Classical notes: Composer tackles own life story in book

Composer Daron Hagen wept the first time he arrived for a residency at Yaddo, the illustrious artist colony in Saratoga Springs. Greeted with a shower of kisses from the motherly program director, he confessed that he had no idea why he was crying. "Oh, I do," said a sympathetic staffer. Now more than 30 years later, Hagen has written a vast catalog of operas, symphonies and concertos that are performed by top American institutions and he is a lifetime member of the Corporation of Yaddo.

Hagen's entry through the gates of Yaddo is one of many life passages that he shares in his new memoir "Duet with the Past" (McFarland & Company). The book follows several intertwining paths – artistic creation and discovery, the business of music with all the contacts, competitiveness and dejection, and finally, and most poignantly, the emotional struggle toward adulthood.

That Hagen would publish his life story comes as no surprise, given that one of his mentors was Ned Rorem, another prolific and tuneful composer who chronicled his own inner life and public persona in a dozen or so published diaries. Rorem's writing was gossipy, cagey but curated, and always beautifully crafted. Hagen's task is different. Where Rorem published something about every five or 10 years, Hagen, at age 57, has a lot more ground to cover and all in one volume. He does so with great honesty and plenty of pride but also sufficient remorse and resolve to make him, in the end, a sympathetic character to readers.

We see him as a little boy observing his mother make a sculpture. We flip the pages quickly to get past his father's alcoholic reign of terror in their Milwaukee household. We lose track of his three brothers and their own deadly binges. And we read in near disbelief of Hagen drunk, penniless and passed out on a sidewalk in Vienna.

Career...