<div><b>Acclaimed composer Ned Rorem delights and provokes with a fearless collection of vivid memories, critiques, and musings on life, music, and his world</b><BR>Pulitzer Prize&ndash;winning American composer Ned Rorem has been lauded for his art songs, symphonies, operas, and other orchestral works. With <i>Critical Affairs</i>, as with his other literary works, the great maestro once again demonstrates that he is a master of words as well as music. Winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, <i>Critical Affairs </i>opens a window into the brilliant mind of a multi-talented artist and acute observer of the world around him. Rorem is fearless&mdash;sometimes shameless&mdash;in critiques of his contemporaries and their work. He gives glowing praise to those who merit it and tears down those he feels do not with a sharp and cunning wit. His remembrances of past challenges and conquests, both artistic and sexual, alternately scandalize and mesmerize, and his thoughts on everything from Walt Whitman to rock music carry weight and substance. Through it all, the author retains his unique charm and grace, whether he&rsquo;s confidently confessing a shocking personal indiscretion or remembering with lyrical fondness a late musical giant who helped to shape his extraordinary career.</div>

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Critical Affairs

<div><b>In the earliest published diaries of Ned Rorem, the acclaimed American composer recalls a bygone era and its luminaries, celebrates the creative process, and examines the gay culture of Europe and the US during the 1950s</b><BR>One of America&rsquo;s most significant contemporary composers, Ned Rorem is also widely acclaimed as a diarist of unique insight and refreshing candor. Together, his <i>Paris Diary</i>, first published in 1966, and <i>The New York Diary</i>,which followed a year later, paint a colorful landscape of Rorem&rsquo;s world and its famous inhabitants, as well as a fascinating self-portrait of a footloose young artist unabashedly drinking deeply of life. In this amalgam of forthright personal reflections and cogent social commentary, unprecedented for its time, Rorem&rsquo;s anecdotal recollections of the decade from 1951 to 1961 represent Gay Liberation in its infancy as the author freely expresses his open sexuality not as a revelation but as a simple fact of life. At once blisteringly honest and exquisitely entertaining, Rorem&rsquo;s diaries expound brilliantly on the creative process, following their peripatetic author from Paris to Morocco to Italy and back home to America as he crosses paths with Picasso, Cocteau, Gide, Boulez, and other luminaries of the era.  With consummate skill and unexpurgated insight, a younger, wilder Rorem reflects on a bygone time and culture and, in doing so, holds a revealing mirror to himself. </div>

The Paris Diary & The New York Diary, 1951–1961

<div><b>The esteemed American composer and unabashed diarist Ned Rorem provides a fascinating, brazenly intimate first-person account of his life and career during one of the most extraordinary decades of the twentieth century </b><BR>Ned Rorem is often considered an American treasure, one of the greatest contemporary composers in the US. In 1966, he revealed another side of his remarkable talent when <i>The Paris Diary </i>was published, and a year later, <i>The New York Diary</i>, both to wide critical acclaim. In <i>The Later Diaries</i>,Rorem continues to explore his world and his music in intimate journal form, covering the years 1961 to 1972, one of his most artistically productive decades. The Ned Rorem revealed in <i>The Later Diaries</i> is somewhat more mature and worldly than the young artist of the earlier works, but no less candid or daring, as he reflects on his astonishing life, loves, friendships, and rivalries during an epoch of staggering, sometimes volatile change. Writing with intelligence, insight, and honesty, he recalls time spent with some of the most famous, and infamous, artists of the era&mdash;Philip Roth, Christopher Isherwood, Tallulah Bankhead, and Edward Albee, among others&mdash;openly exploring his sexuality and his art while offering fascinating, sometimes blistering, views on the art of his contemporaries.</div>

The Later Diaries of Ned Rorem, 1961–1972

<div><b>A magnificent collection of essays, opinions, and reflections on life, culture, art, love, and music&mdash;always lyrical, witty, and brazenly provocative&mdash;from one of the most acclaimed contemporary American composers</b><i><BR>Time </i>magazine has called Ned Rorem &ldquo;the world&rsquo;s best composer of art songs.&rdquo; 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. <i>An Absolute Gift </i>is a cornucopia of Roremisms&mdash;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&rsquo;s lambasting or celebrating the world&rsquo;s great musical works and their creators (and, according to Stephen Sondheim, &ldquo;He is one of the best writers about music that I have ever read&rdquo;), offering intensely personal musings on death and love, or brilliantly dissecting the artist&rsquo;s craft, Ned Rorem is always fascinating, always provocative, and enormously entertaining.</div>

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An Absolute Gift

<div><b>A sterling collection of essays, commentary, reviews, and personal recollections on art, love, and the musical life, from Ned Rorem, award-winning composer and author extraordinaire</b><BR>Ned Rorem, the acclaimed American composer and writer, displays his incisive, sometimes outrageous genius for artistic critique and social commentary with a grand flourish in this engaging collection of essays and diary entries. Fearlessly offering opinions on a wealth of subjects&mdash;from the lives of the famous and infamous to popular culture to the state of contemporary art&mdash;Rorem proves once again that he is an artist who tells unforgettable stories not only through music, but with a pen, as well. <i>Setting the Tone </i>gathers together essays and commentary previously published elsewhere and combines them with pages from Rorem&rsquo;s ongoing diary, offering readers a vivid and enlightening view of Rorem&rsquo;s world along with an honest portrait of the author himself. Whether he&rsquo;s lambasting critics and former friends and acquaintances, vivisecting opera, or presenting his views on theater, film, books, or composers and their music, Rorem is ingenious, incorrigible, and madly entertaining.</div>

