Tag: Ned Rorem

  • The power of critics

    “Critics sometimes say, about this or that new work – it should betaken up by all our major orchestras and recorded.  It never is.  Critics have great power, but they have no power.” Ned Rorem (2000) Lies: A Diary 1986-1999.  Cambridge: MA: Da Capo Press, p.27.

  • Rorem’s affinity with French music

    “Bartók’s music as a whole is a music I never think about when its not around.  It’s impeccable, it’s theatrical, it’s even great.  It dazzles, thrills, horrifies, sometimes irritates, but also moves me.  But I’m not touched by it, as by, for instance, the outset of the quartet by Ravel – Ravel, supposed to be…

  • What Cage couldn’t stand

    “John Cage once said he couldn’t abide the Dominant Seventh, and the saxophone.” Ned Rorem (2000) Lies: A Diary 1986-1999.  Cambridge: MA: Da Capo Press, p.65.

  • The necessity of the serial method

    Boulez declares: “Any composer of our time who has not felt the necessity of the serial method is worthless.”  Omit the word “not,” and I agree. Ned Rorem (2000) Lies: A Diary 1986-1999.  Cambridge: MA: Da Capo Press, p.69.

  • Art is meant to be uplifting

    “Art,” announces Pat Buchanan to Charlie Rose, “is meant to be uplifting.” What a relief!  After all these years I’d never realized that Art had a moral purpose.  No more need now to be upset by Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, Picasso and Goya, Stravinsky and Berg, Sophocles and Williams.  Pat has clarified the rules, set the…

  • Cure for the common chord

    He [John Holmes] entered my room around midnight and said, “‘Eureka!’ shouted Arnold Schoenberg. ‘I’ve found the cure for the common chord.’” Ned Rorem (2000) Lies: A Diary 1986-1999.  Cambridge: MA: Da Capo Press, p.104.

  • What is an artist?

    “What is an artist? An artist is a tortured being who, when he opens his mouth to scream, only beautiful sounds emerge.” (Or something like that.)… Do I believe this at all?  It was John Cage who first exposed us to this gorgeous phrase.  In 1945?  Cage the Romantic? Ned Rorem (2000) Lies: A Diary…

  • A hundred violins may play softer than one

    John Holmes “reiterates that only with a large group can you get a truly soft sound. Sure, a solo fiddle can hold its own against a hundred fiddles: a hundred fiddles are never a hundred times louder than a solo at the same dynamic, since there’s no such animal as “a same dynamic,” or even…

  • Underrated and overrated composers

    “Polls of various musical personalities (but not me) in the Times about who’s underrated and who’s overrated.  Naturally Vivaldi is deemed overrated in the light of Bach.  Since everyone knows he’s overrated.  I’d have said he’s the most underrated of overrated composers.” Ned Rorem (2000) Lies: A Diary 1986-1999.  Cambridge: MA: Da Capo Press, p.82.…