In 1976, Ned Rorem was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his composition Air Music. He preferred to write the music that he “wanted to hear” rather than something dictated by others.
Rorem was openly gay in an era when his contemporaries like Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, and Truman Capote were still in the closet. He once said they treat their homosexual experiences as a literary device. Rorem was candid about his sexual relationships, including Leonard Bernstein, John Cheever, Noël Coward, Tennessee Williams, and others. This sometimes shocked the literarti if the lovers he mentioned weren’t out to the public.
“I am a composer, not a gay composer. . . . Anyone can be gay—it’s no accomplishment—but only I can be me.”
Rorem struggled with alcoholism in the 1950s and 1960s. He attended Alcoholics Anonymous and tried medication to suppress the effects of alcohol, but both were unsuccessful.
"The minute a drop of wine touches my lips, I begin to be this other person—an infantile regression takes place.”
In 1967, he began a relationship with organist James Roland Holmes. He credited James for offering him enough stability, helping him to abandon alcohol completely. They were together for 32 years.
Holmes was initially diagnosed with cancer, but it was later confirmed to be HIV-related. Holmes died in 1999 with Rorem by his side. Rorem later wrote about the despair and brutality of watching a lover die.
Author Edmund White wrote the following in a ew York Times article:
“Ned told the truth. Maybe the diary is the best form for talking about AIDS, because it shows the quotidian pain.”
Rorem was devastated by Holmes’s death, saying he “no longer looked forward to anything”.
Holmes's death inspired some of Rorem's most poignant music, including a Double Concerto for violin and cello and the song cycle Aftermath.
Rorem began his retirement in 2010:
"I've kind of said everything I have to say, better than anyone else".
He only wrote two more pieces, a song in 2013 based on a Shakespeare sonnet and his final work, Recalling Nadia, a brief organ piece written in 2014.
Rorem died at home from natural causes in November 2022, at age 99.
