If there were a classical composer of the modern era whose music embodied the quiet triumph of intuitive lyricism over systemic dogma, it was Ned Rorem, who has died aged 99. Rorem aligned himself with no compositional school, preferring to write the music that he “wanted to hear” rather than at someone’s else’s diktat, a deeply unfashionable stance to take in the postwar period. Rorem composed music that many others wanted to hear, or to perform, particularly singers.
The bulk of his output comprises more than 500 art songs, of which the 95-minute-long cycle, Evidence of Things Not Seen (1997), for four singers and piano, setting 36 texts by 24 different writers, is not only his magnum opus but a compendium of the expressivity Rorem sought for as a composer. The fourth song, The Rainbow, is a fine example of his innate gift for simple lyricism catching the essence of the text, in this case Wordsworth’s My Heart Leaps Up.
