Elliott Carter, 1908-2012

[Joe Barron]

Beethoven is certainly cozy-making.

Odd that people think of Beethoven's music as relaxing. As Paul Griffith's has pointed out, when it was new, his orchetral music was --- outside of thunder and ordnance --- the loudest sound a person could hear hear.

[Joe Barron]

yea i have to agree after watching him on charlie rose, he seems very lively for guy who's 100.

Although his interviews have become sterotyped. he tends to say the same thing over anf over, though I expect that's what happens when you're 100 and you've been asked the same questions fro decades. He did seem to be having a good time. It was also interesting how, toward the end, Levine and Barenboim took over the interview and left Rose out of it.

[Joe Barron]

oh i wouldn't know this, im not an obsessive Carter-buff like you.

Help me.

[karlhenning]

Odd that people think of Beethoven's music as relaxing. As Paul Griffith's has pointed out, when it was new, his orchetral music was --- outside of thunder and ordnance --- the loudest sound a person could hear hear.

It's gotten louder since.

[bhodges]

What a great three days it has been.  Just returned from the final Carter concert, an afternoon by members of the New York Philharmonic, with a great new set of songs, Poems of Louis Zukofsky (2008) with Lucy Shelton singing and Stanley Drucker on clarinet.  As usual, Carter seems to respond to poetry with unusual sensitivity.  Jon Deak on double bass offered Figment III (2007), and the musical portion ended with the Clarinet Quintet (2007) which Joe and I heard last spring at the Focus! festival.  Drucker did a great job with a piece that really deserves a fine recording as soon as possible.

The afternoon began with an excellent interview: Carter talking with Matias Tarnopolsky (VP, Artistic Planning for the Philharmonic), who began by asking Carter, "Did you compose today?" and the answer, "yes."  The first half continued with a very fine film of Carter talking with composer Steven Stucky, who asked about some of the composer's recent works, the poets he admires, and many other subjects. 

About 300 people were there.  I was also delighted to meet Mark G. Simon as well, who joined Joe and me and a few others for the concert.  Still can't believe Carter is in such good shape at 100, and in such a fertile creative mode.

--Bruce

[Dundonnell]

I feel that I ought to say that although I am not on Carter's wavelength and can make very little of his music(apart from the early Symphony from 1942) I respect and honour his magnificent achievement in reaching this wonderful age while still remaining active as a composer.

I simply don't understand an attitude which says in effect I don't understand or appreciate a composer's music so ipso facto it is not 'good music'. I don't 'get Carter' anymore than I 'get' early Penderecki, or late Lutoslawski or Boulez or Stockhausen. Doesn't mean these composers should not merit all the praise they deserve from their admirers

So...belated Hapy Birthday, Mr. Carter. God bless your endeavours!

[bhodges]

I wish everyone were able to comment on composers whom they don't care for with such tolerance! 

My not-so-secret confession: it took me years to warm up to Carter's music.  Despite being a big fan of other living composers, and of contemporary music general, I just never had that "it" moment when I "wanted to hear a given piece again" (which IMHO is an important thing to pay attention to).  I took a short piece, Espirit Rude/Esprit Doux (for flute and clarinet), and listened to it over and over--not hard to do since it's only four minutes long.  But that didn't seem to work. 

But eventually the moment came when I heard a piece that did it for me, the Variations for Orchestra (Levine's recording with the CSO), and now I'm exploring lots of his other stuff.

But Carter's longevity, and productivity in old age, is quite unprecedented.  I wouldn't be surprised if he's around for at least another five or even ten years.

--Bruce

[karlhenning]

My not-so-secret confession: it took me years to warm up to Carter's music.  Despite being a big fan of other living composers, and of contemporary music general, I just never had that "it" moment when I "wanted to hear a given piece again" (which IMHO is an important thing to pay attention to).  I took a short piece, Espirit Rude/Esprit Doux (for flute and clarinet), and listened to it over and over--not hard to do since it's only four minutes long.  But that didn't seem to work.

