Elliott Carter

Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (December 11, 1908 – November 5, 2012) was an American modernist composer who was one of the most respected composers of the second half of the 20th century. He combined elements of European modernism and American "ultra-modernism" into a distinctive style with a personal harmonic and rhythmic language, after an early neoclassical phase. His compositions are performed throughout the world, and include orchestral, chamber music, solo instrumental, and vocal works. Carter was the recipient of many awards – he was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his string quartets. He also wrote the large-scale orchestral triptych Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei.

Carter was born in New York City. He developed an interest in modern music in the 1920s. He was later introduced to Charles Ives, and he soon came to appreciate the American ultra-modernists. After studying at Harvard University with Edward Burlingame Hill, Gustav Holst and Walter Piston, he studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, then returned to the United States. Carter was productive in his later years, publishing more than 40 works between the ages of 90 and 100, and over 20 more after he turned 100 in 2008. He completed his last work, Epigrams for piano trio, on August 13, 2012.

Biography

Elliott Cook Carter Jr. was born in Manhattan on December 11, 1908, the son of a wealthy lace importer, Elliott Carter Sr., and the former Florence Chambers. Much of his childhood was spent in Europe; he spoke French before learning English. As a teenager he developed an interest in music, although his parents did not encourage his interests other than providing for early piano lessons. Carter later came to appreciate the American ultra-modernists: Henry Cowell, Edgard Varèse, Ruth Crawford and, later, Conlon Nancarrow. Ives often accompanied Carter to BSO concerts conducted by Serge Koussevitzky, who programmed contemporary works frequently, and then returned to Ives' home to critique and parody the so-called tricks of Debussy, Stravinsky or Prokofiev, who were composing European new music that Ives considered only 'superficially modern'. of natural causes, on November 5, 2012, at his home in New York City, at age 103. He later considered writing operas on the themes of communal suicide and a story by Henry James, but abandoned both ideas and resolved to write no more operas. On December 11, 2008, Barenboim reprised the work with the BSO at Carnegie Hall in New York in the presence of the composer on his 100th birthday. The premiere was given on June 20, 2009, by the baritone Leigh Melrose and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group conducted by Oliver Knussen.

Figment V for marimba was premiered in New York on May 2, 2009, by Simon Boyar, and Poems of Louis Zukofsky for soprano and clarinet had its first performance by Lucy Shelton and Thomas Martin at the Tanglewood Festival on August 9, 2009. The US premiere of the Flute Concerto took place on February 4, 2010, with the flutist Elizabeth Rowe and the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Levine. The last premiere of Carter's lifetime was Dialogues II, written for Barenboim's 70th birthday and conducted in Milan in October 2012 by Gustavo Dudamel. The last Carter premiere ever, which happened after Carter's death, was "The American Sublime", a work for baritone and large ensemble, dedicated to and conducted by Levine.

Musical style and language

Carter's earlier works were influenced by Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, and Paul Hindemith, and are mainly neoclassical. He had strict training in counterpoint, from medieval polyphony to Stravinsky, and this shows in his earliest music, such as the ballet Pocahontas (1938–39). Some of his music during the Second World War is fairly diatonic, and includes a melodic lyricism reminiscent of Samuel Barber.

Starting in the late 1940s his music shows an increasing development of a personal harmonic and rhythmic language characterized by elaborate rhythmic layering and metric modulation. While Carter's chromaticism and tonal vocabulary parallels serial composers of the period, Carter did not use serial techniques. Carter said, "I certainly have never used a twelve-tone row as the basis of a composition, in the way described in Schoenberg's Style and Idea, nor are my compositions a constant rotation of various permutations of twelve-tone rows". Rather, he independently developed and catalogued all possible collections of pitches (i.e., all possible three-note chords, five-note chords, etc.), compiling what he called his Harmony Book.) Musical theorists like Allen Forte independently had systematized these data into musical set theory perhaps having been inspired by Howard Hanson's Harmonic Materials of Modern Music. A series of Carter's works in the 1960s and 1970s generates its tonal material by using all possible chords of a particular number of pitches.

