Elliott Carter, 1908-2012

[Mark G. Simon]

I had a dream last night that I was listening to the Carter Double Concerto and it had a loud ending. Kind of like the crashing chord that begins the coda, only it came back and ended the piece with an abrupt cut-off.

It made me think of how many Carter pieces have loud endings. Not too many. More often there's an all-out climax and then the music subsides.

[Joe Barron]

I had a dream last night that I was listening to the Carter Double Concerto and it had a loud ending. Kind of like the crashing chord that begins the coda, only it came back and ended the piece with an abrupt cut-off.

It made me think of how many Carter pieces have loud endings. Not too many. More often there's an all-out climax and then the music subsides.

Carter has said he does not like loud, rhetorical endings, and he reiterated the point last week during his onstage interview with Richard Dyer. When he wrote the Allegro scorrevole, which ends with a single piccolo note, he said that the finales of the big, romantic symphonies strike him as militaristic. They sound like soldiers marching to a big nationalistic triumph, which is a sentiment he does not find admirable.

I have long suspected there's also a structural, harmonic component of those soft endings. A  lot of Carter's pieces don't just end quietly. They end on a single, unharmonized note, or, as with the Double Concerto, a stroke of unpitched percussion. What better way to emphasize the atonality of a piece than by depriving the final note of a harmonic context?  Symphonies in C major don't just end on the note C, after all. There's got to be an E there somewhere to establish the tonality. The note C, by itself, means nothing, or at least it is not enough in itself to establish a key.

The Third String Quartet ends loudly, as does the Brass Quintet. The upcoming Interventions does as well, but those are the only examples in Mr. Carter's mature oeuvre I can think of.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Symphonies in C major don't just end on the note C, after all. There's got to be an E there somewhere to establish the tonality. The note C, by itself, means nothing, or at least it is not enough in itself to establish a key.

The last note of Beethoven's 5th is a big, fortissimo unison (or multi-octave) C. The last two notes of Mahler 1 are a unison octave drop, D to D. Since the tonality of both works has been unmistakably established within the movements (some would say too unmistakably), a single unison note at the end does nothing to disrupt the sense of the key.

[bhodges]

Just found out that at this all-Carter concert on December 12 (the day after the big 100th birthday blowout) will feature another new piece, the world premiere of the Duettino for violin and cello, to be performed by Rolf Schulte and Fred Sherry.  (Or perhaps Joe has known about it for months!)  Anyway, looks like a great evening.

December 12, 2008, 7:30pm
Zankel Hall

Making Music: Elliott Carter

Tara Helen O'Connor, Flute
Charles Neidich, Clarinet
Stephen Taylor, Oboe
Stephen Gosling, Piano
Rolf Schulte, Violin
Hsin-Yun Huang, Viola
Fred Sherry, Cello
Donald Palma, Double Bass
Bridget Kibbey, Harp
Film Interludes by Frank Scheffer
Jeremy Geffen, Series Moderator

ELLIOTT CARTER  Duettino (World Premiere)
ELLIOTT CARTER  Canon for 4 
ELLIOTT CARTER  Enchanted Preludes
ELLIOTT CARTER  Gra 
ELLIOTT CARTER  Duo for Violin and Piano 
ELLIOTT CARTER  Con leggerezza pensosa
ELLIOTT CARTER  Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux
ELLIOTT CARTER  Mosaic (NY Premiere)

--Bruce

[Joe Barron]

Actually, I have known about it. I wasn't planning to go, since I'll be in New York the evening before and the program consists entirely of small peices, but I do want to hear the Duettino, even though its only few minutes long.

[Joe Barron]

Oh, and here's another performance for you New Yorkers:

11/2/2008
Carter, Elliott: Harvest Home
Carter, Elliott: Mad Regales (New York premiere)
New York Virtuoso Singers / Harold Rosenbaum
St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church, New York, NY, USA

Looks as though the Mad-regales is already catching on.

[Joe Barron]

The following letter just appeared in the Wall Street Journal. It doesn't deal with Carter exclusively, but it does use him as an example.

