Elliott Carter

• Born: December 11, 1908
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: November 5, 2012
• Place of death: New York, New York

American classical composer

Carter’s influence extended beyond the sphere typically occupied by modernist composers. His innovations in expressive character and rhythm inspired not only those who shared his stylistic bent but also those striking out in different musical directions. Prolific for more than five decades, he inspired postwar composers around the world.

The Life

Elliott Cook Carter Jr. was born in New York but spent a lot of time in Europe; his father was a wealthy importer and his family traveled frequently. In particular, he spent a great deal of time in France, learning French at a young age. He started piano lessons early, but his musical development was impacted less by his family than by the encouragement he received from Charles Ives, whom he met in 1924 and with whom he attended many concerts. Carter had a broad range of musical interests, stylistically speaking. He was interested in many of the modernists of the early twentieth century, such as Henry Cowell, Edgard Varèse, and Roger Sessions, even though Carter’s early works seem to belie this influence.

In 1926, Carter began to study at Harvard but felt that the music department was too conservative. Instead, he turned to studying Greek and English literature. He maintained some musical studies, in solfeggio and piano, and ultimately earned a master’s degree in music in 1932. Among his primary teachers were Gustav Holst and Walter Piston. Like many American composers of his generation, he studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, first privately and then at the École Normale de Musique. His move to Europe was at least in part because of the enjoyable experiences he had during his travels in his youth. Upon completion of his studies in 1935, he returned to New York to devote his time to composing. He assumed the directorship of Ballet Caravan. The music he composed for this group was typical of neoclassicism of the time—most clearly displaying the influence of his studies with Boulanger.

Carter’s later works (after 1948) established him as one of the foremost innovators in the twentieth century. He held a number of teaching posts on the East Coast, primarily in the New York area, where he taught at Columbia University, Queens College, with his longest stint at the Juilliard School from 1964 to 1984. Carter received the Pulitzer Prize twice, once in 1960 and then again in 1973. In 1987, the Paul Sacher Foundation arranged to acquire all of Carter’s manuscripts, assuring their place alongside the papers of such other twentieth-century masters as Igor Stravinsky, Pierre Boulez, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, and Richard Strauss.

Even at an advanced age, Carter continued completing a variety of well-received pieces, including instrumental, orchestral, and vocal works. In 2008, in recognition of his one hundredth birthday, well-attended concerts were held in both the United States and across the world that included performances of some of his classic compositions as well as premieres of his newer work. The following year, he was honored with the Trustee's Award by the Recording Academy. Not long after completing the instrumental pieces "Epigrams" and "Instances" earlier that year and his orchestral composition Dialogues II had its world premiere in October, he died at his longtime home in the Manhattan borough of New York City on November 5, 2012, at the age of 103.

The Music

Early Works. Carter’s early works bear a strong resemblance to his neoclassical contemporaries, many of whom also studied with Boulanger in Paris. Two compositions in particular, Pocahontas and The Minotaur, suggest that Carter’s compositional output was following a path similar to that of his friend Aaron Copland. The former was written for the Ballet Caravan and the latter for the Ballet Society (the precursor of the New York City Ballet). Style and timing help explain why Carter’s career did not flourish in quite the same manner as that of his contemporaries at the time. Pocahontas is rather similar to Copland’s style and had its premiere on the same night as Copland’s Billy the Kid. It is also interesting to note that the works deal with American and American Indian subjects, respectively. The Minotaur combines Copland-like strains with a healthy dose of Stravinsky. It shared a number of other similarities with Orpheus, a work by Stravinsky to which it is often compared. Orpheus was produced by George Balanchine, and Carter collaborated with the legendary choreographer on The Minotaur. Both are based on Greek myths, and both were premiered by the Ballet Society. While these early works did take strides away from neoclassicism, particularly in their dramatic expression, they did not compare favorably to the works of Carter’s more established colleagues. Radical stylistic change was, however, on the horizon.

