The Nantucket Diary of Ned Rorem 1973-1985

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

417-418

text excerpt

Where do you find space to rehearse nearly a thousand singers plus a brass orchestra with drums? On the top floor of the Statler, that's where, and there I went this morning for the first combined run-through of the nine Gay Men's Choruses, each of which has presumably been rehearsing Whitman Cantata for weeks in its respective city. The music was already under way when I arrived. Seated in a series of connecting salons with their doors thrown open was an army of men, their backs to me, singing my sounds as I made my way through them toward the podium where Greed Smith was weaving his able arms in an effort at mass hypnosis. When I was introduced, the assembly rose as one and applauded with the force and the warmth of a great minority celebrating one of their own. The effect was more than one of mere appreciation: it was erotic, like being embraced by a vast male cloud. I was all the more moved in that every one of them was a non-professional, and for some the learning of my piece (to them difficult, even incomprehensible) could have seemed a burden.

excerpt from 'The Nantucket Diary of Ned Rorem 1973-1985' pp. 417-418 (194 words)

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