Life
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 (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.
His notable students include Daron Hagen.
Read more about this topic: Ned Rorem
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Not lived; for life doth her great actions spell,
By what was done and wrought
In season, and so brought
To light: her measures are, how well
Each syllab’e answered, and was formed how fair;
These make the lines of life, and that’s her air.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“Your faith an’ trouth yese never get
Nor our trew Love shall never twain
Till ye come within my bower
And kiss me both cheek and chin.
My mouth it is full cold, Margret,
It has the smell now of the ground;
An’ if I kiss thy com’ly mouth
Thy life days will not be long.”
—Unknown. Clerk Saunders (l. 109–116)
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)