son of C. Rufus Rorem, whose concepts within the Nineteen Thirties had been the foundation for the Blue Go and Blue Protect insurance policy and who grew to become to Quaker philosophy, elevating his son as a pacifist.

    The more youthful Rorem went to day faculty on the elite College of Chicago Laboratory Colleges. By the point he used to be 10, his piano trainer presented him to Debussy and Ravel, which “modified my existence endlessly,” stated the composer whose track used to be tinged with French lyricism.

    He went on to review on the American Conservatory of Song in Hammond, Indiana, and Northwestern College in Evanston, Illinois, then the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and the Juilliard College in New York.

    As a tender composer within the Fifties, he lived in another country for 8 years, most commonly in Paris however with two years in Morocco.

    “The Paris Diary” covers his keep there and is full of well-known names of other folks he met — Jean Cocteau, Francis Poulenc, Balthus, Salvador Dali, Paul Bowles, John Cage, Guy Ray, and James 1st earl baldwin of bewdley. The past due author Janet Flanner referred to as it “worldly, clever, licentious, extremely indiscreet.” Rorem himself stated his textual content used to be “stuffed with drunkenness, intercourse, and the debate of my betters.”

    His literary self-portrait persisted via 1985, contained in “The New York Diary,” “The Later Diaries” and “The Nantucket Diary.”

    “His essays are composed like ratings,” McClatchy as soon as wrote of him. “The similar hallmarks we concentrate for in Rorem’s track can be present in his essays a smartly: indirection, instinctive grace, highbrow aplomb, a lyrical line.”

    Some had been appalled via Rorem’s infamous accounting of his relationships with 4 big-name males in track: Leonard Bernstein, Noel Coward, Samuel Barber, and Virgil Thomson. He additionally outed a couple of others.

    However maximum of his personal existence used to be targeted round James Holmes, an organist and choir director with whom he lived for 3 a long time in New York Town. Holmes died in 1999. A commentary from Boosey & Hawkes stated Rorem died surrounded via family and friends and is survived via six nieces and nephews and 11 grandnieces and grandnephews.

    Drawing on his upbringing, Rorem based totally his “Quaker Reader” — a selection of items for organ — on Quaker texts.

    As for his non-musical writings, he stated: “My track is a diary no much less compromising than my prose. A diary however differs from a musical composition in that it depicts the instant, the author’s provide temper which, had been it inscribed an hour later, may just emerge relatively another way.”

    Rorem’s essays on track seem in anthologies titled “Atmosphere the Tone,” “Song from the Within Out,” and “Song and Other folks.”

    “Why do I write track?” he as soon as requested. “As a result of I wish to pay attention it — it’s so simple as that.”

    NEW YORK:  Ned Rorem, the prolific Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning musician identified for his huge output of compositions and for his barbed and now and again scandalous prose, died Friday at 99.

    The scoop used to be showed via a publicist for his longtime track writer, Boosey & Hawkes, who stated he died of herbal reasons at his house on Long island’s Higher West Aspect.

    The good-looking, vigorous artist produced a thousand-work catalog starting from symphonies and operas to solo instrumental, chamber and vocal track, along with 16 books. He additionally contributed to the rating for the Al Pacino-starring movie “Panic in Needle Park.”

    Time mag as soon as referred to as Rorem “the arena’s easiest composer of artwork songs,” and he used to be notable for his masses of compositions for the solo human voice. The poet and librettist J.D. McClatchy, writing in The Paris Overview, described him as “an untortured artist and rushing narcissist.”

    His track used to be most commonly tonal, regardless that very a lot trendy, and Rorem didn’t hesitate to try his published phrases at different distinguished contemporaries who espoused the dissonant avant-garde, like Pierre Boulez.

    “If Russia had Stalin and Germany had Hitler, France nonetheless has Pierre Boulez,” Rorem as soon as wrote.

    He had a fundamental motto for songwriting: “Write gracefully for the voice — this is, make the voice line as observed on paper have the arched glide which singers love to interpret.”

    Rorem received the 1976 Pulitzer for his “Air Song: Ten Etudes for Orchestra.” The 1989 Grammy for exceptional orchestral recording went to The Atlanta Symphony for Rorem’s “String Symphony, Sunday Morning, and Eagles.”

    His 1962 “Poems of Love and the Rain” is a 17-song cycle set to texts via American poets; the similar textual content is ready two times, in a contrasting means.

    Born in Richmond, Indiana, Rorem used to be the son of C. Rufus Rorem, whose concepts within the Nineteen Thirties had been the foundation for the Blue Go and Blue Protect insurance policy and who grew to become to Quaker philosophy, elevating his son as a pacifist.

    The more youthful Rorem went to day faculty on the elite College of Chicago Laboratory Colleges. By the point he used to be 10, his piano trainer presented him to Debussy and Ravel, which “modified my existence endlessly,” stated the composer whose track used to be tinged with French lyricism.

    He went on to review on the American Conservatory of Song in Hammond, Indiana, and Northwestern College in Evanston, Illinois, then the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and the Juilliard College in New York.

    As a tender composer within the Fifties, he lived in another country for 8 years, most commonly in Paris however with two years in Morocco.

    “The Paris Diary” covers his keep there and is full of well-known names of other folks he met — Jean Cocteau, Francis Poulenc, Balthus, Salvador Dali, Paul Bowles, John Cage, Guy Ray, and James 1st earl baldwin of bewdley. The past due author Janet Flanner referred to as it “worldly, clever, licentious, extremely indiscreet.” Rorem himself stated his textual content used to be “stuffed with drunkenness, intercourse, and the debate of my betters.”

    His literary self-portrait persisted via 1985, contained in “The New York Diary,” “The Later Diaries” and “The Nantucket Diary.”

    “His essays are composed like ratings,” McClatchy as soon as wrote of him. “The similar hallmarks we concentrate for in Rorem’s track can be present in his essays a smartly: indirection, instinctive grace, highbrow aplomb, a lyrical line.”

    Some had been appalled via Rorem’s infamous accounting of his relationships with 4 big-name males in track: Leonard Bernstein, Noel Coward, Samuel Barber, and Virgil Thomson. He additionally outed a couple of others.

    However maximum of his personal existence used to be targeted round James Holmes, an organist and choir director with whom he lived for 3 a long time in New York Town. Holmes died in 1999. A commentary from Boosey & Hawkes stated Rorem died surrounded via family and friends and is survived via six nieces and nephews and 11 grandnieces and grandnephews.

    Drawing on his upbringing, Rorem based totally his “Quaker Reader” — a selection of items for organ — on Quaker texts.

    As for his non-musical writings, he stated: “My track is a diary no much less compromising than my prose. A diary however differs from a musical composition in that it depicts the instant, the author’s provide temper which, had been it inscribed an hour later, may just emerge relatively another way.”

    Rorem’s essays on track seem in anthologies titled “Atmosphere the Tone,” “Song from the Within Out,” and “Song and Other folks.”

    “Why do I write track?” he as soon as requested. “As a result of I wish to pay attention it — it’s so simple as that.”