Absolute Gift

by Ned Rorem

A magnificent collection of essays, opinions, and reflections on life, culture, art, love, and music—always lyrical, witty, and brazenly provocative—from one of the most acclaimed contemporary American composers


Time magazine has called Ned Rorem “the world’s best composer of art songs.” But his genius does not end in the realm of classical music. Rorem has a rare gift for writing, as well, and the wide acclaim that has greeted his memoirs, essay collections, and published diaries attest to this fact.
 

An Absolute Gift is a cornucopia of Roremisms—essays, reviews, and opinions on a vast array of fascinating subjects, from music to film to drama to sex. Here also are candid diary entries, displaying the frankness and remarkable insight for which Rorem is known. Whether he’s lambasting or celebrating the world’s great musical works and their creators (and, according to Stephen Sondheim, “He is one of the best writers about music that I have ever read”), offering intensely personal musings on death and love, or brilliantly dissecting the artist’s craft, Ned Rorem is always fascinating, always provocative, and enormously entertaining.

Genres: Music

286 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 1978

About the author

Ned Rorem (born October 23, 1923) is a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer and diarist. He is best known and most praised for his song settings.

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[vague] (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.