Excerpt from KNOWING WHEN TO STOP: A MEMOIR by Ned Rorem (pp. 234-5).
Copyright © 1994 by Ned Rorem.
Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the author.

August 30, 2009, Ned Rorem adds:
It would have been in 1942 that my friend, the pianist Eugene Istomin, introduced me to Harold Brown. Harold was the first real composer I ever knew, despite my time at Curtis. His music was modal, vocally inclined and quite contagious.
If only it could have survived more vigorously!
Ned Rorem