This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/nov/06/elliott-carter
The article has changed 9 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 5 | Version 6 |
|---|---|
| Elliott Carter obituary | Elliott Carter obituary |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| The American composer Elliott Carter, who has died aged 103, was, apart from Pierre Boulez, the last survivor of the heroic age of postwar musical modernism, and perhaps its greatest exponent. In the 1950s, when Carter wrote his first masterpieces in his new self-made, fabulously intricate language, that age was in full flood. By the time he wrote his playful late masterpieces, it had long since passed into history. | The American composer Elliott Carter, who has died aged 103, was, apart from Pierre Boulez, the last survivor of the heroic age of postwar musical modernism, and perhaps its greatest exponent. In the 1950s, when Carter wrote his first masterpieces in his new self-made, fabulously intricate language, that age was in full flood. By the time he wrote his playful late masterpieces, it had long since passed into history. |
| And yet despite his longevity, Carter never became what so many aged artists become: relics of a bygone age, constantly interviewed for their memories of the past. He always lived in the present tense. In his last years he was more interested to hear about the latest thing than in reminiscing. By the same token, he and his music were completely impervious to fashion. The music lost its hectic intricacy of the 1970s and 80s and became so graceful in its modernist purism that it took on the mysterious quality of a classic – always contemporary, through being essentially timeless. In Carter's vicinity, musical history seemed to bend to his agenda; he was always the centre of his own self-made universe, needing no validation from anything or anyone. | And yet despite his longevity, Carter never became what so many aged artists become: relics of a bygone age, constantly interviewed for their memories of the past. He always lived in the present tense. In his last years he was more interested to hear about the latest thing than in reminiscing. By the same token, he and his music were completely impervious to fashion. The music lost its hectic intricacy of the 1970s and 80s and became so graceful in its modernist purism that it took on the mysterious quality of a classic – always contemporary, through being essentially timeless. In Carter's vicinity, musical history seemed to bend to his agenda; he was always the centre of his own self-made universe, needing no validation from anything or anyone. |
| The achievement is all the more extraordinary when seen in the context of Carter's life story. Most composers' biographies bear out the adage that geniuses are born, not made. With Carter the reverse was true. There was no revelation in early childhood of unusual gifts, to be eagerly seized on by the world. What distinguishes Carter's early years is not precocious musicality but precocious maturity and unshakeable self-belief. He was born in New York, at a time when the first skyscrapers were appearing on the skyline, but milk was still delivered by horse and cart. His father was a lace importer and Elliott often accompanied his father on buying trips, which allowed him to learn French and Flemish at first hand. | The achievement is all the more extraordinary when seen in the context of Carter's life story. Most composers' biographies bear out the adage that geniuses are born, not made. With Carter the reverse was true. There was no revelation in early childhood of unusual gifts, to be eagerly seized on by the world. What distinguishes Carter's early years is not precocious musicality but precocious maturity and unshakeable self-belief. He was born in New York, at a time when the first skyscrapers were appearing on the skyline, but milk was still delivered by horse and cart. His father was a lace importer and Elliott often accompanied his father on buying trips, which allowed him to learn French and Flemish at first hand. |
| It was a solid bourgeois upbringing, but the boy soon showed a rebellious streak. His father hoped he would take over the business and must have been annoyed to find his son so passionate not just about music, but beastly modern music. The young Carter was incorrigibly attracted to anything new: he attended the first American performance of The Rite of Spring, in 1924. In the same year Carter met the reclusive founding father of American musical modernism, Charles Ives, thanks to a sympathetic music teacher at his school. The frail elderly man took to the determined young man, describing him in a letter of recommendation to Harvard University as "rather an exceptional boy. He has an instinctive interest in literature, and especially music." | It was a solid bourgeois upbringing, but the boy soon showed a rebellious streak. His father hoped he would take over the business and must have been annoyed to find his son so passionate not just about music, but beastly modern music. The young Carter was incorrigibly attracted to anything new: he attended the first American performance of The Rite of Spring, in 1924. In the same year Carter met the reclusive founding father of American musical modernism, Charles Ives, thanks to a sympathetic music teacher at his school. The frail elderly man took to the determined young man, describing him in a letter of recommendation to Harvard University as "rather an exceptional boy. He has an instinctive interest in literature, and especially music." |
