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The Later Diaries of Ned Rorem 1961 1972
Book by Rorem, Ned
439 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
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33 people want to read
About the author
Ned Rorem
180 books7 followersNed 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 5, 2014
It does seem churlish to criticize a diarist for being self-centered, but there's something missing here that prevents the "Later Diaries" of the 1960s from being as interesting as they could have been or should have been. And maybe it is that Ned Rorem was so wrapped up in his own personal life with its rather minor accomplishments and frustrations that he failed to see what was going on around him. I mean: the 1960s! The youth rebellion, the Vietnam War, Race Riots in the cities. He does write a little bit about Rock and Roll music, for which I give him some credit, but there is no sense that he appreciated the significance of the tumultuous decade that the time frame of this publication encompasses.
Rorem combines discretion and indiscretion in a peculiar manner. There's something "chilly" as he recounts (like Don Giovanni) his thousands of sexual encounters in his twenties and thirties - it seems as if these were accomplished through compulsion, without any true significance or meaning. At a certain point in the decade represented here, he appears to have foresworn further sexual encounters, but it's not really clear why or when he does so. Moreover, by the early 1970s he seems to have entered into a long term committed emotional relationship with a younger man, JH (Jimmy Holmes, as identified in the photographs), but there is no elaboration or explanation.
Then there's the recurrent self-pity, which is rather unappealing in a man who is living a comfortable upper-middle class lifestyle in Mid-Manhattan, without personal tragedy or major illness. He's getting older and is not quite as beautiful as he used to be! Alas.
Rorem is most interesting in writing about his friends and rivals who were also active composers of the time: Copland, Menotti, Bernstein, Boulez - they all show up here and Rorem has interesting things to say about them.
If you are looking to read the journals of a prominent gay artist in the 1960s, I would recommend the Diaries of Cecil Beaton. Beaton no doubt was "bitchier" and probably a lot harder to get along with, but the Beaton Diaries give a better sense of what it is was like to be a middle aged gay artist in the 1960s. (Admittedly Beaton was a visual artist, and 18 years older than Rorem, but he actually seems to have had a lot more young friends than the composer.)
Rorem combines discretion and indiscretion in a peculiar manner. There's something "chilly" as he recounts (like Don Giovanni) his thousands of sexual encounters in his twenties and thirties - it seems as if these were accomplished through compulsion, without any true significance or meaning. At a certain point in the decade represented here, he appears to have foresworn further sexual encounters, but it's not really clear why or when he does so. Moreover, by the early 1970s he seems to have entered into a long term committed emotional relationship with a younger man, JH (Jimmy Holmes, as identified in the photographs), but there is no elaboration or explanation.
Then there's the recurrent self-pity, which is rather unappealing in a man who is living a comfortable upper-middle class lifestyle in Mid-Manhattan, without personal tragedy or major illness. He's getting older and is not quite as beautiful as he used to be! Alas.
Rorem is most interesting in writing about his friends and rivals who were also active composers of the time: Copland, Menotti, Bernstein, Boulez - they all show up here and Rorem has interesting things to say about them.
If you are looking to read the journals of a prominent gay artist in the 1960s, I would recommend the Diaries of Cecil Beaton. Beaton no doubt was "bitchier" and probably a lot harder to get along with, but the Beaton Diaries give a better sense of what it is was like to be a middle aged gay artist in the 1960s. (Admittedly Beaton was a visual artist, and 18 years older than Rorem, but he actually seems to have had a lot more young friends than the composer.)
November 14, 2023
Seems that some people told him that the Paris Diaries were some minor masterpiece, which they are not, and so he went on, somewhat ponderously, producing entries for the remainder of his life, musing on his lost looks, commenting on the cultural, or memorial divide between this and that, youth and old age, France, Fez and the States, etc. All the noteworthy figures of a certain scene, plus some more are encountered, or not, making this little nook of the world narrower, more confined than the casual glance would naively assume.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews