Though Ned Rorem's oeuvre covers the entire spectrum of ensembles and genres—from solo and chamber works to symphonies and other orchestral music to operas—he has long been recognized as America's foremost exponent of the art song. Rorem's lyrical, largely tonal musical language, greatly influenced by the French tradition of Debussy, Ravel, and Poulenc, seems to have lent itself particularly well to the production of vocal music. The hundreds of examples in his catalogue bear testament not only to a remarkable fecundity, but also to an affinity for and sensitivity to the nuances of the English language equaled by few composers since Benjamin Britten. Rorem has demonstrated an especial attraction to the poetry of his own time as source material; among those whose work he has set most extensively are Theodore Roethke and Paul Goodman; among earlier poets, Whitman and Tennyson figure especially prominently.

While the body of Rorem's vocal music is populated by a great many freestanding songs—including such outstanding examples as "I Am Rose" (Stein; 1955), "My Papa's Waltz" (Roethke; 1959), and "Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal" (Tennyson; 1963)—the composer's dozens of song cycles constitute his central contribution to the song literature. A number of Rorem's song cycles are structured around the work of a particular poet; among these are Four Dialogues for soprano, tenor, and two pianos (O'Hara; 1953 - 54), King Midas (Moss; 1962), Last Poems of Wallace Stevens for soprano, cello, and piano (1971 - 72), and The Auden Poems for voice and piano trio (1989). Perhaps more interesting, though, are the thematic cycles which assemble the work of numerous poets on a central literary or philosophical idea. Poems of Love and the Rain (1962 - 63) thus employs the poetry of Windham, Auden, Moss, Dickinson, Roethke, Larson, Cummings, and Pitchford; in an intriguing experiment, Rorem sets each of the poems twice, arranging the pairs of different settings in a large arch form. Solar imagery takes center stage in Sun for voice and orchestra (Ikhnaton, Byron, Goodman, Blake, Morgan, Shakespeare, Whitman, and Roethke; 1966), while a feminine perspective infuses the texts of Women's Voices (Wylie, Rossetti, Bradstreet, Chudleigh, Pembroke, Coleridge, Rich, Dickinson, Boleyn, Ridge, and Mew; 1975 - 76). Rorem's pacifist bent, one of the most important facets of his personal credo, is clearly in evidence in Poèms pour la paix (Regnier, Ronsard, Magny, Daurat, Baif; 1953) and the Vietnam-era War Scenes (Whitman; 1969).

Composed in 1951, the cycle From an Unknown Past is an assemblage of seven anonymous fifteenth- and sixteenth-century poems, originally conceived for mixed voices acappella (SATB), and subsequently arranged for solo voice and piano. Rorem would return to the work nearly fifty years later to arrange them for solo voice and chamber orchestra—specifically for countertenor Brian Asawa and the Los Angeles CO.



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