Ned Rorem

Words and music are inextricably linked for Ned Rorem. Time Magazine has called him "the world's best composer of art songs" (which number in the hundreds), yet his musical and literary ventures extend far beyond that specialized field.

Photo: Ned Rorem, photograph by Jack Mitchell, 1983.

Print This Page

Audio

Track:

    About

    Born in Richmond, Indiana, on October 23, 1923 to Quaker parents, Ned Rorem was raised in Chicago, where his father became a co-founder of Blue Cross and his mother espoused activist pacifist causes. He demonstrated an early interest in composition and piano, studying with Margaret Bonds, who introduced him to American music, and Nuta Rothschild, who awakened his Francophilia. Rorem then pursued advanced musical studies at Northwestern, the American Conservatory, Curtis, and finally at Juilliard, from which he took his master’s degree in 1948. He also worked privately with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood and Virgil Thomson in New York.

    In 1948 Rorem traveled to Morocco and in 1950 to Paris, where he remained for seven years, achieving international recognition and recording his experiences in a candid diary published to literary acclaim in 1966. The first of several books Rorem would publish, The Paris Diary, for all its gossip, shed valuable light on the musical and intellectual climate of the post-war era. His subsequent diaries and essays offer elegant and erudite analyses of aesthetic questions.

    Since his return to the United States in 1957, Rorem has divided his time between Manhattan and Nantucket. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his suite Air Music. He has composed three symphonies, four piano concerti, an array of other orchestral works, music for numerous combinations of chamber forces, ten operas, choral works of every description, ballets, and other music for the theatre. He is the author of sixteen books, including five volumes of diaries and collections of lectures and criticism.

    With more than 500 songs in his catalog, Rorem is one of the most prolific composers of the American art song. Heavily influenced by his interest in poetry, he has described the song as “a lyrical poem of moderate length set to music for single voice and piano.” In choosing texts, Rorem has the innate ability to select those of exquisite craftsmanship. While he has set the texts of British poets, including Edmund Spenser, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, he has also favored American writers such as Theodore Roethke, Paul Goodman, Kenneth Koch, and Walt Whitman. Indeed, Rorem has turned to Whitman’s writings as inspiration for a number of his compositions, including Five Songs to Poems by Walt Whitman (1957) and War Scenes, both for voice and piano (1969); Whitman Cantata for men’s chorus, brass, and timpani (1983); and Goodbye My Fancy for alto and baritone soloists, mixed chorus, and orchestra (1988).

    Sources
    –Thomas Hampson and Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold, PBS I Hear America Singing
    –Stephanie Poxon, Ph.D.
    –Ned Rorem Web site

    Time magazine dubbed Ned Rorem “the world’s best composer of art songs,” and the appellation certainly fits. There are 500 songs in Rorem’s catalog, which easily tops the efforts of nearly every other American composer (Charles Ives is perhaps the closest second, with nearly 200 songs). But Rorem’s output also includes three symphonies, four piano concertos (including one for the left hand alone), numerous choral and chamber works, ten operas, ballets, and other music for the theater. And then there are nearly twenty books, including a series of diaries and collections of lectures and criticism.

    Rorem was born in Richmond, Indiana on October 23, 1923. As a child he moved with his family to Chicago, where he began piano lessons. Through this early instruction, he was exposed to the music of Debussy and Ravel, which heavily influenced his craft, especially in song composition. When he was seventeen, Rorem entered the Music School of Northwestern University to study piano. In 1943, he was awarded a scholarship at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied counterpoint with Rosario Scalero and Gian Carlo Menotti. Further study in composition took place at the Juilliard School in New York, where Rorem obtained his B.A. degree in 1946. In 1948 he received his M.A degree there, along with Juilliard’s George Gershwin Memorial Prize in composition. Following graduation, Rorem worked for a time as Virgil Thomson’s copyist; as compensation he received $20 per week plus orchestration lessons.

