Ned Rorem

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American composer of art song, writer and music teacher. Rorem received a Fulbright Fellowship in 1951, two Guggenheim fellowships, a Grammy, an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters 1968, the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award 1971 for his book "Critical Affairs" and the Pulitzer Prize for "Air Music" 1976. Rorem moved to Chicago as a child with his Quaker parents. His father was a co-founder of Blue Cross and his mother espoused pacifist causes. By age ten his piano teacher had him playing Debussy and Ravel changing his life forever. In 1936 while in Europe for three months he kept a diary. At 14 he entered the Music School of Northwestern University, two years later receiving a scholarship to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. He studied composition at Juilliard receiving his BA in 1946 and his MA along with the $1,000 George Gershwin Memorial Prize in composition in 1948. He also studied on a fellowship at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood with Aaron Copland in the summers of 1946-47. Working as a copyist for Virgil Thomson he earned $20 a week and received orchestration lessons. Rorem traveled to Morocco in 1948, moved to France in 1949 and remained there until 1957. An avid diarist, he wrote daily since September 1945 and has published five books based on his daily observations, including "The Paris Diary," "Settling the Score" and "Knowing When to Stop." Rorem has composed three symphonies, three piano concertos, six operas, many orchestral, chamber, choral, theater, and vocal works, is a former faculty member of University of Buffalo, University of Utah, Curtis Institute and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Many of today's best composers have learned composition from Rorem. Although he has published 15 books he still calls himself a composer who happens to write. A homosexual, Rorem has lived with life-partner James Holmes, organist, choral conductor and musicologist since 1967. He has homes in New York City and Nantucket, MA. Link to Wikipedia biography