Duet with the Past: A Composer's Memoir, Paperback

Composer, conductor and operatic polymath Daron Hagen has written five symphonies, a dozen concertos, 13 operas, reams of chamber music and more than 350 art songs. His intimate, unsparing memoir chronicles his life, from his haunted childhood in Wisconsin to the upper echelons of the music world in New York and Europe. Hagen's vivid anecdotes about his many collaborators, friends and mentors--including Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss, Gian Carlo Menotti, Paul Muldoon, Ned Rorem, Virgil Thomson and Gore Vidal--counterpoint a cautionary tale of the sacrifices necessary to succeed in the brutally unforgiving business of classical music.

Esteemed composer Daron Hagen is a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient and winner of the Kennedy Center Friedheim Prize. He has taught at Bard College, the Curtis Institute of Music and the Princeton Atelier, and is currently a member of the Artist Faculty of the Chicago College of the Performing Arts. He lives in Rhinebeck, New York.