    In 1949, Rorem moved to France, where he lived for almost a decade. Experiences from this time were later chronicled in The Paris Diary (1966), the first in a succession of published diaries. Although notorious for their candor, the diaries have received critical acclaim as some of the foremost examples in the English language of the contemporary diarist’s art. Rorem returned to the United States in 1958, where he held several teaching positions, including appointments at the University of Buffalo (1959-61), the University of Utah (1965-67), and the Curtis Institute (1980-86). He remained active as a composer, and in 1976 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his suite Air Music. Other honors bestowed on Rorem include a Fulbright Fellowship (1951), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1957), an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1968), three ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards, and an ASCAP Lifetime Achievement award (2003). In 1989, the Atlanta Symphony’s release of String Symphony, Sunday Morning, and Eagles won the Grammy Award for Outstanding Orchestral Recording.

    Rorem’s songs display a wide variety of styles. They are set to a vast number of poets, and range from short miniatures to lengthy cycles. The earlier settings feature texts from different literary periods, but for songs composed after 1950, Rorem generally preferred the texts of American poets, including Walt Whitman, and, from the 20th century, Howard Moss, Paul Goodman, Theodore Roethke, and Kenneth Koch. A master at text-setting, Rorem learned early in his craft how to manipulate square phrases in the poetry, and how to make the text flow smoothly and naturally by means of syncopation, meter changes, misplaced accents, and other rhythmic devices. Equally important are his accompaniments; Rorem is a first-rate pianist and this is reflected brilliantly in his songs. Rorem’s harmonic language mirrors those of Debussy, Stravinsky, and Hindemith; his songs often include complex chords, such as seventh, ninth, and eleventh chords, which account for the “jazz” flavor found in some of the songs. In addition, Rorem is particularly fond of using contrapuntal techniques–ground bass, ostinatos, imitation, and contrary motion–in his songs.

    In 1998, in celebration of Rorem’s 75th birthday, the New York Festival of Song gave the premiere performance of Rorem’s Evidence of Things Not Seen, a song cycle featuring 36 poems by 24 authors, and a repeat performance was later held at the Library of Congress’s Coolidge Auditorium. In 2003, in honor of the composer’s 80th birthday, a “Roremania” festival, essentially a two-week celebration encompassing Rorem’s works in every genre, was held at the Curtis Institute of Music. And in 2006, Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music presented the premiere performance of Rorem’s opera Our Town, based on the acclaimed Thornton Wilder play of the same name.

    –Stephanie Poxon, Ph.D.

    Related Information

    Songs

    A Child Asleep in Its Own Life

    Ned Rorem

    Wallace Stevens

    Song Collection: Last Poems of Wallace Stevens

    A Clear Day and No Memories

    Ned Rorem

    Wallace Stevens

    Song Collection: Last Poems of Wallace Stevens

    A Dead Statesman

    Ned Rorem

    Rudyard Kipling

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    A Dream of Nightingales

    Ned Rorem

    David Bergman

    A Glimpse

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    A Learned Man

    Ned Rorem

    Stephen Crane

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    A Night Battle

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Song Collection: War Scenes

    A Specimen Case

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Song Collection: War Scenes

    A Terrible Disaster

    Ned Rorem

    Paul Goodman

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    An Incident

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Song Collection: War Scenes

    Absalom

    Ned Rorem

    Paul Goodman

    Aftermath

    Song Collection

    Ned Rorem

    John Scott of Amwell

    William Blake

    Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    Richard Eberhart

    A. E. Housman

    Randall Jarrell

    John Hollander

    William Shakespeare

    Walter Savage Landor

    Muriel Rukeyser

    Are you the new person?

