“From whence cometh song?” asks the opening lines of a poem by the American writer Theodore Roethke…

That’s a question American composer Ned Rorem must have asked himself hundreds of times, while providing just as many answers in the form of hundreds of his original song settings.

About his own music, Rorem tends to be a little reluctant to speak. “Nothing a composer can say about his music is more pointed than the music itself,” he writes.

On today’s date in 1979, Rorem himself was at the piano, accompanying soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson in the premiere performance of a song-cycle he called “Nantucket Songs,” a cycle that began with Rorem’s setting of Roethke’s poem.

“These songs,” wrote Rorem, “merry or complex or strange though their texts may seem, aim away from the head and toward the diaphragm. They are emotional rather than intellectual, and need not be understood to be enjoyed.”

Speaking of personal enjoyment, Rorem said at the premiere performance of his “Nantucket Songs ,“ which was recorded live at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. that “Phyllis Bryn-Julson and I, unbeknownst to each other, BOTH had fevers of 102 degrees.”

Ned Rorem (b. 1923) — Nantucket Songs (Phyllis Bryn-Julson, soprano; Ned Rorem, piano) CRI 670