| At Harvard, Carter officially studied English literature, but he also learned ancient Greek, sang in the Harvard Glee Club (for which he later wrote three fine pieces) and wrote incidental music for theatre productions. These early works were competent, but gave no sign of exceptional promise. A career as a music critic (Carter early on revealed a sharp insightful mind and fluent style) or a humanities teacher (he taught for several years at St John's College, Annapolis, Maryland), combined with some composing for choirs on the side, seemed his most likely prospect. But Carter's persistent explorations and self-questioning suggest an inkling of a bigger goal. | At Harvard, Carter officially studied English literature, but he also learned ancient Greek, sang in the Harvard Glee Club (for which he later wrote three fine pieces) and wrote incidental music for theatre productions. These early works were competent, but gave no sign of exceptional promise. A career as a music critic (Carter early on revealed a sharp insightful mind and fluent style) or a humanities teacher (he taught for several years at St John's College, Annapolis, Maryland), combined with some composing for choirs on the side, seemed his most likely prospect. But Carter's persistent explorations and self-questioning suggest an inkling of a bigger goal. |
| The next 15 years were ones of slow maturing, revealed in a trying-out of various idioms that to the world must have seemed oddly tentative. In retrospect, these years take on an awesome quality of self-possessed, unhurried progress toward a goal whose essence was glimpsed, but for which the technical means were as yet lacking. What Carter was searching for was a music apt for the giddy speed and multilayered experience of being alive in the 20th century. But he was aware that the obstreperous American modernism of Ives, Henry Brant and Edgard Varèse wouldn't do. | The next 15 years were ones of slow maturing, revealed in a trying-out of various idioms that to the world must have seemed oddly tentative. In retrospect, these years take on an awesome quality of self-possessed, unhurried progress toward a goal whose essence was glimpsed, but for which the technical means were as yet lacking. What Carter was searching for was a music apt for the giddy speed and multilayered experience of being alive in the 20th century. But he was aware that the obstreperous American modernism of Ives, Henry Brant and Edgard Varèse wouldn't do. |
| Urban and "machine-age" sounds and gestures did not interest him; they were too much of the moment. He wanted a modernism beyond fashion, rooted in a new kind of syntax, and to achieve that some European sophistication would be necessary. All the things he had absorbed would eventually find a place in his modernist idiom: the idea of dramatic personages found in Mozart operas, the independent layers of English madrigals, the syntactic rigour of Arnold Schoenberg – and the combination of strict and free rhythm in jazz pianists he admired, such as Art Tatum. | Urban and "machine-age" sounds and gestures did not interest him; they were too much of the moment. He wanted a modernism beyond fashion, rooted in a new kind of syntax, and to achieve that some European sophistication would be necessary. All the things he had absorbed would eventually find a place in his modernist idiom: the idea of dramatic personages found in Mozart operas, the independent layers of English madrigals, the syntactic rigour of Arnold Schoenberg – and the combination of strict and free rhythm in jazz pianists he admired, such as Art Tatum. |
| Synthesising all these within a coherent idiom that was both authentically contemporary and authentically American – but without obvious American pictorialisms – would prove agonisingly hard. At first Carter thought it might be achieved through the pert, lean, unsentimental neoclassical idiom then in fashion. From 1932 he spent three years in Paris acquiring a solid technical grounding from neo-classicism's leading proselyte, Nadia Boulanger, which left its mark on his String Quartet in C (and possibly other works from that period that Carter later destroyed). | Synthesising all these within a coherent idiom that was both authentically contemporary and authentically American – but without obvious American pictorialisms – would prove agonisingly hard. At first Carter thought it might be achieved through the pert, lean, unsentimental neoclassical idiom then in fashion. From 1932 he spent three years in Paris acquiring a solid technical grounding from neo-classicism's leading proselyte, Nadia Boulanger, which left its mark on his String Quartet in C (and possibly other works from that period that Carter later destroyed). |
