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The Chicago Symphony Orchestra family joins the music world in mourning the loss of American pianist, diarist, and Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Ned Rorem. He died at his home in Manhattan on November 18, 2022, at the age of ninety-nine.
Rorem was born in Richmond, Indiana, on October 23, 1923, and his family soon moved to Chicago. He expressed a talent for music at a young age and attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and the American Conservatory of Music. As a young musician, he regularly attended concerts in Orchestra Hall, where he “was exposed to contemporary music simultaneously with the standard classics. From the very start, I saw—heard—that the present was every bit as vital as the past, a truth made obvious when the two were interlarded.” Rorem later attended Northwestern University, the Curtis Institute, and the Juilliard School.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus performed a number of Rorem’s works, including the world premiere of Goodbye My Fancy, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on the occasion of its centennial season. “Goodbye My Fancy finds, both musically and expressively, the inner coherence it strives for,” John von Rhein wrote in the Chicago Tribune, following the first performance on November 8, 1990. “Rorem’s music remains blissfully oblivious to the blandishments of what used to be called modernism: the score is dated 1988 but sounds as if it could been written thirty years earlier. No American composer sets American words more sensitively; no composer is more alive to Whitman’s fierce passions. Rorem’s choral writing savors leanness, elegance and subtlety, even when it roars. The deployment of massed and solo voices with instruments is telling, the cumulative impact affecting. . . . the shining stars of the occasion were the Chicago Symphony Chorus. As prepared by director Margaret Hillis, the CSO contingent sang with firm consonants, clear vowels, full and forward tone and fervent dedication. They were magnificent to hear. Goodbye My Fancy is a work that deserves to be in the repertory of America’s best symphony choruses. But I doubt that any of them will be able to make its Whitmanesque music leap off the page more exactly or vividly than Hillis’s sterling ensemble.”
A complete list of his works performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus is below:
August 4, 1959, Ravinia Festival
ROREM Symphony No. 3
Alfred Wallenstein, conductor
November 12 and 13, 1959, Orchestra Hall
ROREM Design for Orchestra
Fritz Reiner, conductor
July 14, 1962, Ravinia Festival
ROREM Eagles
William Steinberg, conductor

June 15 and 16, 1972, Orchestra Hall
ROREM Piano Concerto in Six Movements
Irwin Hoffman, conductor
Jerome Lowenthal, piano
January 6, 7, and 9, 1977, Orchestra Hall
ROREM Air Music, Ten Variations for Orchestra
Guido Ajmone-Marsan, conductor
April 24, 25, and 26, 1986, Orchestra Hall
ROREM An American Oratorio
Margaret Hillis, conductor
Donald Kaasch, tenor
Chicago Symphony Chorus
Margaret Hillis, director
November 8, 9, and 10, 1990, Orchestra Hall
ROREM Goodbye My Fancy (world premiere)
Leonard Slatkin, conductor
Wendy White, mezzo-soprano
John Cheek, bass-baritone
Chicago Symphony Chorus
Margaret Hillis, director
On June 3, 1990, Rorem made a rare appearance as a pianist in Orchestra Hall, accompanying soprano Arleen Augér. “The idea of pairing Augér, one of the few American singers who really care about American vocal music, with composer-pianist Rorem, who has done more than any other living American to cultivate the art of native song, was an inspired one,” wrote John von Rhein in the Chicago Tribune. “Fully half of the program was given over to his songs. Throughout the program, Rorem’s accompaniments were rich in the special insights perhaps only a composer who happens to be a skilled pianist can bring to them.”
Numerous tributes have been posted online, including AP News, NPR, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, among several others.

