DURHAM -- Robert Ward, the grand old man of American opera and arguably the last great composer of his generation, doesn't get out of town much anymore.
He's in remarkable shape for someone about to turn 94, with his faculties largely intact, and he speaks in a clear voice. Still, traveling is difficult, and Ward needs a walker to get around. But next month, he'll journey to Washington, D.C., to receive a singular honor: a lifetime award from the National Endowment for the Arts' Opera Honors, which comes with a $25,000 honorarium.
"Winning that was a complete surprise - particularly the last sentence of the letter and the amount of money," Ward said with a laugh on a recent morning, sitting in his apartment. "I couldn't believe it. I've had a lot of commissions come my way, and I think that had something to do with the fact that I never tried to shock the world but just do as well as I could. That seems to have worked out."
One of Ward's many gifts is a flair for understatement. In fact, he's a giant of 20th-century music.
"These NEA Awards frequently honor those who have achieved a great deal, or those who have been active in passing along their expertise," said Marc Scorca, president of Opera America in Washington. "Bob has done both. He's a key player whose works have been a pillar of American opera companies seeking to promote an American voice, which is a huge accomplishment. But there's also his role as a teacher, and the individual coaching and mentoring he has generously bestowed on so many from the next generation and even the one after that. He's a rare combination."
A North Carolina resident since 1967, when he became chancellor of the N.C. School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, Ward has had a remarkable career. Along with seven symphonies and numerous shorter works, his resume includes eight operas. One of the latter, 1961's "The Crucible," won a Pulitzer Prize and, a half-century later, is still staged regularly around the world.
"When I grow up, I want to be Robert Ward," said William Curry, Summerfest artistic director for the N.C. Symphony. "It's a privilege to have him here in our midst. He's representative of a certain type of American music, a generation of composers entrusted with reaching a broad audience. Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber were populist, melodic, romantic. They often used folk music, cowboy songs, spirituals. Robert's music still gets played all over the world, too. It's stood the test of time."
A musical family
Ward grew up in Cleveland, the youngest of five children in a musical family. He had his earliest musical experiences in church, as a boy soprano, and he began composing in high school. After graduation, he went on to study composition at the Eastman School of Music before World War II intervened.
Ward actually had "a wonderful musical career" in the U.S. Army during the war years, serving as band director for the 7th Division band. That was also how he met his wife of 62 years, Mary, who was a recreation worker for the Red Cross in Hawaii.
After the war, Ward resumed his studies in New York and earned a degree at Juilliard, going on to teach there and at Columbia University. He also taught at Duke for a decade, following his seven-year tenure at the N.C. School of the Arts.
His most famous work
But Ward made his biggest mark as a composer. His first opera was 1959's "He Who Gets Slapped," which picked up fine notices including a New Yorker review touting Ward and co-writer Bernard Stambler as "two men to watch." On a colleague's recommendation, Ward went to a performance of Arthur Miller's renowned stage play "The Crucible" - which used the Salem witch trials of the late 17th century as an allegory about the McCarthy era of anti-communist paranoia in America.
"I was bowled over," Ward said. "I've never had a stronger reaction to a play. Then the question was how to get to Arthur Miller. Him being married to Marilyn Monroe didn't make it any easier."
Ward worked connections to get a meeting with Miller, which led to a commission to write the music for the New York City Opera's version of "The Crucible." It received instant and massive acclaim, winning the Pulitzer in 1962.
Five decades later, "The Crucible" is still the best-known American opera this side of "Porgy and Bess." But there's a downside to that level of success.
"Bob's always been a little upset that 'The Crucible' overshadows his other operas so much, and some of them are just as good," said Robert Kolt, Ward's biographer. "I think it's the connection to Arthur Miller's famous play, and that the music just fit the drama of the play so well. But the normal course of history is that most composers are known for a handful of works while they're still alive, then the public catches on to everything else after they're gone."
Ask Ward which of his other works he'd like to see staged again, and he mentions two comedies, 1964's "The Lady From Colorado" and 1981's "Abelard and Heloise." But the one he'd most like to revive is 1982's "Minutes Till Midnight."
Interested in politics
"Minutes Till Midnight" came out of Ward's fascination with atomic weapons, a subject he has mixed feelings about. He was in Okinawa preparing for the invasion of mainland Japan when atomic bombs ended World War II in 1945. But witnessing the destruction firsthand during a later visit to Hiroshima made a profound impression.
"Among the eight operas I've done, some aren't political, but the biggest and most important of them are," Ward said. "I'm still very interested in the state of the world, and disturbed by things. I think that's related to having five children and a lot of grandchildren. I'll talk to people my age and they'll say they can't get involved because they'll be dead in a year or two. My only reply is, 'Do you have grandchildren?' "
The state of the world is the motivation for Ward's latest project, a wide-ranging and far-flung book he admits he might never finish. He's been working on it for most of the last decade, with the working title "Our Planet in a Matter of Time: A Retrospective of Its Past and a Prospectus for Its Future."
"That'll cover everything," Ward said. "I'm not sure I'm the guy to be writing this, but I want to pull together a lot of things. It gets bigger and more complicated every time I get into it. The longer I've worked at it, the bigger the subject has become."
Study and solitude
That's where Ward's creative focus lies now, and he spends most days quietly reading books about history and politics and writing in his retirement-home apartment. He doesn't come from a particularly long-lived family, attributing his longevity to luck and staying "too busy to get sick" - he's never worked out or been too careful about his diet.
It's a good life, and almost everyone in the complex seems to know Ward - who has a kind word and a story or two for everyone who greets him in the halls. But it's also more solitary than he'd like. Ward's wife, Mary, died in 2006 after a long period of failing health. Though not unexpected, her death was still hard to take.
"Sometimes I'll think of something and start to tell her about it," Ward said quietly. "But she's not there. That hurts. It always will."
As for his musical legacy, that is set, with the NEA Award as a fitting capper to his career. Ward has an electric keyboard, but it's broken. He almost never plays the piano downstairs anymore, either.
"I've been away from it for so long that no one would want to hear it except for comic relief," he said with a chuckle. "My ears just aren't as good as they once were, and my output - eight operas, seven symphonies, choral works, chamber music and the rest - feels like enough. I'm very happy. Somehow or other, I've always had lucky breaks to do what I want."