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Setting the Tone

<div><b>A thrilling, poignant, and bold memoir of the early years and accomplishments&mdash;both musical and sexual&mdash;of renowned contemporary composer Ned Rorem</b><BR>Ned Rorem, arguably the greatest composer of art songs that America has produced in more than a hundred years, is also revered as a diarist and essayist whose unexpurgated writings are at once enthralling, enlightening, and provocative. In <i>Knowing When to Stop</i>, one of the most creative American artists of our time offers readers a colorful narrative of his first twenty-seven years, expertly unraveling the intriguing conundrum of who he truly is and how he came to be that way. As the author himself writes, &ldquo;A memoir is not a diary. Diaries are written in the heat of battle, memoirs in the repose of retrospect.&rdquo; But careful thought and consideration have not dulled the sharp point of Rorem&rsquo;s pen as he writes openly of his life and loves, his missteps and triumphs, and offers frank and fascinating portraits of the luminaries in his circle: Aaron Copland, Truman Capote, Jean Cocteau, Martha Graham, Igor Stravinsky, Billie Holliday, Paul Bowles, and Alfred C. Kinsey, to name a few. The result is an early life story that is riveting, moving, and intimate&mdash;a magnificent self-portrait of one of the great minds of this age. </div>

Knowing When to Stop

<div><b>The acclaimed author of <i>The Paris Diary</i>, Pulitzer Prize&ndash;winning American composer Ned Rorem offers readers a mellow, thoughtful, and candid chronicle of his life, work, and contemporaries</b><BR>One of our most revered contemporary musical artists&mdash;winner of the Pulitzer Prize and declared &ldquo;the world&rsquo;s best composer of art songs&rdquo; by <i>Time </i>magazine&mdash;Ned Rorem writes that he is &ldquo;a composer who writes, not a writer who composes.&rdquo; Despite this claim, Rorem&rsquo;s published diaries, memoirs, essay collections, and other nonfiction works have all received resounding acclaim for their lyricism, bold honesty, and insightful social commentary. His <i>Nantucket Diary</i>, covering the years 1973 through 1985, reveals a more mature and graceful Ned Rorem, a man who has experienced great loss and serious illness yet has lost none of his acute observational skills and keenly opinionated nature. His wit remains bracing and his candor refreshing as he offers sharp critiques on the state of modern classical music and its creators. His accounts of times shared with luminaries and legends, musical and otherwise (including Leonard Bernstein, Edward Albee, Virgil Thomson, and Stephen Sondheim) are consistently enthralling and delightful. The outspoken hedonist of <i>The Paris Diary </i>may be older and more subdued now, but his incisive observations and unique outlook on life, both personal and creative, remain an unforgettable reading experience.</div>

The Nantucket Diary of Ned Rorem, 1973–1985

<div><b>Ned Rorem explores the state of contemporary classical music in a magnificent collection of personally selected essays and critiques of masterworks, lesser works, and their legendary creators</b><BR>Pulitzer Prize&ndash;winner Ned Rorem&rsquo;s musical compositions are considered some of the finest produced in the past century. His literary works have been hailed as &ldquo;scintillating&rdquo; (<i>Time </i>magazine) and &ldquo;extraordinary&rdquo; (<i>The Washington Post</i>). Rorem&rsquo;s remarkable twin talents are brilliantly intertwined in <i>Settling the Score</i>, a masterful collection of essays on music, composers, and the state of the art. Selected by Rorem himself, these enthralling and provocative pieces examine the works of the great and (in the author&rsquo;s lively, unabashed opinion) the not-so-great masters of twentieth-century classical music&mdash;Debussy, Ravel, Copland, Gershwin, Barber, Cage, Bernstein, Britten, Stravinsky, and others. With keen precision, he dissects the so-called serious music of our time while predicting where the form is bound in the future. Never lacking in intelligence or wit, each essay in <i>Settling the Score</i> sings in a voice that is clear and true.</div>

Settling the Score

<div><b>A collection of insightful essays, interviews, and commentaries on music, art, and those who make it, from acclaimed author and Pulitzer Prize&ndash;winning composer Ned Rorem</b><BR>It is a rare artist who can deftly cross the boundaries separating one artistic endeavor from another. Contemporary American composer Ned Rorem is one of the able few, not only &ldquo;the world&rsquo;s best composer of art songs&rdquo; (<i>Time </i>magazine) but a remarkable purveyor of prose works, as well. Rorem&rsquo;s superb collection <i>Other Entertainment</i> features insightful and fascinating essays on music, musicians, and literature, as well as provocative interviews with well-known figures in the arts and elsewhere. Whether he&rsquo;s offering a cogent analysis of Benjamin Britten&rsquo;s published diaries, confronting John Simon on the famously acerbic film and theater reviewer&rsquo;s alleged homophobia, or providing in-depth commentary on the lives and accomplishments of major artists and musical colleagues&mdash;as well as moving obituaries for those we have lost&mdash;Rorem proves himself to be as entertaining and controversial a social and cultural critic as America has ever produced.</div>

Ned Rorem

Books By Ned Rorem (9 Books)