Musician of the Week: Elliot Cook Carter

Those who closely followed his last years were surprised to see that he still produced compositions at a constant speed, and not occasional miniatures, but some of the most ambitious pages of his career, Aaron Copland himself in 1971 referred to him in the nomination to the gold medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters of the United States as “one of the most eminent creative artists of any field in the United States”.

Elliot Carter discovered classical music through his friend and mentor Charles Ives, and later studied it under Walter Piston at Harvard University and Nadia Boulanger in Paris.

He received numerous awards throughout his long career (he reached the age of 103), crowned by the Pulitzer Prizes for his “String Quartet Number 2” in 1959 and “String Quartet Number 3” in 1973. He also received the German Ernst von Siemens Prize and the award from the Monegasque Prince Pierre Foundation.

In his celebrated quartets, a total of five, Elliot Carter revisits the quintessential classical form with such a radical perspective and rhythmic complexity that they have become his trademark.

In 2002, the New York Times called his string quartets among “the most difficult ever conceived” and praised their “volatile emotions, finesse and even, at times, fearless humor.”

American composer Elliott Carter’s second string quartet was completed in 1959. This composition for string quartet was commissioned by the Stanley String Quartet at the University of Michigan, who decided not to play it upon seeing the score, and was premiered in 1960, by the Juilliard String Quartet.

In his long career, of more than 80 years, Elliot Carter composed 158 works, from his Symphony No. 1 and the Holyday Overture until Dialogue IIwritten in 2012 year of his death.

In the words of music critic Andrew Porter, Carter was “America’s great musical poet and in his work one could frequently hear the wit and humor, the anger in some of his early great pieces, and a growing lyricism and beauty in his compositions of recent decades”

Elliot Carter was the first composer to receive the US National Medal of Arts in 1985, and was also made a Commander of the French Order of Arts and Letters.

In an interview with The Associated Press in 1992, Elliot Carter described his pieces as “music that begs to be listened to with great attention.“. “It is not music that generates a theatrical effect,” he said then, “but assumes that the listener is paying attention to the sounds and trying to give them some logic.”

The complex way in which the instruments in his compositions interact created drama for listeners who made an effort to understand it and made it difficult for orchestral musicians to learn it. He said that he tried to give each musician individuality within the context of an understandable whole.

Elliot Carter was highly respected by an exclusive circle of critics and musicians. As we noted at the beginning of this audition, he remained incredibly active, accepting new commissions, even as he celebrated his 100th birthday in December 2008 with a gala at Carnegie Hall.

On that occasion, Carter recalled a visit to Carnegie Hall in 1924 to see the New York premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s groundbreaking work. Spring consecration. “I thought that was the most amazing thing I’d ever heard, and I wanted to do something like that, too,” Carter recounted. “Of course, half the audience walked out of the room, which was even more pleasing to me. I found it much more exciting than Beethoven and Brahms and the rest of them.”

You will be able to listen to some of his works in the next audition of The musician of the week, on Monday, November 7 at 3:00 p.m. HJCK live signal.