| Once back in America, Carter became the musical director for Lincoln Kirstein's Ballet Caravan, for which he composed the ballet Pocahontas, and in 1939 he married the sculptor Helen Frost-Jones. Like his slightly older contemporary Aaron Copland, Carter was swept up in the populist spirit engendered by the Depression. One result was his Holiday Overture, composed in 1944 during a summer stay on Fire Island. | Once back in America, Carter became the musical director for Lincoln Kirstein's Ballet Caravan, for which he composed the ballet Pocahontas, and in 1939 he married the sculptor Helen Frost-Jones. Like his slightly older contemporary Aaron Copland, Carter was swept up in the populist spirit engendered by the Depression. One result was his Holiday Overture, composed in 1944 during a summer stay on Fire Island. |
| Copland was a guest during that summer and his ballet Appalachian Spring was written at the same kitchen table as Carter's overture. Copland's ballet was a perfect piece of American arcadiana, which touched something deep in the American psyche. Carter's overture, though sharing some of Copland's upbeat diatonic flavour, had an admixture of Carter-ish contrapuntal complexity and dissonance. His inability, or refusal, to strike a purely populist note helps to explain why, with his 40th birthday looming, he was still a marginal figure. When Copland published a survey of "younger talents to watch", in 1948, Carter did not get a mention, a fact which – despite his affection for Copland – still rankled in later years. | Copland was a guest during that summer and his ballet Appalachian Spring was written at the same kitchen table as Carter's overture. Copland's ballet was a perfect piece of American arcadiana, which touched something deep in the American psyche. Carter's overture, though sharing some of Copland's upbeat diatonic flavour, had an admixture of Carter-ish contrapuntal complexity and dissonance. His inability, or refusal, to strike a purely populist note helps to explain why, with his 40th birthday looming, he was still a marginal figure. When Copland published a survey of "younger talents to watch", in 1948, Carter did not get a mention, a fact which – despite his affection for Copland – still rankled in later years. |
| Eventually Carter realised that all the accumulated baggage of his music – the neoclassicism, the madrigalian references, the Greek texts, the Americana – would have to go. In the Piano Sonata of 1945, written the year he moved with his wife into the brownstone apartment he would live in for the rest of his life, Carter retains the massive rhetoric of the American sublime. But the cyclic form, the startling use of piano resonances and rhythmic flexibility mark a huge step forward. The Cello Sonata of 1948 is another leap towards a really radical conception of form. The piece at the end seems to loop back to its opening, in a way that recalls Stéphane Mallarmé's conception of a book that one can begin at any point. At the beginning, a strict metronomic "ticking" in the piano is combined with a rhapsodically unfolding line in the cello. Nothing quite like this joining of two radically opposed worlds moving at different speeds had been heard in music before. | Eventually Carter realised that all the accumulated baggage of his music – the neoclassicism, the madrigalian references, the Greek texts, the Americana – would have to go. In the Piano Sonata of 1945, written the year he moved with his wife into the brownstone apartment he would live in for the rest of his life, Carter retains the massive rhetoric of the American sublime. But the cyclic form, the startling use of piano resonances and rhythmic flexibility mark a huge step forward. The Cello Sonata of 1948 is another leap towards a really radical conception of form. The piece at the end seems to loop back to its opening, in a way that recalls Stéphane Mallarmé's conception of a book that one can begin at any point. At the beginning, a strict metronomic "ticking" in the piano is combined with a rhapsodically unfolding line in the cello. Nothing quite like this joining of two radically opposed worlds moving at different speeds had been heard in music before. |
| But it was in the First String Quartet of 1951 that Carter's new conception of independent musical layers, sometimes co-operating, sometimes clashing in purposeful disunity, came fully into focus. To achieve it, Carter cut himself off from his usual surroundings and moved to the Arizona desert for several months. What survives from his old manner is a heroic rhetoric of wide intervals, as if the American sublime has been sublimated and purged of anything local. | But it was in the First String Quartet of 1951 that Carter's new conception of independent musical layers, sometimes co-operating, sometimes clashing in purposeful disunity, came fully into focus. To achieve it, Carter cut himself off from his usual surroundings and moved to the Arizona desert for several months. What survives from his old manner is a heroic rhetoric of wide intervals, as if the American sublime has been sublimated and purged of anything local. |