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    As Adam Early in the Morning

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Boy With a Baseball Glove

    Ned Rorem

    Paul Goodman

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    Chromatic Fantasy

    Ned Rorem

    Anthony Hecht

    Clouds

    Ned Rorem

    Paul Goodman

    Come In

    Ned Rorem

    Robert Frost

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    Comment on War

    Ned Rorem

    Langston Hughes

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    Conversation

    Ned Rorem

    Elizabeth Bishop

    Do I Love You

    Ned Rorem

    Jack Larson

    Song Collection: Poems of Love and Rain

    Even Now...

    Ned Rorem

    Paul Monette

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    Evidence of Things Not Seen

    Ned Rorem

    William Penn

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    Faith

    Ned Rorem

    Mark Doty

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    Five Poems of Walt Whitman

    Song Collection

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    For Poulenc

    Ned Rorem

    Frank O’Hara

    From "The Rain"

    Ned Rorem

    Donald Windham

    Song Collection: Poems of Love and Rain

    From Whence Cometh Song

    Ned Rorem

    Theodore Roethke

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    Gliding O'er All

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Song Collection: Five Poems of Walt Whitman

    Gods

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Song Collection: Five Poems of Walt Whitman

    Grief

    Ned Rorem

    Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    Song Collection: Aftermath

    His Beauty Sparkles

    Ned Rorem

    Paul Goodman

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    How Do I Love Thee?

    Ned Rorem

    Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    I Am He

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    I Saw a Mass

    Ned Rorem

    John Woolman

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Song Collection: Three Calamus Poems

    I Strolled Across an Open Field

    Ned Rorem

    Theodore Roethke

    Song Collection: Two Poems of Theodore Roethke

    I Will Always Love You

    Ned Rorem

    Frank O’Hara

    In the Rain

    Ned Rorem

    E. E. Cummings

    Song Collection: Poems of Love and Rain

    Inauguration Ball

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Song Collection: War Scenes

    Last Poems of Wallace Stevens

    Song Collection

    Ned Rorem

    Wallace Stevens

    Life in a Love

    Ned Rorem

    Robert Browning

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    Look Down, Fair Moon

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Song Collection: Five Poems of Walt Whitman

    Losses

    Ned Rorem

    Randall Jarrell

    Song Collection: Aftermath

    Love Cannot Fill

    Ned Rorem

    Edna St. Vincent Millay

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    Love's Stricken "Why"

    Ned Rorem

    Emily Dickinson

    Song Collection: Poems of Love and Rain

    More Than a Day

    Song Collection

    Ned Rorem

    Jack Larson

    Nantucket

    Ned Rorem

    William Carlos Williams

    Song Collection: Nantucket

    Not Ideas about the Thing but the Thing Itself

    Ned Rorem

    Wallace Stevens

    Song Collection: Last Poems of Wallace Stevens

    Now is the Dreadful Midnight

    Ned Rorem

    Paul Goodman

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    O You Whom I Often and Silently Come

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Of Him I Love Day and Night

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Song Collection: Three Calamus Poems

    Of Mere Being

    Ned Rorem

    Wallace Stevens

    Song Collection: Last Poems of Wallace Stevens

    On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday

    Ned Rorem

    Walter Savage Landor

    Song Collection: Aftermath

    Orchids

    Ned Rorem

    Theodore Roethke

    Song Collection: Two Poems of Theodore Roethke

    Pippa's Song (The Year's at the Spring)

    Ned Rorem

    Robert Browning

    Poems of Love and Rain

    Song Collection

    Ned Rorem

    W. H. Auden

    E. E. Cummings

    Emily Dickinson

    Howard Moss

    Jack Larson

    Kenneth Pitchford

    Theodore Roethke

    Donald Windham

    Reconciliation

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Song Collection: Five Poems of Walt Whitman

    See How They Love Me

    Ned Rorem

    Howard Moss

    Snake

    Ned Rorem

    Theodore Roethke

    Sometimes With One I Love

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Song Collection: Five Poems of Walt Whitman