Among his better known works are the Variations for Orchestra (1954–55); the Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano with Two Chamber Orchestras (1959–61); the Piano Concerto (1964–65), written as an 85th-birthday present for Stravinsky; the Concerto for Orchestra (1969), loosely based on a poem by Saint-John Perse; and the Symphony of Three Orchestras (1976). He also composed five string quartets, of which the second and third won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1960 and 1973 respectively. Spaced at regular intervals throughout his mature career, they are considered by some to be the most important body of work in that medium since Bartók. Carter also made frequent use of "tonic" 12-note chords. While Carter's music shows little trace of American popular music or jazz, his vocal music has demonstrated strong ties to contemporary American poetry. He set poems by Elizabeth Bishop (A Mirror on Which to Dwell), John Ashbery (Syringa and Mad Regales), Robert Lowell (In Sleep, in Thunder and Mad Regales), John Hollander (Of Challenge and of Love), William Carlos Williams (Of Rewaking), Wallace Stevens (In the Distances of Sleep and The American Sublime), Ezra Pound (On Conversing with Paradise), E. E. Cummings (A Sunbeam's Architecture), Marianne Moore (What Are Years) and T. S. Eliot (Three Explorations). Twentieth-century poets also inspired several of his large instrumental works, such as the Concerto for Orchestra (St. John Perse) and A Symphony of Three Orchestras (Hart Crane).

Awards and honors

1945, 1950: Guggenheim Fellowship for Music Composition
1960: Pulitzer Prize for Music, for String Quartet No. 2
1963: Elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1983: Edward MacDowell Medal, awarded by the MacDowell Colony
1985: National Medal of Arts, awarded by the by President of the United States and the National Endowment for the Arts
1987: Named a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government
1998: Inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame and Museum
2005: The Thomas Jefferson Medal, awarded by the American Philosophical Society
2009: Received a Trustees Award (a lifetime achievement award given to non-performers) from the Grammy Awards.
2012: Named a Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur by the French government

Significant works

Orchestral

Variations for Orchestra (1955)
Concerto for Orchestra (1969)
A Symphony of Three Orchestras (1976)
Penthode (1985)
Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei (1993–1996)

Concertos

Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano with Two Chamber Orchestras (1959–1961)
Piano Concerto (1964–1965)
Oboe Concerto (1986–1987)
Violin Concerto (1990)
Cello Concerto (2000)
Horn Concerto (2006)
Interventions for Piano and Orchestra (2007)

Voice and ensemble

A Mirror on Which to Dwell (1975)
Syringa (1978)
In Sleep, in Thunder (1981)

Piano

Piano Sonata (1945–46)
Night Fantasies (1980)
Two Diversions (1999)
"Caténaires" (2006)

String quartets

String Quartet No. 1 (1951)
String Quartet No. 2 (1959)
String Quartet No. 3 (1971)
String Quartet No. 4 (1986)
String Quartet No. 5 (1995)

Chamber

Cello Sonata (1948)
Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord (1952)
Duo for Violin and Piano (1974)
Triple Duo (1983)
ASKO Concerto (2000)

Partial discography

Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord; Sonata for Cello and Piano; Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano With Two Chamber Orchestras. Paul Jacobs, harpsichord; Joel Krosnick, cello; Gilbert Kalish, piano; The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, Arthur Weisberg, cond. Elektra/Nonesuch 9 79183–2.
String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2. The Composers Quartet. Elektra/Nonesuch 9 71249–2
Piano Concerto; Variations for Orchestra. Ursula Oppens, piano; Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Michael Gielen, cond. New World Records, NW 347–2.
Triple Duo; Clarinet Concerto; Short Pieces. Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Lorraine Vaillancourt, cond. ATMA Classique, ACD2 2280.
Complete Music for Piano. Charles Rosen, piano. Bridge 9090.
Vocal Works (1975–81): A Mirror on Which to Dwell; In Sleep, In Thunder; Syringa; Three Poems of Robert Frost. Speculum Musicae with Katherine Ciesinki, mezzo; Jon Garrison, tenor; Jan Opalach, bass; Christine Schadeberg, soprano. Bridge, BCD 9014.
Dialogues; Boston Concerto; Cello Concerto; ASKO Concerto. Nicolas Hodges, piano; Fred Sherry, cello; London Sinfonietta, BBC Symphony Orchestra, ASKO Ensemble, Oliver Knussen, cond. Bridge 9184.

Notable students

References

Sources