| That joining together of aspiring strenuousness with an ever-increasing allusiveness would define Carter's creative project for the next two decades. It revealed itself in three works of astounding complexity that occupied him for more than 10 years: the Double Concerto, premiered in 1961, the Piano Concerto – written in 1964-65, partly in Berlin, and imbued, according to the composer, with the dark atmosphere of that divided city – and the Concerto for Orchestra of 1969. | That joining together of aspiring strenuousness with an ever-increasing allusiveness would define Carter's creative project for the next two decades. It revealed itself in three works of astounding complexity that occupied him for more than 10 years: the Double Concerto, premiered in 1961, the Piano Concerto – written in 1964-65, partly in Berlin, and imbued, according to the composer, with the dark atmosphere of that divided city – and the Concerto for Orchestra of 1969. |
| Carter was now in his 60s, and his life had long since settled into a pattern that mingled teaching and composing during the academic year with more concentrated creative work during summer retreats at the Carters' modest country home at Waccabuc in upstate New York. He had reached the age at which Brahms was already thinking of retirement, and most composers are in some way retrenching. | Carter was now in his 60s, and his life had long since settled into a pattern that mingled teaching and composing during the academic year with more concentrated creative work during summer retreats at the Carters' modest country home at Waccabuc in upstate New York. He had reached the age at which Brahms was already thinking of retirement, and most composers are in some way retrenching. |
| Nobody could have guessed that Carter was just getting into his stride, and that ahead of him lay more than four decades of creativity. In the 1970s, after a gap of nearly 30 years, he returned to vocal writing in a series of elegantly intricate settings of American poets such as John Ashbery, Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. This decade also produced the distilled essence of Carter's heroic style: A Symphony of Three Orchestras (1977). Inspired by Hart Crane's poem The Bridge, the piece evokes all the conflicting energies of America, with a soaring trumpet solo that captures Crane's image of a gull wheeling over Brooklyn Bridge. By the 1980s, Carter was established as modernism's not-so-grand old man. This didn't cut much ice with the American public, which preferred an expressive form of post-minimalism (and still does). | Nobody could have guessed that Carter was just getting into his stride, and that ahead of him lay more than four decades of creativity. In the 1970s, after a gap of nearly 30 years, he returned to vocal writing in a series of elegantly intricate settings of American poets such as John Ashbery, Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. This decade also produced the distilled essence of Carter's heroic style: A Symphony of Three Orchestras (1977). Inspired by Hart Crane's poem The Bridge, the piece evokes all the conflicting energies of America, with a soaring trumpet solo that captures Crane's image of a gull wheeling over Brooklyn Bridge. By the 1980s, Carter was established as modernism's not-so-grand old man. This didn't cut much ice with the American public, which preferred an expressive form of post-minimalism (and still does). |
| He was not ignored in America, but it was the respectful esteem of prizes and fellowships that came his way rather than affection. As ever, Carter was a frequent visitor to Europe, where his uncompromising modernism found a warmer reception. He was never a performer, apart from a few teenage piano recitals, so one form of "visibility" was denied him. However, he was an indefatigable worker and was much involved in practical ways with American musical life. He taught, principally at the Juilliard School, in New York, held guest professorships in the US and in Europe and served on the board of the American section of the International Society for Contemporary Music. | He was not ignored in America, but it was the respectful esteem of prizes and fellowships that came his way rather than affection. As ever, Carter was a frequent visitor to Europe, where his uncompromising modernism found a warmer reception. He was never a performer, apart from a few teenage piano recitals, so one form of "visibility" was denied him. However, he was an indefatigable worker and was much involved in practical ways with American musical life. He taught, principally at the Juilliard School, in New York, held guest professorships in the US and in Europe and served on the board of the American section of the International Society for Contemporary Music. |
