elliott carter

He also went to my school!

He is hard going but worth the effort (see also: most Birtwistle).

(Julio: YES! One of the best choral pieces ever written.)

perhaps biased due to his neanderthal slandering of Ives.

basically just some cloth-eared comments about how he shouldn't be considered a 'great' composer because he didn't write his own melodies (not entirely true, and in any case missing the point entirely). carter also saw Ives' revising his earlier pieces and mentioned that he'd been 'jacking up the dissonances', suggesting that he'd been following the lead of other music he'd been hearing in the meantime, calling into doubt his 'innovations'. this suggestion says a lot more about the mentality of Carter than it does about Ives.

As for myself, I have always been fascinated by the polyrhymic aspect of
Ives' music, as well as its multiple layering, but perplexed at times by
the disturbing lack of musical and stylistic continuity, caused largely
by the constant use of musical quotations in many works. To me a
composer develops his own personal language, suitable to express his
field of experience and thought. When he borrows music from another
style and thought from his own, he is admitting that he did not really
experience what he is presenting but has to borrow from someone else who
did. In the case of early music, like masses on L'homme arme, or cantatas on Lutheran chorales, the original melody has a deep religious meaning so that, understandably, a very devout composer feels he needs to borrow it as a basis, since its expression transcends
his own religious experience. These old tunes both united the composer
to his listener and were very close in style to the music for which they
formed a basis. At the other extreme of borrowing are the endless
variations on popular or famous tunes in the ninteenth century, a very
few of which produced great music, not really because of the tunes. Then
there were the entertaining potpourris or medleys of partriotic airs,
sometimes arranged humorously for band concerts; these have no artistic
pretentions and reveal little fundamental musical imagination. Some of
Ives' works belong close to this latter category, except for his daring
"take-off" technique that often makes these pieces resemble "realistic" sound pictures of festive scenes. It is, to me, disappointing that Ives
too frequently was unable or unwilling to invent musical material that
expressed his own vision authentically, instead of relying on the
material of others. But what is striking and remarkable in his work,
like much of the First and Second Piano Sonatas, is an extraordinary musical achievement.

don't mean to be raining on Carter's thread. I've been meaning to check out 'Symphonia'. My distant opinion is based only on 'Three Orchestras' and the String Quartets.

make sure you hear either the arditti or composers string quartets' versions. the "standard" juilliard interpretations are often lacking.

and to make a general statement: i think his ideas work best in chamber form, with the exception of the aforementioned "symphonia." he's certainly improved his orchestral writing with time.

What I'm coming to say is I have the first four string quartets. I can put them on and be engaged and appreciate the intricacy and the spiciness of the dissonance and the way the strings sound but I still don't think I totally get it as far as the larger picture goes and I can't still really follow why someone would want to write music in this way, other than as an interesting exercise. Or maybe looking for more than what I do get, which is something you know, is the problem. Mind you, I just have the Juilliard recordings. I would be fascinated if someone here who loves these, as some of you seem to, could expand a bit on why he or she likes it.

the Perlis interview, which also contains some great comments on how Ives' influence on him waned once he began studying music 'formally', but here:

A new score was being derived from the older one to which he was adding and chaging, turning octaves into sevenths and ninths, and adding dissonant notes. Since then, I have often wondered at exactly what date a lot of the music written early in his life received its last shot of dissonance and polyrhythm. In this case he showed me quite simply how he was improving the score. I got the impression that he might have frequently jacked up the level of dissonance of many works as his tastes changed. While the question no longer seems important, one could wonder whether he was as early a precursor of "modern" music as is sometimes made out. A study of the manuscripts would probably make this clear.

Perfectly fair questions, as stated. A little trifling, maybe, to quibble over a few extra ninths in an intrinsically bent piece like Three Places -- arguing over the degree to which his work was pioneering seems poisoniously academic. This may have carried over into my initial reaction to Carter's music.

There's this guy who's recently been publishing research contending that Ives back-dated his scores, Alex Ross ran with the story in the New Yorker. Kyle Gann had a beautiful response in the mid-may entries on his blog here.

Paul in Santa Cruz as i recall liked serialism but i don't think he posts here anymore. I really need to hear Ives too.

what

ever

I guess Julio's first post was right, then

there is the theatricality. take any of his quartets: you will notice the obsession with "voice." he pits strings against each other, either in singles or in doubles, then isn’t afraid to suddenly entwine them, to drop one, or two, or three out of the flow and demonstrate how disconnected they are to begin with—-soliloquies that would be devoid of meaning in any other context. then is his essentiality of rhythmic interplay; this idea of simultaneously having instruments play different parts at different speeds, till you start to visualize their little threads as they spiral off into directed patterns.