No Degree Needed to Enjoy Mozart
August 6, 2008; Page A14
While I appreciate and enjoy the writing of both Terry Teachout and Joe Queenan, I have to agree with Mr. Queenan's letter (Aug. 4) taking Mr. Teachout to task for defending "modern" or "contemporary" classical music by offering up popular, melodic and not very modern examples of work. I think that for the nonacademics among us, Mr. Queenan got it right -- modern and contemporary classical music is off-putting to audiences made up of nonacademics and nonmusicians.

I serve on the board of a small local chamber music ensemble and we confront this issue every year. For example, the musicians want to play Elliott Carter, the audience doesn't enjoy Elliott Carter's music, and the board is told by musicians that if we only would learn more about what Mr. Carter is trying to do and the theories behind his music, we would enjoy it. I respond: Why is this material unenjoyable to anyone not primed by a professional musicologist?

Did Mozart and Beethoven require rigorous preconcert education sessions so the audience could tolerate the music and attempt to enjoy it? The arts are like aromas and tastes. Some are naturally pleasing, other require effort to be appreciated (if at all). Perhaps we should question how much effort one must expend to find a minimal amount of enjoyment, and whether such exertions are really necessary. Does modern music have to be like (fill in your hated vegetable of choice or cod liver oil), good for us though we dread taking the dose?

Marla Schwaller Carew
Beverly Hills, Mich.

Since coming back from the Carter festival at Tanglewood, I've been in too good a mood to entertain the carping of Terry Teachout, Joe Queenan or anyone else, but something about this letter bothered me. If I'm understanding her correctly, this passive-aggressive biddy has been thwarting the desires of her musicians for years. They come to her every every asking her permission to play music they are evidently enthusiastic about --- and this enthusiasm should tell her something about the music's vitality --- and she turns them away with a Catch-22: We can't play this music without some kind of pre-concert talk, but then, any music that needs a pre-concert talk will not be played. I wonder how the musicians keep up their morale in such an atmosphere. It seems to me that a discussion --- whether "rigorous" or not -- is a small price to pay to keep them happy. I'd get myself a new board member.

As for the idea that art is like aromas, this is a fiction. It might seem natural to like Beethoven and Mozart, but even their music requires some education and repeated exposure before one can appreciate it fully. (Charles Rosen discusses just this idea perceptively in the New York Review of Books.) Our good friend Bruce confessed to me the other night he really doesn't like Mozart all that much, and I have only recently begun to enjoy Chopin fully. (I've always liked some pieces, of course, but most of it  used to leave me cold.) And I can think of a number of people who would benefit from being educated about Beethoven.

I guess the atmosphere in the Berkshires was a little rarefied. Up in out lofty mountain aerie, we forgot that there are still people out there like this in the real world. It's a shock and a waste to come back.

Ugh.

[ChamberNut]

Some music is very difficult to appreciate, some of it is very easy.  I'm finding Carter's string quartets very difficult to digest.  Of course, some may find this to be the complete opposite.

[Joe Barron]

Some music is very difficult to appreciate, some of it is very easy.  I'm finding Carter's string quartets very difficult to digest.  Of course, some may find this to be the complete opposite.

But does this mean it should not be performed?

[ChamberNut]

But does this mean it should not be performed?

No, of course not.  Especially in the composer's native country.

[bhodges]

You don't need a degree to enjoy Elliott Carter either, just a good pair of working ears, and a dash of curiosity wouldn't hurt either.

What struck me about the letter is as Joe noted, that apparently the musicians want to play Carter.  But then she mentions being "primed by a professional musicologist" and I'm thinking, Forget them for the moment: you just said you have musicians wanting to play for you!

--Bruce

[Joe Barron]

What struck me about the letter is as Joe noted, that apparently the musicians want to play Carter.  But then she mentions being "primed by a professional musicologist" and I'm thinking, Forget them for the moment: you just said you have musicians wanting to play for you!--Bruce

Exactly!

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

You don't need a degree to enjoy Elliott Carter either, just a good pair of working ears, and a dash of curiosity wouldn't hurt either.

I can vouch for the truth of that observation. Funny - I can still remember the atmosphere of the Piano Sonata and the First String Quartet, but I can't recall the exact musical content.

Time to renew my acquaintance...

