Rorem, Ned (1923-2022), an American composer and author, won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for music for his orchestral suite Air Music. However, Rorem gained his greatest acclaim as a composer of art songs. He also won recognition, and some controversy, for his diaries and essays on music.
Many of Rorem’s early compositions were solo songs. He then wrote works for voice and instrumental accompaniment, often in cycles, such as Poems of Love and the Rain (1962-1963). Rorem also composed operas, works featuring piano and organ, and chamber music.
Rorem lived in France and Morocco from 1948 to 1958. The Paris Diary of Ned Rorem (1966) caused much comment because of Rorem’s candid accounts of the personal lives of such cultural figures as author Jean Cocteau and composers Georges Auric and Francis Poulenc. Rorem also wrote The New York Diary (1967), The Final Diary: 1961-1972 (1974), and The Nantucket Diary of Ned Rorem, 1973-1985 (1987). His writings on music have been collected in Settling the Score: Essays on Music (1988). He wrote a memoir, Knowing When to Stop (1994).
Rorem was born in Richmond, Indiana. He studied music at Northwestern University from 1940 to 1942 and at the Curtis Institute in 1943. He received a B.S. degree from the Juilliard School of Music in 1946. He died on Nov. 18, 2022.