above all, he is expressive! granted: difficult and enigmatic, but inexhaustibly saying something and taking every possible route to get there, minus the easy one. i remember reading this interview where he claimed to have been interested in dissonance from the very start. he says it took him a while to appreciate the works of, say, beethoven, or bach. i think many of the total serialists were too conceptual; too obsessed with the idea that "everything must be different"--a calculated pose if ever there was one. yet if carter is to be believed (and i think it is reasonable to assume he isn’t lying thru simply listening to his music), atonality and dissonance provide him with a vision that is neither subservient to trends nor reactionary à la schoenberg.

search: string quartets, vols. i & ii (arditti string quartet); chamber music (arditti string quartet, ursula oppens); the complete music for piano (charles rosen); symphonia, clarinet concerto (bbc symphony orchestra, cond. oliver knussen); piano concerto, variations for orchestra (ursula oppens, cincinnati symphony orchestra, cond. michael gielen)

destroy: concerto for orchestra, most of his fairly boring/derivative early works

anyone heard what next?

Elliott Carter is my favorite composer, and has held steady as such even as the rest of my top ten (or so) fluctuates. I just got a pet cat and was going to name it Carter. (But I ended up getting a girl cat and naming her Clara.) I think everything Carter (the composer, not the hypothetical cat) has written from the Cello Sonata onward is at least worth hearing.

Having said that, What's Next is not his best work. (I've never "seen" it, only heard the studio recording.)

There's a lot going for it. His purely instrumental music has always had a high degree of theatricality (with different instruments or instrumental groups playing dramatic roles and engaging in various types of interplay, from conflict to cooperation), and his song cycles-- represent some of his most lyrical and approachable work. And finally, the librettist Paul Griffiths is a great writer on music and a longtime champion of Carter's work, who understands it deeply.

But Griffiths is not a great poet or playwright, and he's produced a libretto that's "composed" too much like a typical Carter composition: each character is given a personality in sharp contrast to the others, but then they're all just cast into a situation where they proceed to interact according to some governing formal design, with the result that there's really no engaging drama. Really, what I miss is a strong impression of the librettist's own personality and literary voice. The opera would have been much better, I imagine, if the Carter-isms had been left to Carter -- if the text even provided some *resistance* to his usual practices. Given his status in the realm of American Arts and Letters, he could have worked with, who knows, Albee, or Ashberry, or Louise Gluck, or -- I don't know, somebody great.

Did I mention Night Fantasies yet? Fantastic piece. And the Triple Duo! And...

Most of it is being broadcast on radio 3 - you can listen online.

There was a 20 min interview in the break. He had many interesting comments though some of them seemed to have come up at one time or another (not his fault I guess he keeps getting asked the same questions); Ivan Hewitt was v intersting - he kept asking about the period in which he composed Copland-type material, about why he did it in the first place and what prompted the change. Another good bit were his comments on serialism, something he doesn't feel too comfortable or into anymore (interesting then to look at this thread now after that interview) and apparently, of the serialist works, Carter still loves nono's 'il canto sospeso' but not much else.

Happy centenary!

And many more to come!

Cooled on him a bit. The piece I'm most fond of these days is Night Fantasies for solo piano.

I really want to hear the recent "Sound Fields" for string orchestra, which is said to have all its rhythms written in eighth notes and quarter notes -- which would make it unique among Carter's compositions (post 1950, at least).

Carter's own program note:
In thinking about musical contrasts between thick textures and thin ones, I had the idea of composing a piece which depended only on such contrasts, always remaining at the same dynamic and tone color using strings non- vibrato. Helen Frankenthaler’s fascinating Color Field pictures encouraged me to try this experiment.

Saw him on Charlie Rose the other night, not exactly lucid.

I don't enjoy his music, but I heard an interview with him this morning that was very funny. Well, he was very funny. Apparently he mostly listens to Mozart operas at home. Also (not quite verbatim): “I like to move from one thing to another which is rather contrary from what most people write now. . . [at which point I cracked up] they don’t even have to write it out, they can just write a ditto sign. . .” It was on some NPR show I think. I'm not sure what it's called. It was actually an episode about aging. (Other exchange: "How is being 100 different from being in your 70s" "If I were only in my 70s you probably wouldn't be here to interview me." Or the like.)

Ha, my post was so idiotic.

Search: the Duo for piano/violin

I do enjoy his music. Listening to the brass quintet at present. I think what I like best about the E.C. I've heard is that it's more or less all or nothing: you can give it your attention, and reap rich rewards, or you can try to let it play in the background, and find yourself getting pretty irritable in a matter of minutes.

Arlene Sierra ‏
@asie

RIP Elliott Carter 1908-2012

Appears to be the first report so far.

whaaaaa

I mean, not really surprising but I thought I'd at least get to really meet him before he died

RIP to the magnificent ornery old cunt

just playing his 2nd string qt yesterday

just one of a long line of Harvard-related composers whom I've wanted to ask "what were you thinking when you did that?" (Dan Pinkham's answer was priceless: "I was thinking, 'I'm getting paid for this.'")

yeah i don't think carter was ever at great risk of that

From the BBC's classical music magazine:

https://twitter.com/MusicMagazine/status/265575042845405184

Yeah this is starting to look fully confirmed:

https://twitter.com/nightafternight/status/265582760704503810

increasingly, overwhelmingly, though not yet irrevocably dead

if there's one thing the world needed more than Elliott Carter, it's Zombie Elliott Carter

Someone already made a cyborg Elliott Carter joke on Twitter!