    Song for Lying in Bed During a Night Rain

    Ned Rorem

    Kenneth Pitchford

    Song Collection: Poems of Love and Rain

    Songs of Sadness

    Song Collection

    Ned Rorem

    Mark Strand

    Sonnet LXIV

    Ned Rorem

    William Shakespeare

    Song Collection: Aftermath

    Stop All the Clocks

    Ned Rorem

    W. H. Auden

    Song Collection: Poems of Love and Rain

    Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

    Ned Rorem

    Robert Frost

    That Shadow, My Likeness

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    The Air is the Only

    Ned Rorem

    Howard Moss

    Song Collection: Poems of Love and Rain

    The Apparition

    Ned Rorem

    Theodore Roethke

    Song Collection: Poems of Love and Rain

    The Auden Poems

    Song Collection

    Ned Rorem

    W. H. Auden

    The Candid Man

    Ned Rorem

    Stephen Crane

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    The Comfort of Friends

    Ned Rorem

    William Penn

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    The Dance

    Ned Rorem

    William Carlos Williams

    Song Collection: The Nantucket Songs

    The Dove in Spring

    Ned Rorem

    Wallace Stevens

    Song Collection: Last Poems of Wallace Stevens

    The Drum

    Ned Rorem

    John Scott of Amwell

    Song Collection: Aftermath

    The End

    Ned Rorem

    Dana Gioia

    The Fury of the Aerial Bombardment

    Ned Rorem

    Richard Eberhart

    Song Collection: Aftermath

    The Lordly Hudson

    Ned Rorem

    Paul Goodman

    The Nantucket Songs

    Song Collection

    Ned Rorem

    Theodore Roethke

    Christina Rossetti

    William Carlos Williams

    The Open Road

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    The Park

    Ned Rorem

    John Hollander

    Song Collection: Aftermath

    The Planet on the Table

    Ned Rorem

    Wallace Stevens

    Song Collection: Last Poems of Wallace Stevens

    The Real War Will Never Get in the Books

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Song Collection: War Scenes

    The River of Rivers in Connecticut

    Ned Rorem

    Wallace Stevens

    Song Collection: Last Poems of Wallace Stevens

    The Sick Wife

    Ned Rorem

    Jane Kenyon

    Song Collection: Evidence of Things Not Seen

    Then

    Ned Rorem

    Muriel Rukeyser

    Song Collection: Aftermath

    To a Common Prostitute

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Song Collection: Three Calamus Poems

    To You

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Two Poems of Theodore Roethke

    Song Collection

    Ned Rorem

    Theodore Roethke

    Tygers of Wrath

    Ned Rorem

    William Blake

    A. E. Housman

    Song Collection: Aftermath

    War Scenes

    Song Collection

    Ned Rorem

    Walt Whitman

    Women's Voices

    Song Collection

    Ned Rorem

    Emily Dickinson

    Christina Rossetti

    Elinor Wylie

    Videos

    Recordings

    Vocalisms

    (John Harbison, James Primosch and Ned Rorem)

    2018

    Love Comes in at the Eye

    (Ned Rorem)

    2018

    The Soul Fox

    (Amy Marcy Beach, Lori Laitman and Ned Rorem)

    2017

    Notes from the Asylum

    (Ned Rorem)

    2016

    stopping by

    (Mark Abel, Samuel Barber, Amy Marcy Beach, Leonard Bernstein, Charles Wakefield Cadman, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, Celius Dougherty, John Woods Duke, Stephen Foster, Charles Griffes and Ned Rorem)

    2013

    An American Kaleidoscope

    (William Bolcom, John Woods Duke and Ned Rorem)

    2012

    Something to Sing About

    (Samuel Barber, William Bolcom, Aaron Copland, John Corigliano, John Harbison, Charles Ives and Ned Rorem)

    2011

    Wigmore Hall Live: Songs By Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky & Ned Rorem

    (Charles Ives and Ned Rorem)

    2007

    Evidence of Things Not Seen

    (Ned Rorem)

    2007

    Songs of Ned Rorem

    (Ned Rorem)

