Notes for: July 19, 2005
Ned Rorem is arguably the most versatile of contemporary American composers. On the one hand his musical output has been prodigious – three symphonies, four piano concertos, six operas, choral works of every description, ballets and other music for the theater, and, his greatest legacy, more than 400 songs. (Two summers ago we heard his Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano.) On the other hand, he is the author of 14 books, including five volumes of diaries; a highly regarded memoir, Knowing When to Stop; and collections of critical essays, lectures and reminiscences. The sheer productivity of the man is breathtaking.
Moreover, Rorem considers his prose writing and his musical composition complementary skills. “My music is a diary no less compromising than my prose,” he once wrote. “A diary differs from a musical composition in that it depicts the moment, the writer’s present mood which, were it inscribed an hour later, could emerge quite otherwise. I don’t believe that composers notate their moods, they don’t tell the music where to go – it leads them.”
Rorem was born in Richmond, Indiana, the son of Rufus Rorem, a distinguished medical economist at Earlham College whose work led to the creation of the Blue Cross. A musical prodigy, he entered the Music School at Northwestern University at 17, received a scholarship two years later to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, then earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Juilliard. In 1948, his song “The Lordly Hudson” was voted the best published song of that year by the Music Library Association.
In 1949, he moved to Paris to continue his musical studies, remaining there until 1958 and befriending such notables as Arthur Honegger, Jean Cocteau and Francis Poulenc. Meanwhile, his compositions were attracting increasing attention in the United States, and starting in 1959 he received a series of academic appointments at the Universities of Buffalo and Utah and the Curtis Institute. He now lives in New York City and Nantucket.
Rorem has been one of the most honored of American composers. He has been recipient of Fullbright and Guggenheim Fellowships, an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters and, in 1976, the Pulitzer Prize. He has been awarded commissions from the Ford, Lincoln Center, and Koussevitzsky Foundations, Atlanta and Chicago Symphonies, New York Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall.
Bright Music, according to Rorem’s own program note for the recording of the work on New World Records, was commissioned in 1987 by the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival for five specific musicians – a flutist, two violinists, a cellist and a pianist. Rorem accepted the commission, intrigued by the unprecedented mixture of instruments. The work was premiered at the Festival in July, 1988, with three repeat performances the following March at the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society.
Writing about himself in the third person, Rorem continues:
“I’m struck by how the composer of Bright Music – who insofar as he is known at all is known for vocal pieces which are spacious and nonrepetitive – has here constructed not from themes but from motives, fragments.
‘Fandango’, for example, which is actually a rondo, is built from a ritornello [repetition] of four adjacent notes, E-D-G-F. The net effect is meant to evoke a rat in an ashcan, commencing with spasmodic flurries, starts and stops, then gusting into a raucous mazurka.
‘Pierrot’ is a meditation on Picasso’s early blue-period paintings, although this was decided ex post facto. ‘Dance-Song-Dance’ is a scherzo based on a major triad, followed by a long lament based on the same triad in slow motion that returns to the scherzo, and whirls to a close.
‘Another Dream’ is a series of solos by flute and strings that weave them selves slowly around the piano’s 48-measure ostinato [a repeated figure] in 9/8. Finally, ‘Chopin’ is the wisp of an echo of the composer’s B-flat minor piano sonata.
After the piece was done, the only problem remaining was what to call it. Originally named Chamber Music (had the term ever been used specifically rather than generically as a title?), that seemed just too dull. Sylvia Goldstein [a music publisher and the donor of an annual award for a new music composition] came up with the present title – apt, since as I grow older my music grows more optimistic.”