Aaron Copland got turned down. So did Leonard Bernstein.
The wish by both renowned composers to make an opera out of “Our Town,” Thornton Wilder’s archetypal American play, was rejected by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, who feared adding music would clutter and undercut the play’s intentionally austere form.
But three decades after Wilder’s death, his nephew and literary executor, Tappan Wilder, decided with J.D. McClatchy – poet, librettist and founding president of the Thornton Wilder Society – to overrule that wish.
Enter Ned Rorem, also a Pulitzer Prize winner, who was commissioned by Indiana University and five co-commissioners, including the Aspen Music Festival and School, to score the 1938 play into an opera.
“Opera isn’t just a whole lot of songs strung together,” said the 82-year-old composer from his summer retreat on Nantucket Island. “And ‘Our Town’ is such a famous play. So I thought about it and thought about it.
“I knew the opera needed to be visual, theatrical and hold the audience’s attention from beginning to end,” he said. “And I kept in mind that I was writing an opera that people were going to pay money to hear.”
Rorem’s “Our Town” debuted at Indiana University on Feb. 24. The Aspen Opera Theater Center presents the Western U.S. premiere of the opera on Saturday.
“‘Knowing When to Stop’ is the title of my autobiography, and it’s also how I approach composing,” said the American master of vocal music, who has more than 500 songs to his name. “I was raised a Quaker, which is a faith that isn’t outwardly ornate, like the Catholic Church. And musically speaking, my thinking is French, which means exactitude and brevity are paramount.”
That penchant for artistic transparency and sparseness makes the Richmond, Ind., native a good fit to bring to limn the story of love and loss set in another small town, early 20th- century Grover’s Corners, N.H. It is his second full-length opera.
“The focus of ‘Our Town’ is the drama and the voices, so the orchestral textures are light,” said Rorem, whose modernist techniques often elegantly incorporate traditional harmony. “But I’m terribly uncomfortable talking about my music.
“Composing is just a craft. Making it good is up to God. So there’s nothing I can say that my music can’t say for itself.”
What he does enjoying talking about, however, is music in general. Rorem – whose prolific output ranges from symphonies and other orchestral works to piano concertos, chamber music, ballets and theater music, among other genres – has also authored numerous books, including collections of lectures and criticism. From such a considered perspective, he describes American music as largely a combination of French and German schools of thought.
“I divide the world into French and German influences, but I’ve never been attracted to anything German – that is, except German books. I read Thomas Mann from cover to cover,” said Rorem, who lived in France from 1949 to 1958. “To me, French means precision, like the music of Debussy that is economical but it can break your heart at the same time. It means that you say what you want to say and then shut up, as opposed to Beethoven or Strauss who wrote and wrote until the cows came home.”
While Rorem prizes simplicity and accessibility, he’s not put off by the fact that much new music, including his own, isn’t mainstream.
“The music we’re talking about is about one-tenth of one percent of what’s out there,” he said. “The rest of it is pop and rock ‘n’ roll. If you talk to wealthy, educated operagoers or non-operagoers, they know all about art and literature, but they have no idea about serious contemporary music.
“So people shouldn’t worry about having a small audience. Everything that’s worthwhile has a small audience, at least in the beginning.”
That said, Rorem is disparaging of contemporaries such as Elliott Carter whose music he perceives as overly complicated and too far afield for anyone to relate to in a meaningful way.
“Music has always gone from complexity to simplicity and back to complexity,” he said. “But I don’t think people rush home to play or listen to Carter.
“And at my age, I can say that without anyone throwing stones at me.”
Most accounts of Rorem’s inspired compositions, however, indicate that it’s time to pay them more attention. Perhaps Rorem’s take on “Our Town” will bring him that recognition.
| “Our Town”
CONTEMPORARY OPERA|Ned Rorem’s opera based on Thornton Wilder’s classic play at the Aspen Musical Festival; Wheeler Opera House, 320 E. Hyman Ave., Aspen; 7 p.m. Saturday, Monday and Thurssday |$20 |970-925-9042 or aspenmusicfestival.com