    2006

    Music@Menlo Live '03: Innovation / Evolution: The Unfolding of Music 1720 - 2002, Vol. 5 (Voices of Our Time)

    (John Corigliano, John Harbison and Ned Rorem)

    2003

    For Your Delight... - New American Art Songs

    (Chris DeBlasio, Ricky Ian Gordon, Daron Aric Hagen, Richard Hundley, John Musto and Ned Rorem)

    2002

    I Hear America Singing

    (Ernst Bacon, Jean Berger, Paul Bowles, Henry T. Burleigh, Stephen Foster, Ernest Gold, Charles Griffes, Richard Hageman, Sergius Kagen, Charles Martin Loeffler, Edward MacDowell, Charles Naginski, John Jacob Niles, Hermann Reutter, Frédéric Louis Ritter, Ned Rorem, William Grant Still, Hugo Weisgall and Tennessee Williams)

    2001


    View recording

    Ned Rorem: Selected Songs

    (Ned Rorem and Walt Whitman)

    2001

    Susan Graham - The Songs of Ned Rorem

    (Ned Rorem)

    2000

    More Than A Day

    (Ned Rorem and Jack Larson)

    1999

    American Anthem: From Ragtime to Art Song

    (Samuel Barber, Lee Hoiby, Charles Ives, John Musto, John Jacob Niles, Ned Rorem, Aaron Copland and William Bolcom)

    1998

    To The Soul - Poetry Of Walt Whitman

    (Ernst Bacon, Leonard Bernstein, Henry T. Burleigh, Gerald Busby, Philip Dalmas, Charles Ives, Charles Naginski, Ned Rorem, Robert Strassburg, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kurt Weill, Elinor Remick Warren and Walt Whitman)

    1997

    Sure on This Shining Night

    (Samuel Barber, George Whitefield Chadwick, Charles Ives, John Corigliano, Aaron Copland, William Bolcom, Ned Rorem, Richard Hageman, Charles Griffes, Victor Herbert, Horatio Parker, John Musto, Amy Marcy Beach, Theodore Chanler and Virgil Thomson)

    1997

    The Listeners

    (Ernst Bacon, Theodore Chanler, Lee Hoiby, John Jacob Niles and Ned Rorem)

    1977

    Paul Sperry Sings an American Sampler

    (Samuel Barber, Robert Beaser, William Bolcom, William Billings, Elliott Carter, Celius Dougherty, John Woods Duke, Stephen Foster, Charles Griffes, John Musto, Ned Rorem, May Swenson, Louise Talma, Hugo Weisgall and Kurt Weill)

    1995

    Where the Music Comes From

    (Lee Hoiby, Celius Dougherty, Ned Rorem, Henry T. Burleigh, Samuel Barber, Arthur Farwell and Charles Griffes)

    1991

    Songs of America

    (William Bolcom, Charles Wakefield Cadman, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Stephen Foster, Charles Ives, Carrie Jacobs-Bond, Sergius Kagen, Theodore Roethke, Ned Rorem, Carl Sandburg, William Jay Smith and Gertrude Stein)

    1988

    American Songs: Copland, Rorem, Sessions

    (Aaron Copland, Ned Rorem and Roger Sessions)

    1971

    Rorem: Poems of Love and the Rain

    (Ned Rorem)

    1965

    Songs by 20th Century American Composers (Vol. I & II)

    (Ernst Bacon, Samuel Barber, Paul Bowles, John Alden Carpenter, Theodore Chanler, Aaron Copland, Charles Griffes, Charles Ives, Otto Luening, Edward MacDowell, Virgil Thomson and Ned Rorem)

    1962

    Books

    Sheet Music

    15 Art Songs by American Composers (High Voice)

    Composer(s): Dominick Argento, Leonard Bernstein, Theodore Chanler, Aaron Copland, John Duke, Richard Hundley, Ned Rorem

