Born on October 23, 1923 in Richmond, Indiana (d. 2022), Ned Rorem, acclaimed American composer and author, was widely celebrated as one of the world's most prolific and masterful creators of art songs, with a special affinity for poetry unparalled in modern music. Over his long career, he composed more than 500 art songs, drawing from diverse literary influences, setting poems by Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Frank O'Hara, and Paul Goodman among many others, and showcasing, in his musical settings a lifelong dedication to tonality, lyricism, and the neoromantic aesthetic over modernism. Beyond his vocal catalog, Rorem was an accomplished orchestral and chamber composer as well, winning the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his suite "Air Music." He was equally famous for his secondary career as a writer, publishing 16 books including highly candid diaries—most notably The Paris Diary—which chronicled his artistic and personal life among mid-century cultural icons like Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, and Leonard Bernstein. We'll celebrate his unique musical legacy through a wide range his works on Friday afternoon's Classical Music with Foley Schuler.
You can hear Foley's musical selections—and stories behind th emusic—every weekday afternoon from 1 until 4 on Blue Lake Public Radio.
