This book is, as the subtitle says, “A Diary (1999-2005) and Musical Writings”—but, not surprisingly, there’s a lot of overlap. Rorem writes about music in his diary, and bits of those thoughts about music (and the state of it in America today) end up in his speeches, letters-to-the-editor, and program notes for his own pieces. So there’s a bit of repetition, some hobbyhorses: art as something that “shows uswhat we did not know we knew” (p 136), the idea that “music does not alter us: it confirms” (p 194), the way that “the past dominates the present” (p 178) in the world of non-pop music (and how this wasn’t, of course, always the case).
The diary, though, is a delight to read: full of interest, whether it’s thoughts on movies or music or newspaper articles or books, or just the description of a day; the essays on Marc Blitzstein and Franco Zeffirelli and Allen Ginsberg are full of life; and the program notes make me want to listen to some of his work.
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