    Voice Type: High

    Buy via Sheet Music Plus

    15 Art Songs by American Composers (Low Voice)

    Composer(s): Dominick Argento, Leonard Bernstein, Theodore Chanler, Aaron Copland, John Duke, Richard Hundley, Ned Rorem

    Voice Type: Low

    Buy via Sheet Music Plus

    50 Collected Songs

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Song(s): Clouds
    Love
    Alleluia
    The End
    Chromatic Fantasy
    For Susan
    Orchids
    Psalm 150
    The Nightingale
    Absalom
    A Birthday
    A Child Asleep in Its Own Life
    Conversation
    A Journey
    The Land of Fear
    Little Elegy
    The Lordly Hudson
    Nantucket
    O Do Not Love Too Long
    On a Little Bird
    Poem for F.
    The Serpent
    Shelley's Vision
    The Sick Wife
    Spring (Hopkins)
    Spring (Koch)
    The Waking
    What if some little pain...
    While Sodom was occupied
    A Glimpse
    He Thinks Upon His Death
    Philomel
    Rain in Spring
    You, the young Rainbow
    Early in the Morning
    Are you the new person?
    Catullus: on the Burial of His Brother
    Ferry me across the water
    I strolled across an open field
    I will always love you
    Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair
    Look down, fair moon
    Love in a Life
    On a Singing Girl
    Sometimes with one I love
    Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
    Such beauty as hurts to behold
    That shadow, my likeness
    To a Young Girl
    Visits to St. Elizabeths

    Voice Type: High & Medium/Low

    Buy via Sheet Music Plus

    As Adam Early in the Morning

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Buy via Edition Peters

    Evidence of Things Not Seen

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Buy via Boosey & Hawkes

    Five Poems of Walt Whitman

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Song(s): 1. Sometimes With One I Love
    2. Look Down, Fair Moon
    3. Gliding O'er All
    4. Reconciliation
    5. Gods

    Buy via Boosey & Hawkes

    "For Poulenc" (from "Four Songs")

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Buy via E. C. Schirmer

    Last Poems of Wallace Stevens

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Song(s): 1. Not Ideas about the Thing but the Thing Itself
    2. The River of Rivers in Connecticut
    3. A Child Asleep in Its Own Life
    4. The Planet on the Table
    5. The Dove in Spring
    6. Of Mere Being
    7. A Clear Day and No Memories

    Buy via Boosey & Hawkes

    More Than A Day

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Find at your Local Library

    Poems of Love and Rain

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Voice Type: Medium

    Buy via Boosey & Hawkes

    Six Songs For High Voice

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Song(s): Pippa's Song (Robert Browning)
    Cradle Song (16th Century Anonymous)
    Song for a Girl (John Dryden)
    Rondelay (John Dryden)
    In a Gondola (Robert Browning)
    Song to a Fair Young Lady Going out of Town in the Spring (John Dryden)

    Buy via Edition Peters

    Songs of Sadness

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Voice Type: Low

    Buy via Boosey & Hawkes

    The Nantucket Songs

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Voice Type: High

    Buy via Boosey & Hawkes

    Three Calamus Poems

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Song(s): 1. Of Him I Love Day and Night
    2. I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
    3. To a Common Prostitute

    Buy via Boosey & Hawkes

    To You/Epitaph

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Buy via Theodore Presser Company

    Two Poems of Theodore Roethke

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Song(s): 1. Orchids
    2. I Strolled Across an Open Field

    Buy via Sheet Music Plus

    War Scenes

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Song(s): 1. A Night Battle
    2. A Specimen Case
    3. An Incident
    4. Inauguration Ball
    5. The Real War Will Never Get in the Books

    Voice Type: Medium

    Buy via Boosey & Hawkes

    Women's Voices

    Composer(s): Ned Rorem

    Voice Type: High

    Buy via Boosey & Hawkes

    Support us and help us grow

    Dear friends, Thank you for helping us build a comprehensive online archive of American song. Your gift is greatly appreciated.