[trumpetmaster]

Elliott Carter - Brass Quintet

Now this is a very powerful and challenging work to perform!

[Joe Barron]

I can vouch for the truth of that observation. Funny - I can still remember the atmosphere of the Piano Sonata and the First String Quartet, but I can't recall the exact musical content.

Time to renew my acquaintance...

You do get to the point, as with any music, where you di remember the content, and you can keep whole strecthes of it in your head. I'm thinking of some of the prettier passages in the Piano Sonata right now.

[Joe Barron]

Elliott Carter - Brass Quintet

Now this is a very powerful and challenging work to perform!

Have you in fact perfromed it? I'd enjoy reading your impressions both of the music and of the rehearsals. I love that piece. It's seems overlooked compared to some of Cater's other chamber music, but it's by no means minor. 

[trumpetmaster]

Have you in fact perfromed it? I'd enjoy reading your impressions both of the music and of the rehearsals. I love that piece. It's seems overlooked compared to some of Cater's other chamber music, but it's by no means minor. 

Joe,
It is overlooked. Maybe because it is very difficult to perform.

No... unfortunately... I have not had the chance to perform it...
I have read through it a few times and there is a high demand to have your technical chops down as well as your flexibility.

Regards,
TM

[Al Moritz]

You don't need a degree to enjoy Elliott Carter either, just a good pair of working ears, and a dash of curiosity wouldn't hurt either.

Exactly. Often I even find modern music easier to understand because you only have to listen to gestures, not thematic development.

And I find Carter easier to appreciate than Mozart. The latter has written some phenomenal, dazzling works, like the mature piano concertos, the flute concerto in G major or the Paris and Jupiter symphonies, but a lot of his output seems just boring and routine to me. Perhaps I am missing something, and some musicological training might help.

Now Bach, that is an entirely different beast altogether ... After it took me years to fully appreciate his music, I now cannot get enough of it. However, with Bach I always had the feeling that I was missing something, and once I would have discovered that, the music would start to speak to me. With Mozart I just don't have that feeling, and never had; somehow I suspect that there is just not much more substance there than I already hear. Perhaps I am wrong, or perhaps the composer is just overrated -- yes, he is absolutely sublime when he is at his best, but I don't think he very often is. Maybe the famed ease with which he wrote music is also his achilles heel. Too often I just hear the same kind of phrases, variations and modulations over and over again -- frequently he seems to work with the same limited bag of, albeit nice, tricks.

[Guido]

Exactly. Often I even find modern music easier to understand because you only have to listen to gestures, not thematic development.

And I find Carter easier to appreciate than Mozart. The latter has written some phenomenal, dazzling works, like the mature piano concertos, the flute concerto in G major or the Paris and Jupiter symphonies, but a lot of his output seems just boring and routine to me. Perhaps I am missing something, and some musicological training might help.

Now Bach, that is an entirely different beast altogether ... After it took me years to fully appreciate his music, I now cannot get enough of it. However, with Bach I always had the feeling that I was missing something, and once I would have discovered that, the music would start to speak to me. With Mozart I just don't have that feeling, and never had; somehow I suspect that there is just not much more substance there than I already hear. Perhaps I am wrong, or perhaps the composer is just overrated -- yes, he is absolutely sublime when he is at his best, but I don't think he very often is. Maybe the famed ease with which he wrote music is also his achilles heel. Too often I just hear the same kind of phrases, variations and modulations over and over again -- frequently he seems to work with the same limited bag of, albeit nice, tricks.

*Ducks for cover*
I agree with most of what you have said, or rather my experiences are roughly the same, except that I have more hope that I will some day appreciate Mozart.
*wraps self in asbestos blanket to avoid the flames*

[Joe Barron]

Well, as usual, Al provides a wealth of ideas in a few sentences. The part about the few neat tricks echoes something Charles Rosen has written about the evolution of music: Since the end of the 18th century, music has relied less and less on prefabricated material like scales and broken chords. Mozart made full use of such material. By the 20th century, musical meaning had to arise from the demands of each new work. Carter has often spoken of the need to make every note "tell," and he has spoken of minimalism as a return to the mechanized formulas of the past.

Then again, he also loves Mozart