But eventually the moment came when I heard a piece that did it for me, the Variations for Orchestra (Levine's recording with the CSO), and now I'm exploring lots of his other stuff.

I'll take up the "what was it like when you first 'met' Carter" talking-stick . . . .

For me, Carter was one among a long list of 20th-c. composers with whose music I was first made acquainted in my Music History sequence at Wooster.  I first went to Wooster with the intent to major in clarinet performance, but was encouraged by my first-year Music Theory professor to consider a double-major, perhaps in composition . . . the idea of actually studying composition ignited me (I had tried writing the odd bit before then, an experience which most of all made me feel I needed something more, in order to be adequate to the task).  In all events, some of the music we had played in various bands which most fired me up, were 20th-c. pieces written by people who to me were nothing more than names.  Then, as we were taught a survey of modern music, my ears just drank everything in, it was all so new and wonderful.  The first Carter piece I ever heard was the Double Concerto, and of course, I did not understand a note of it, but it was a thrill to listen to:  I knew I liked it, and I wanted to get to know it better.

Anyway, I've since listened to about six discs' worth of Carter's music (and have heard some three pieces of his live in Symphony Hall . . . I uploaded a facsimile of his autograph here), and I do like most of it, and some of it very well indeed.  It's not the sort of music I write, myself, but then, I'm also crazy about the music of Vaughan Williams, which is pretty much unlike the way I write my own music, too.

[Dundonnell]

"Had We But World Enough And Time"

[karlhenning]

Not if the music sucks ...it's necessary to distinguish.

It is; pity you're incapable of it.

[Mark G. Simon]

It was a pleasure to meet Bruce and Joe for the first time. I had hoped to meet them before the concert, but traffic into the Lincoln Tunnel was inching along bumper to bumper all the way back to the New Jersey Turnpike, and I was just glad to get to Lincoln Center by 2:00. There were 2 grand old men there at the concert: Carter, of course, but also Stanley Drucker, 1st clarinet of the New York Philharmonic since about the same time Carter started writing metric modulations. Both of them are in excellent shape and still going strong.

Carter walks slowly, stooped over with a cane, but his mind is as sharp as a tack. He was interviewed twice, once live and once on film. He talked about his views on modern poetry and the musical setting thereof, and about writing for voice. He said he was tempted to write an opera on Much Ado About Nothing, but then he figured Berlioz had already done it.

For the Zukofsky songs, I found myself following the clarinet line, listening to how Drucker handles the various notes in different registers, and how he reacts to the quick changes in mood. The music is hard, even for him, though he only got the part 2 weeks ago. I didn't even try to absorb the vocal line. I found the Clarinet Quartet totally engrossing, from the opening "Beethoven's 5th" figure to the abrupt pauses at the close (topped off with a wistful clarinet doo-dad). The drama inherent in Carter's music comes out stronger in live performance than on records. A lot of the rapid interplay between instruments went by so fast, I wanted at many points to stop and do an instant replay in slow motion, as they do in Football games on TV. As it was, they had enough time when it was finished, that they could have played it again and still been out of the hall by 4:00. I really wanted to hear the piece a second time, so I could catch more details.

[karlhenning]

It was a pleasure to meet Bruce and Joe for the first time. I had hoped to meet them before the concert, but traffic into the Lincoln Tunnel was inching along bumper to bumper all the way back to the New Jersey Turnpike, and I was just glad to get to Lincoln Center by 2:00. There were 2 grand old men there at the concert: Carter, of course, but also Stanley Drucker, 1st clarinet of the New York Philharmonic since about the same time Carter started writing metric modulations. Both of them are in excellent shape and still going strong.

Carter walks slowly, stooped over with a cane, but his mind is as sharp as a tack. He was interviewed twice, once live and once on film. He talked about his views on modern poetry and the musical setting thereof, and about writing for voice. He said he was tempted to write an opera on Much Ado About Nothing, but then he figured Berlioz had already done it.

