Posted on 10/24/2018 7:42:07 AM PDT by Borges
“I know everything,” the composer Ned Rorem said on a recent afternoon, “but I remember nothing.”
Mr. Rorem — elder statesman of American art song, prolific prose writer, pioneer of gay liberation — was exaggerating. Now 95 years old (as of Tuesday), he is more forgetful than he used to be. But he actually remembers quite a lot.
Give him the right prompt, and he can dish at length on nearly every cultural luminary of the past century — he’s known almost all personally — and reminisce about Picasso’s Paris or the New York City of $25 rents. He’s a walking archive and anachronism.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Fascinating guy.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is 99.
Olivia de Havilland is 102.
Carl Reiner is 96.
Nehemiah Persoff is 99.
Amazing that these people are still around.
Kirk Douglas turns 102 in December.
Rorem wouldn’t be the first composer to stop composing, though at 95 it’s more understandable with him. Giacomo Rossini, Jan Sibelius, and Charles Ives, among others, decided in the middle of their lives to give up composing music. Rossini concentrated on cuisine, Ives on his business career, and Sibelius? Well, everyone already knew when he stopped something that he was able to Finnish...
Rossini only stopped composing operas. He continued to compose in other forms. Sibelius was already in his mid 60s when he stopped with about 40 years worth of music behind him. Most great composers don’t even live that long.
McCartney hasn’t written anything worth a shit in 20+ years.
He just released a new album!
So he stopped composing...but he’s not yet decomposing....
McCartney hasn’t written anything worth a shit in 20+ years.
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McCartney hasn’t written anything worth a shit....EVER.
Could have written it "At 95, Ned Rorem Is Done Composing. But He’s Not yet Decomposing."
Aw shoot, you beat me to the punchline!
Yeah the Beatles would have been much better off without him. Lennon’s solo career demonstrated that. /sarc
The Beatles suck.
Oh you’re one of THOSE people. What was the great music of that period then? Say 62-67.
I’m one of THOSE people who grew tired of being constantly told that the beatles were the greatest band ever. I always thought they sounded like screaming little girls.
So what was the genuinely good music from that era then? 62-66 even.
Ned Rorem is perhaps the composer whose name appears the most in crossword puzzles. It’s because his first and last name conveniently go consonant-vowel-consent etc.
Often clued as: “Composer Ned” or “Composer Rorem”
That’s mentioned in the article.
“At 95, Ned Rorem Is Done Composing.”
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