Ted Gioia on Ned Rorem's diaries: A literary achievement unmatched by any other composer

Composer Ned Rorem celebrated his 99th birthday this week. Music writer Ted Gioia, however, highly recommends composer's diaries - "the most remarkable firsthand documentation we have of a musical life—surpassing those of Charles Burney, Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten, or whomever else you care to cite. Not even Mozart’s voluminous letters can match the scope and depth of Rorem’s six decades of journaling. He operates on a larger sphere, up their with Pepys and Boswell and others at the pinnacle of the diary as a literary genre".

Gioia also offers a choice of aphorisms:

• “The best music must be nasty as well as beautiful.”
• “Wagner, too, I love, if I don’t have to listen to him.”
• “Americans say what they think, the French think what they say.”
• “The end of love is like the Boléro played backwards.”