Sonata for Cello.In 1948, the year after The Minotaur was completed, Carter composed a work that pinpoints when he left the path of the mainstream, populist composers he seemed to be emulating. Carter was looking for new rhythmic structures not found in traditional Western art music. He found his inspiration in the music of Africa, Arabia, and Southeast Asia. Initially, Carter composed the second movement, the only one that utilizes key signatures. The tonality and jazzy sounds in this movement were identified by Carter as a parody of the work of his American colleagues at the time. It is interesting to note that after attending concerts together, Carter and Ives would often rush to a piano to play parodies of the various composers they had heard; perhaps that game was the genesis of this movement. The other movements, however, foreshadow Carter’s later works in their simple form and modernist language.

This work displays some of the devices that would pervade Carter’s later compositions. It shows his penchant for assigning different characteristics to different instruments. In this case, the cello begins with a free, legato melody, while the piano’s clocklike percussion contrasts sharply. The characteristics of each instrument shift dramatically and between movements seem to trade such elements as melody and tempo. In this work Carter also establishes his method of “metric modulation,” a technique that owes a debt to the composer’s exploration of the rhythms of other cultures. The music shifts through proportionally related tempi rather quickly, the rhythmic analogue of modulation between keys in a tonal system. It was not originally well received—in Carter’s own words, “Everybody hated it.”

String Quartet No. 2.The change in compositional philosophy in the Sonata for Cello led to a period of exploration and discovery, involving increasingly complex polyrhythms and bearing the influence of his friend Ives, along with that of Conlon Nancarrow and Béla Bartók. His String Quartet No. 1 and the Variations for Orchestra combined these influences and expanded his ideas while achieving the critical success that the Cello Sonata did not. The String Quartet No. 2 represents the next step in the evolution of Carter’s compositional language. Much more dissonant and angular than his earlier pieces, this work divides the ensemble into four characters, each identified by varying intervals, rhythms, tempi, and dynamics. Also, the members of the quartet are instructed how to sit: in pairs, with violin and viola seated across from violin and cello and as far apart as possible, so that it seems as if they are playing two distinct pieces. Carter won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for this work.

Later Works. Carter remained prolific throughout his long career, and the concepts and devices created in the Cello Sonata and String Quartet No. 2 were expanded upon in the works that followed, establishing him as one of the true innovators of the twentieth century. Among these devices are chords whose notes exhibit all possible intervals (all-interval chords), increasingly complex polyrhythms, a circular time plan, and opposing forces and characters in his chamber and orchestral works. These, along with an increasing expressiveness, are shown in the String Quartet No. 3 (for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize), A Mirror on Which to Dwell for soprano and chamber ensemble, Triple Duo, and the Oboe Concerto. While the evolution of his musical language was rapid and sharp in the late 1940s, Carter never disavowed his earlier works and seemed quite comfortable with their place in his oeuvre.

Musical Legacy

Carter never belonged to one group or symbolized one movement. He is usually described as a modernist, but this label does not tell the whole story. While his works show tremendous compositional control and a highly chromatic character, he never explicitly utilized the serial system, as did most of the composers who are often mentioned in the same breath, such as Milton Babbitt, Pierre Boulez, or Karlheinz Stockhausen. Carter’s influence has been felt on both sides of the Atlantic, and his innovations, particularly in rhythm, have impressed composers whose styles and philosophies range far beyond the circle of modernism. Carter described his compositional goal as follows: “I want to invent something I haven’t heard before.”

