Elliott Carter, 1908-2012

[bhodges]

I have the second recording, with Christine Schadeberg singing Mirror, and it's excellent.  I also think Syringa is one of his best works as well and the performance here is quite good. 

Since I've heard the other recording is also very recommendable, it might come down to whether you're more in the mood for a bunch of vocal works or for chamber music.

Joe probably has both...

--Bruce

[Joe Barron]

I do, in fact, have both. As for Mirror, the Bridge recording is preferable. You also get Syringa, which is Carter's greatest vocal score.

[Guido]

Cheers Joe, I have ordered the latter CD. Good to know that the other pieces are worth hearing too - looking forward to Syringa.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Joe and other Carterians,

From the  Daily Telegraph  last week:

Aaron Copland, creator of the acceptable, populist face of American art music, was cool about his younger colleague's music.

"He didn't mention me in his book about American music, which hurt a little," says Carter. "Later he came round to my music, but only after Leonard Bernstein recorded it."

But what's wrong with Copland's idea that music should be comprehensible to a broad public? "Well, I did believe that for a while, and wrote several pieces in that style. But then I realised the public stayed indifferent whatever I did, so that gave me the freedom to say to hell with them and do what I really wanted to do."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/3563923/Elliott-Carter-Adventures-of-an-American-legend.html

[karlhenning]

"He didn't mention me in his book about American music, which hurt a little," says Carter. "Later he came round to my music, but only after Leonard Bernstein recorded it."

There, I feel better about Lenny already 

[karlhenning]

. . .  the character of the new music is certainly different from the work of the 60s and 70s, and it might not be to the taste of some hard core Carterians.

You've got to allow the artist to go where he chooses.  Debussy complained that the debussystes were killing him.

[Brünnhilde forever]

I had posted this link at a Boulez thread, it applies to Elliot Carter as well:

http://www.mdt.co.uk/MDTSite/product//3078398.htm

This afternoon I spent an hour and a half in the company of this marvelous, talented, loving and of course outstanding composer. An in-depth film by Frank Scheffer filled with interviews, performances, rehearsals and long walks. Highly recommend it. It is available as a single DVD also.

[Brünnhilde forever]

: HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY!

[Catison]

Listening to the fourth quartet, I had a thought.  It is possible to say that this quartet is not atonal?  There always seems to be a bit of that open Copland-esque tonality hanging behind the notes.  I love this piece.

[karlhenning]

I still need to make the acquaintance of the Third & Fourth Quartets.

[not edward]

Starting in 20 minutes on BBC Radio 3, a Carter centenary concert including the Horn, Cello and Boston concertos, plus the UK premieres of Sound Fields and Mad Regales and the world premiere of Wind Rose.

Listen at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/index.shtml?logo

[Homo Aestheticus]

ELLIOTT CARTER AT 100 You could say that Elliott Carter has worked his whole life within the box of the musical and academic establishment. Still, his ingenious, formidably complex music has always presented outside-the-box challenges, with comparable rewards to listeners willing to follow him on his visionary journey. On Dec. 11, his 100th birthday, Mr. Carter was celebrated at Carnegie Hall with a performance of his new work for piano and orchestra, "Interventions," with James Levine conducting the Boston Symphony and Daniel Barenboim as soloist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/arts/music/21tomm.html?ref=music

Will Anthony Tommassini ever drop ... "formidably complex music"... in connection with Carter's music ? 

What does that phrase ultimately mean ?

[karlhenning]

Will Anthony Tommassini ever drop ... "formidably complex music"... in connection with Carter's music ? 

What does that phrase ultimately mean ?

This is not directly its meaning, but: How easily can one follow the piece in its entirety on a single hearing?

[Guido]

ELLIOTT CARTER AT 100 You could say that Elliott Carter has worked his whole life within the box of the musical and academic establishment. Still, his ingenious, formidably complex music has always presented outside-the-box challenges, with comparable rewards to listeners willing to follow him on his visionary journey. On Dec. 11, his 100th birthday, Mr. Carter was celebrated at Carnegie Hall with a performance of his new work for piano and orchestra, "Interventions," with James Levine conducting the Boston Symphony and Daniel Barenboim as soloist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/arts/music/21tomm.html?ref=music

Will Anthony Tommassini ever drop ... "formidably complex music"... in connection with Carter's music ? 

What does that phrase ultimately mean ?

The phrase means that Carter's music is formidable in its complexity. I'm guessing that the phrase irks you because you would reserve it for only three pieces by a certain composer. Surely you do not need us to enumerate the ways in which a piece of music might be complex, especially Carter's scores?

[not edward]

Excellent, thanks. I was frustrated that I didn't get to listen to much of the broadcast when it was live as it kept cutting out; I'm glad they've put it up as on-demand streaming audio now.

[karlhenning]

well, i just finished listening to that and I have to say none of it was particularly good....sounds as if he's having a bit of an identity crisis...i.e. sound fields, wind rose (yawn)....or he's just sort-of recycling but more sparse...

Well, I just finished reading that, and I have to say it isn't particularly good.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Joe, Edward, others

More on Carter this past Sunday:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/21/elliott-carter-vingt-regards


 

[Mark G. Simon]

Wind Rose (2008), a BBC commission for 24 wind instruments. After playing it once, Knussen dispatched it a second time, arguing that we might never see so many clarinets - eight - on stage again, though he might have said the same for the seven flutes.... So often underpinning all is the low growl of that hulking St Bernard of the orchestra, the contrabass clarinet.

Now that's something I've got to hear! And Knussen wasn't afraid to play it a second time.

Thanks, Eric.

[Mark G. Simon]

Cool beans.

Boy, this does not sound like your usual Carter piece. (Wind Rose) If someone had asked me to guess the composer, I don't know who I would have said, but it wouldn't be Carter. I admit, I kept waiting for the moment when it would get more active and do the usual Carter stuff with multiple tempos  and the like. Next time I'll be able to listen to it just for what it is.

One thing this piece is is a study in sonorities and chord voicings. Many of the harmonies are spread out over a wide range, some of them are densely clustered together. The wind sonorities give them a metallic sheen, like one of those Frank Gehry buildings.

Some of Carter's chamber works have moments like this, where activity falls away leaving shifting sustained sonorities. This is the only piece I've heard where this goes on for the whole piece.

[not edward]

Cool beans.

Boy, this does not sound like your usual Carter piece. (Wind Rose) If someone had asked me to guess the composer, I don't know who I would have said, but it wouldn't be Carter. I admit, I kept waiting for the moment when it would get more active and do the usual Carter stuff with multiple tempos  and the like. Next time I'll be able to listen to it just for what it is.

One thing this piece is is a study in sonorities and chord voicings. Many of the harmonies are spread out over a wide range, some of them are densely clustered together. The wind sonorities give them a metallic sheen, like one of those Frank Gehry buildings.

Some of Carter's chamber works have moments like this, where activity falls away leaving shifting sustained sonorities. This is the only piece I've heard where this goes on for the whole piece.

You might wish to listen to Sound Fields near the start of the same broadcast then; it is almost a companion piece to this one, but even more minimal in texture and for string orchestra. (Sound Fields was written first, and Oliver Knussen requested a similar work for winds, hence Wind Rose.)

I see the first Fragment for string quartet, written back in 1994, which arguably does some of the same thing for most of its duration, as a possible ancestor for these pieces. For Sound Fields, I also hear something of The Unanswered Question and perhaps late orchestral Feldman (For Samuel Beckett seems to me to be a relevant point of comparison, particularly harmonically).