This article also appears here.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra family joins the classical music world in mourning the loss of Christopher Rouse. He died on September 21, 2019, at the age of seventy at a hospice center in Towson, Maryland.
Music by the Pulitzer Prize–winning composer has been performed by the Orchestra on numerous occasions, and a complete list is below.
March 1, 2, and 3, 1984, Orchestra Hall
ROUSE The Infernal Machine
Leonard Slatkin, conductor
April 28, 29, and 30, 1994, Orchestra Hall
ROUSE Symphony No. 1
David Zinman, conductor
June 29, 1995, Ravinia Festival
ROUSE Phaethon
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
July 18, 1996, Ravinia Festival
ROUSE Symphony No. 2
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
August 12, 1999, Ravinia Festival
ROUSE Envoi
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
May 17, 18, 19, and 22, 2001, Orchestra Hall
ROUSE Clarinet Concerto
Larry Combs, clarinet
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
The Clarinet Concerto was commissioned by the Hanson Institute for American Music of the Eastman School of Music (University of Rochester) and for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and its principal clarinet, Larry Combs. The concerto was dedicated to Augusta Read Thomas, the Orchestra’s composer-in-residence from 1997 until 2006.
April 20, 21, 22, 23, and 25, 2006, Orchestra Hall
ROUSE Rapture
David Zinman, conductor
December 20, 21, and 22, 2012, Orchestra Hall
ROUSE Heimdall’s Trumpet
Christopher Martin, trumpet
Jaap van Zweden, conductor
Heimdall’s Trumpet was commissioned for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by the Edward F. Schmidt Family Commissioning Fund.
Numerous tributes have been posted on Chicago Classical Review, The Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, and Classic FM, among many others.
Christopher Rouse’s final work—his Symphony no. 6—will receive its world premiere on October 18, 2019, with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Louis Langrée will conduct.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra family joins the music world in mourning the death of Karel Husa, the eminent Czech-born composer and conductor. He was 95.

Husa, Herseth, and Solti backstage following the world premiere of the Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra on February 11, 1988 (Jim Steere photo)
Husa was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1969 for his String Quartet no. 3, and he was awarded the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 1993 for his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra.
The Orchestra first performed Husa’s Music for Prague 1968 under Sergiu Comissiona in April 1973 and again in December 1986 under Erich Leinsdorf.
To celebrate Adolph Herseth‘s fortieth season as principal trumpet, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra commissioned Husa to write the Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra. Under the baton of eighth music director Sir Georg Solti, Herseth was soloist in the world premiere at Orchestra Hall on February 11, 1988. The Orchestra also performed the work multiple times during the first tour to Australia later that same year (details of the tour are here and here).
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On February 2, 1989, Sir Georg Solti led the world premiere of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich‘s Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra, which had been commissoned for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s principal trombone, Jay Friedman.
Zwilich—the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for music— contributed the program note:
“When I was approached by the Chicago Symphony in 1986 with the novel idea of commissioning a work for tenor trombone and a second work for bass trombone and orchestra, I was thrilled because I have long wanted to write something substantial for the trombone. Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra (1988) for Jay Friedman, is the first of two projects, to be followed by a bass trombone work for Charles Vernon. [Zwilich’s Concerto for Bass Trombone, Strings, Timpani, and Cymbals received its world premiere on April 30, 1991, with Vernon as soloist and Daniel Barenboim conducting.]
“Although it has been neglected as such, I think the trombone is a wonderful solo instrument. In addition to sharing the same range, the tenor trombone possesses all the color and drama of the entire spectrum of male voices, from counter-tenor to bass-baritone. Continuing the vocal analogy, the trombone can be both lyric and dramatic. Add to these noble singing qualities the great instrumental flexibility and agility of our modern artist-performers and you have an instrument which commands the stage as a soloist. Thus, one of my aims in the Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra was to cast the trombone as protagonist in a role that ranges from the dramatic and lyrical to bold virtuosic display. . . .
“Throughout the [concerto], the relationship of the solo trombone to the orchestra is one of equal partnership and mutual exploration. The work is dedicated to Sir Georg Solti, Jay Friedman, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.”
Press reviews (concentrating also on Solti’s account of Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony) are here.