promoting the works of Paul and Jane Bowles in the written, musical and theatre forms and working with caring attitude towards helping people in need in Morocco visited by people who like Paul Bowles from more than 119 countries This website online since May 1st 2000 Copyright Notice All content on this page is the work of The International Paul Bowles Society and has previously been published in our printed publications ©The International Paul Bowles Society, November 2002 'Ned Rorem: Paul's Long Time Friend' Of any living person, Ned Rorem knew Paul Bowles during his lifetime for longer than anybody else. Many of Ned's letters to and from Paul Bowles over their more than fifty years of friendship are chronicled in more than one hundred thirty letters published in: 'Dear Paul, Dear Ned' by Paul Bowles and Ned Rorem Elysium Press, North Pomfret, Vermont,1997 Introduction by Gavin Lambert Ned met Paul and Jane Bowles in Taxco, Mexico in 1941 when he was 17 and a student at Northwestern University, and Paul was 30. Rorem was visiting Mexico with his father at the time. Ned Rorem is one of the very few people in the world who enriched the life of Paul Bowles. That's right. Things like this sometimes need another person to speak it. Through Paul's music and writings, there are a zillion people who's lives have been enriched by Paul Bowles, but not so many actually enriched Paul's life. Ned and Paul shared together a lifetime of friendship through their mutual love of music, which was also Paul Bowles's first love, long before he became the famous author of the novel 'The Sheltering Sky.' There are some other people who also enriched the life of Paul Bowles through music. People such as Irene Herrmann, Phillip Ramey, Jonathan Sheffer and others also. These are people who shared or interpreted Paul's music during the 1980's and 1990's and sought to bring personal joy to Paul and/or to bring Paul's musical compositions to a wider public audience. We invite everyone who enriched the life of Paul Bowles through music to tell their story through the medium of this web site. Please get in touch if you would sincerely like to include your story. In the book by Christopher Sawyer Lauçanno 'An Invisible Spectator' (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1989) Rorem recalls on the Bowles's relationship when Jane was stroking Paul's back, with Paul reproaching Jane and gently saying 'Such intimacy.' Rorem's reaction was one of 'Married people didn't say things like that to each other' and commented that the Bowles's 'seemed close, but separate - platonic pals.' Ned was encaptured by the music of Paul Bowles, and spent the whole of the summer sharing music with Paul. Some analysts of the works of Paul Bowles have mistakenly compared Ned Rorem to the character of 'Racky', the son of a Mr. Norton, who is the central figure in the Paul Bowles story of 1947 called 'Pages from Cold Point' (published in New Directions, No.11, 1949) although debated as this point may have been in the past, this is generally believed by scholars of Bowles's works to be not the case. In 1949, Rorem visited Tangier for the first time, moved to Fez, composed the suite 'From an Unknown Past' and stayed until 1951, and along with Gore Vidal, Truman Capote and Aaron Copland became the backbone for the expatriate community in Morocco at that time. Ned Rorem in interview in connection with Paul Bowles has often mentioned Paul's musical composition of 'The Wind Remains,' which is a zarazuela based on a play by Federico Garcia Lorca, in very glowing terms. He describes the music of the aria in 'The Wind Remains' on the Paul Bowles video called 'The Complete Outsider': 'The effect of which I found so contagious that I am still not over the delicious illness it has caused me.' and talks about the 'lower descending third' which was also quite a prominent musical recurrence in the music of Tennessee Williams. For more details on 'The Wind Remains' and to hear a small sample from the aria, please click here. In the USA in 1958, Paul and Ned were very close and sometimes enjoyed mescaline experiences together (source: 'The Complete Outsider' video.) Some of their experiences together are described in letters in the book 'Dear Paul, Dear Ned' (see below.) When Paul Bowles published his autobiography 'Without Stopping' (Putnam, 1972) Ned Rorem was just one of the many friends of Paul's, along with Virgil Thomson and others, who disliked the book. William Burroughs had nicknamed the book 'Without Telling' "because he didn't tell anything" Rorem said of the book, 'Scores of names are dropped with no further identification than their spelling, while close acquaintances vanish and die without so much as an editorial sigh from their friend.....'(source: 'An Invisible Spectator') One of the last occasions when Paul Bowles and Ned Rorem got together was at a party, which was thrown for Paul at Phillip Ramey's penthouse in New York City during Paul's visit to New York from Morocco with Phillip Ramey for performances of Paul's compositional and music works, in September 1995. There is some excellent film footage of Paul at the rehearsals in New York on the video 'Night Waltz' by Owsley Brown. Other guests also at the party included Gavin Lambert, Claude Nathalie Thomas (Paul's translator into French), Rodrigo Rey Rosa and Joseph McPhillips, Headmaster of The American School in Tangier. Notes: Ned Rorem is a composer and writer. He has won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1976 with his composition 'Air Music' and has composed music for many foundations and Symphony Orchestras. He is also regarded across the board as the most foremost composer of 'Art Songs' and as one of the foremost composers of the 20th Century. He was also one of the contributors to the Gary Pulsifer book 'Paul Bowles: By His Friends' (Peter Owen, 1992, out of print) Ned Rorem lives in New York City and Nantucket and has an extremely impressive career background, which is much too vast to list here, this page being primarily about Ned's friendship and contexts with Paul Bowles. Full information on Ned Rorem's life and works in general are on his dot com website. Some of Ned Rorem's written and musical works are: 'The Paris Diary and the New York Diary', DaCapo Press; (April 1998) ISBN: 0306808382 'The Later Diaries' DaCapo Press; (October, 2000) ISBN: 0306809648 'The Nantucket Diary 1973-1985' North Point Press; (October 1987) Out of print 'The Final Diary' 1961-1972 Henry Holt & Company Out of print To discover the compositional work of Ned Rorem, or continue your enjoyment of his music Some of Ned Rorem's music available on CD 'Ned Rorem: Selected Songs' USA Naxos - #8559084 November 20, 2001 Composed by Ned Rorem, Sung by Carole Farley, Soprano from amazon UK from amazon France from amazon Germany Ned Rorem: 'Piano Concerto for Left Hand' USA Performed by Gary Graffman, Choong-Jin Chang and others New World Records - #80445 March 14, 1994 from amazon UK from amazon France from amazon Germany 'Ned Rorem: Orchestral Works' USA (String Symphony/Sunday Morning/Eagles) Conductor: Robert Shaw, Louis Lane Atlanta Symphony Orchestra New World, NW3532 8 December, 1992 from amazon UK from amazon France from amazon Germany 'Ned Rorem: War Scenes; Five Songs to Poems of Walt Whitman' USA Performed by Ned Rorem, Donald Gramm, Eugene Istomin, Richard Cumming with Anita Darian, John Massey Stewart Phoenix label, January 20, 1993 from amazon UK from amazon Germany 'Ned Rorem: Vocal Works: Poems of Love and the Rain/ From an Unknown Past' USA Performed by Ned Rorem and Beverly Wolff, Modern Madrigal Quartet Phoenix label, 1 August, 2002 from amazon UK from amazon Germany Home Promoting the life and work of Paul and Jane Bowles ©The International Paul Bowles Society, 2000