Who's @nightafternight -- i.e., why is his tweet being taken as confirmation?

elliot carter is like the miit romney of non-metaphorical death

xpost -- Steve Smith, runs this site, very much in a position to know. He followed up:

Steve Smith ‏
@nightafternight

@seatedovation I waited for my own authoritative source, too. No way was I signing on to anything beforehand.

just hearing about this. if a dude makes it to 103 it's hard to feel too bummed - what a life! amazing! seeing Emmanuel Ax play a piece of his at UNC (and seeing some of the older patrons walk out with an amazing "no thanks" handwave midway through it) was an amazing moment shortly after we moved here - I think I learned to listen better through Elliott Carter.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/nov/06/elliott-carter/print

this is possibly the first time i have seen a photo of someone at 52 years old and thought 'they look so young there.....'

that obituary is worth reading

RIP

that obituary is worth reading

OTM

^

To my great shame I haven't investigated much Carter beyond the Piano Concerto and String 4tets. Listened to some older stuff and the Double Concerto yesterday, wow.

WKCR is playing only Carter all day today
http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/wkcr/story/elliott-carter-memorial-broadcast-november-6th

The recording of his "Duo" by Rolf Schulte and Martin Goldray is pretty nice, albeit thorny.

just discovered this guy listening to WKCR on my way home from work. good stuff.

:-(

To my great shame I haven't investigated much Carter beyond the Piano Concerto and String 4tets. Listened to some older stuff and the Double Concerto yesterday, wow.

― flamboyant goon tie included, Tuesday, 6 November 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How great is this really? Only now does it really feel like I'm actually taking stock of what this man was (and is still) doing.

Great piece on the history of Double Concerto. Contrast that w/this piece on Ferneyhough and its like night and day.

The Rosen provides illumination; Service is boredeline apologetics, if anyone was in any doubt..

a documentary from Dutch television on Carter:
http://www.uitzendinggemist.nl/afleveringen/1304197

As it happens, I just listened to a Barenboim concert (a few years old) yesterday which includes the Symphonia and the Horn Concerto, with a vocal work in between... first Carter listening I've done in a long time. I'm still trying to crack him tbh. The Horn cto really stood out for me.

If sund4r is about - have you heard and if so do you like Shard (its a 3 min piece for solo gtr)?

That doc looks good, from the first 5 mins there seems to be enough English and great footage of performance to follow (wish Brit TV bothered w/composer portraits but its all v 60 and 70s rock music focused).

Today: the Triple Duo and the Clarinet Concerto. Liked both a lot, esp the latter. I basically copied a bunch of Carter pieces from the Lincoln Center library a few years ago and then forgot about them til now. I seem to respond strongly to his work in concerto format. Of the things I've auditioned this week, the Clarinet and Horn cti really stand out.

http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2013/10/great-moments-in-teaching.html

I played the first several minutes of Elliott Carter’s Double Concerto.

Student #1: Who decided that this work was one of the great pieces of 20th-century music?

Student #2: It’s just like what happens in popular music.

Student #1: But no, popular music becomes popular because people like it.

Student #2: No, popular music is made popular by the industry. Somebody decided that Miley Cyrus could be popular, and so they poured a ton of money and publicity into her. Her career was completely orchestrated.

Me: Between the two of you, you have just arrived at the insight that Elliott Carter and Miley Cyrus are mirror images of each other.

[General laughter]

UPDATE: Let me be clear – other examples besides Carter and Miley Cyrus (whoever she is) could have served. I’m trying to teach the class that the canon is an artificial construct, and that it is indeed created by people in power making decisions. Musical academia has its collective narrative, critics tend toward a different narrative, the classical-music performance world has yet another narrative, and the corporate world makes decisions on a different set of criteria. All of these narratives are contaminated by self-serving premises, and none should be misunderstood as resembling any kind of pure meritocracy. And thus every student needs to judge every piece on its own merits as they appear to him or her, and such decisions should not be made on the first listening, or necessarily the second or third. It took me listening to the Double Concerto about a hundred times before I decided there just wasn’t anything there for me. It’s part of what Bard calls “Critical Thinking,” and I’m really into it lately.

Critical thinking is to think its all a big conspiracy, to then react to it by composing in an opposite style, making it minimal and 'fun'.

Going to these concerts next week (because: FREE), not sure what to expect

http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/er3g9r#p00gm04b

Expect lotsa unfun.

Highly recommended is the Carter-documentary 'A Labyrinth of Memory´, by Frank Scheffer, to be found on www.npo.nl.