| Up to the 1970s, Carter had been a severely constructivist composer. Some pieces were based on vast polymetric grids, and all of them involved complex rhythmic gear-changes known as metric modulations. Carter also made use of a highly systematised harmonic system, involving tables of all possible permutations of a given set of intervals. Manipulating these systems involved immense labour and copious sheaves of preliminary sketches (well over a thousand pages for A Symphony of Three Orchestras). | |
| But from the 80s Carter increasingly composed free-style, by ear. This is one reason for his astonishingly increased productivity. Another is that the knotted density of his 60s and 70s scores gave way to a new transparency – though the musical thought is more quicksilver than ever ("When will Carter start to write an old man's music?" was the plaintive overheard comment of a composer several decades his junior, but already senior himself.) A stream of chamber miniatures emerged, as well as balletically elegant concertos. The greatest surprise of Carter's later years was the appearance of an opera, What Next?, first performed in 1998. However, not all the late works were light in tone. Symphonia, premiered in 1996, is his weightiest achievement, with a middle movement, Adagio Tenebroso, that is the most perfect example of Carter's desolate, unfathomably dark slow movements. | But from the 80s Carter increasingly composed free-style, by ear. This is one reason for his astonishingly increased productivity. Another is that the knotted density of his 60s and 70s scores gave way to a new transparency – though the musical thought is more quicksilver than ever ("When will Carter start to write an old man's music?" was the plaintive overheard comment of a composer several decades his junior, but already senior himself.) A stream of chamber miniatures emerged, as well as balletically elegant concertos. The greatest surprise of Carter's later years was the appearance of an opera, What Next?, first performed in 1998. However, not all the late works were light in tone. Symphonia, premiered in 1996, is his weightiest achievement, with a middle movement, Adagio Tenebroso, that is the most perfect example of Carter's desolate, unfathomably dark slow movements. |
| In the 1990s, America seemed to wake up to the fact that the most revered living composer on the planet was one of their own. As if to make up for lost time, a stream of home-grown commissions followed. There were more surprises, including a piece composed in 2007 for string orchestra, Sound Fields, of astonishing simplicity. This aloof procession of slow chords comes close to Morton Feldman, a composer often thought of as Carter's opposite. When this was pointed out to him, he said, "I know", with a naughty twinkle. "When you get to my age", he said, "you just want to have fun." | |
| Despite the death of his wife in 2003, Carter's cheerful spirit seemed undimmed. He continued to travel across the Atlantic for performances of his music, although these trips brought on pneumonia more than once. The concert for his 103rd birthday contained three US and three world premieres, and last month saw the world premiere of Dialogues II, for piano – Daniel Barenboim – and chamber orchestra. | Despite the death of his wife in 2003, Carter's cheerful spirit seemed undimmed. He continued to travel across the Atlantic for performances of his music, although these trips brought on pneumonia more than once. The concert for his 103rd birthday contained three US and three world premieres, and last month saw the world premiere of Dialogues II, for piano – Daniel Barenboim – and chamber orchestra. |
| Carter was, under his genial demeanour, a fighter. To the end one could detect a determined set of the jaw, which was already evident in photographs of the young student. And there is sometimes a surprisingly aggressive tone in his letters. These clues point to the inevitable human cost of such an implacable struggle sustained over so many years, which perhaps only those closest to Carter had to bear. For the rest of the world, Carter offers an inspiring image of the heights to which determined creative self-fashioning can rise, and a body of work that in its total integrity, masterly craftsmanship and many-sided expressive power, already deserves the name of classic. | Carter was, under his genial demeanour, a fighter. To the end one could detect a determined set of the jaw, which was already evident in photographs of the young student. And there is sometimes a surprisingly aggressive tone in his letters. These clues point to the inevitable human cost of such an implacable struggle sustained over so many years, which perhaps only those closest to Carter had to bear. For the rest of the world, Carter offers an inspiring image of the heights to which determined creative self-fashioning can rise, and a body of work that in its total integrity, masterly craftsmanship and many-sided expressive power, already deserves the name of classic. |
| Carter is survived by his son, David, and a grandson. | Carter is survived by his son, David, and a grandson. |
| • Elliott Cook Carter, composer, born 11 December 1908; died 5 November 2012 | • Elliott Cook Carter, composer, born 11 December 1908; died 5 November 2012 |