Principal Works

ballets (music): Pocahontas, 1936; The Minotaur, 1947.

chamber works: Eight Études and a Fantasy for Wind Quartet, 1949; String Quartet No. 1, 1951; String Quartet No. 2, 1959; String Quartet No. 3, 1971; Triple Duo, 1983 (for wind, string, and percussion instruments); Penthode, 1985 (for five groups of four instruments); String Quartet No. 4, 1986; String Quartet No. 5, 1995; Mosaic for Harp and Ensemble, 2004; Réflexions for Ensemble, 2004.

instrumental works: Eight Pieces for Four Timpani, 1949; Night Fantasies, 1980 (for piano); Changes, 1983 (for guitar); Intermittences, 2005 (for piano); Catenaires, 2006 (for piano); Sistribute, 2008 (for piano); "Epigrams" (for piano, violin, and cello), 2012.

opera (music): What Next?, 1998 (libretto by Paul Griffiths).

orchestral works: Symphony No. 1, 1942; Holiday Overture, 1944; Piano Sonata, 1946; Cello Sonata, 1948; Variations for Orchestra, 1955; Double Concerto, 1961 (for piano, harpsichord, and two chamber orchestras); Piano Concerto, 1964; Concerto for Orchestra, 1969; A Symphony of Three Orchestras, 1976; Oboe Concerto, 1987; Three Occasions, 1989; Violin Concerto, 1990; Clarinet Concerto, 1996; Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei, 1996 (I Am the Prize of Flowing Hope); ASKO Concerto, 2000; Cello Concerto, 2001; Boston Concerto, 2002; Dialogues, 2003 (for piano and orchestra); Three Illusions, 2004 (in three parts: “Micomicón,” “Fons Juventatis,” and “More’s Utopia”); Soundings, 2005 (for piano and orchestra); Horn Concerto, 2007; Interventions, 2007 (for piano and orchestra); Dialogues II (for piano and chamber orchestra), 2010.

vocal works:Three Poems of Robert Frost, 1942 (for baritone and ensemble); A Mirror on Which to Dwell, 1975 (for soprano and ensemble); Syringa, 1978 (for mezzo-soprano, bass-baritone, guitar, and ensemble); In Sleep, in Thunder, 1981 (for tenor and ensemble); Of Challenge and of Love, 1994 (for soprano and piano); In the Distances of Sleep, 2006 (for voice and ensemble); On Conversing with Paradise (for baritone and ensemble), 2008; What Are Years (for soprano and chamber ensemble), 2009.

writings of interest:The Writings of Elliott Carter: An American Composer Looks at Modern Music, 1977; The New Worlds of Edgard Varèse: A Symposium, 1979 (papers by Carter, Chou Wen-Chung, Robert P. Morgan, and Sherman van Solkema).

Bibliography

Carter, Elliott. Elliott Carter: Collected Essays and Lectures, 1937–1995, edited by Jonathan W. Bernard, U of Rochester P, 1998. Includes writings and talks by Carter. Many are nontechnical, dealing with his influences, experiences, and compositional goals.

Carter, Elliott. Harmony Book, edited by Nicholas Hopkins and John F. Link, Carl Fischer Music, 2002. A comprehensive catalog Carter kept during his compositional processes of the harmonies he derived. Includes an interview with the composer and examples from the works with detailed explanations.

Kozinn, Allan. "Elliott Carter, Composer Who Decisively Snapped Tradition, Dies at 103." The New York Times, 5 Nov. 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/arts/music/elliott-carter-avant-garde-composer-dies-at-103.html. Accessed 28 Dec. 2017.

Link, John F. Elliott Carter: A Guide to Research. Routledge, 2000. Comprehensive guide to sources. Includes list of compositions (published and unpublished), interviews with the composer, and articles about the composer.

Rosen, Charles. “Elliott Carter.” Dictionary of Contemporary Music, edited by John Vinton, E. P. Dutton, 1974. Reference article about Carter, including biography and insightful descriptions of works.

Schiff, David. The Music of Elliott Carter. 2nd ed., Cornell UP, 1998. Complete examination of the composer and his body of work by a former compositional student. Includes essays by the composer, full-length interviews, and anecdotes. Combines historical background of the various works with discussions of the composer’s techniques.