Born October 23, 1923 to Quaker parents in Richmond, Indiana, American composer Ned Rorem wrote many works from symphonies to choral works, chamber works, concerti, and others. But Time Magazine once wrote that he was "our foremost composer of art songs." His piece "Air Music" won the Pulitzer in 1976. Rorem was also a prolific prose writer, notably his series of diaries that began in the 1950s when he lived in Paris. His frank discussions of his life as a gay man made him a pioneer of gay liberation. His is also entertainingly chatty about his friends in the New York arts community, crabby about his health and certain people, and open about his likes and dislikes and opinions---that one song of Poulenc is worth more than all of Beethoven, etc. I love his diaries! HIs music, too. His diary "Lies" is a moving chronicle of a loved one dying of AIDS; Rorem's partner, organist James Holmes, died in 1999. Rorem wrote and composed up to age 95, and died last fall at age 99.
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