For the Zukofsky songs, I found myself following the clarinet line, listening to how Drucker handles the various notes in different registers, and how he reacts to the quick changes in mood. The music is hard, even for him, though he only got the part 2 weeks ago. I didn't even try to absorb the vocal line. I found the Clarinet Quartet totally engrossing, from the opening "Beethoven's 5th" figure to the abrupt pauses at the close (topped off with a wistful clarinet doo-dad). The drama inherent in Carter's music comes out stronger in live performance than on records. A lot of the rapid interplay between instruments went by so fast, I wanted at many points to stop and do an instant replay in slow motion, as they do in Football games on TV. As it was, they had enough time when it was finished, that they could have played it again and still been out of the hall by 4:00. I really wanted to hear the piece a second time, so I could catch more details.

Fabulous, Mark.

[Joe Barron]

Well, this is disturbing. I just tried to post a very long review, and it's disappeared. Bastard.

[Mark G. Simon]

Elliott Carter at 100 plus 2 days:

[Mark G. Simon]

Carter is amused:

[Joe Barron]

OK  let's try this thing again:

The Clarinet Quintet sounded lush in the intimacy of the penthouse, but there was a problem with balance. Sometimes the string players overwhelmed the soloist, a result, perhaps, of having Drucker stand in the middle. (Everyone was standing except the cellist.) At the premiere in January, Neidich sat off to the side, and the Juilliard probably prepared more thoroughly than the Philharmonic musicians. There was also glitch at the end. According to he program notes,  the quintet concludes with "a final wistful flourish in the clarinet alone." But yesterday, the last gesture came from the violist, Irene Breslaw. Maybe she was lost, or maybe the momentum just carried her forward for an extra note. In any case, I agree with Mark: I would have liked to hear it again. In fact, the whole musical portion of the program could have been repeated, and it would still have been over by 4:30.

Shelton and Drucker played the four Zukofsky songs Carter has completed. He said in his interview he wanted to write about ten of them, and he had worked on one of them that morning, though he hadn't completed it. With all the excitement of the past few days, he said, he had slept late.

While Mark was concentrating on the instrumental part, I was taken with the sonority the instrument and soprano produced together. In the last song, on the word "glory," the two voices produced a tight harmony that made my  ears ring. I'm sure there's an acoustical term for the way the sound waves blended, but it was beautiful effect. Unfortunately, it would probably never happen again in any other venue.

A word "late style," which Bruce, his friend Jim and I discussed over a drink at O'Neal's after the concert. Jim raised the example of Falstaff as an example of a composer producing an atypical masterpiece (Verdi's only comic opera) late in life. But Falstaff was a one-off. Mr. Carter has written as much music in the past fifteen years as he wrote in the previous eighty-five. In his case, the late style is the style, and more representative of his work than the big, mid-period masterpieces. I used to think the best introduction to Carter's music was the cello and harpsichord sonatas and the Variations. Now I'm thinking a better approach is to start at the end and work backwards. The Enchanted Preludes, the Boston Concerto, and the Clarinet Quintet (which has got to be recorded) are the places to start.

[Guido]

I recently attended a lecture given by the great musicologist and academic Robin Holloway on Carter's life and music - truly fascinating insights on a composer that he clearly admires a lot. He had lots of kind words to say about many works and thinks that he is almost certainly one of 'The Masters', but thinks that Carter has gradually been drying up over the last 20 years - with two notable exceptions - The Opera What Next? which he thought was great (though he described the libretto as pretentious tosh and expressed surprise that such an intelligent, knowledgable and well read man as Carter would have settled for it) and also the incredible Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei. I disagree to an extent, as far as the works I have heard from the late period - I love the cello concerto and Boston concerto too as well as very much liking the clarinet concerto. But it's interesting to hear a dissenting opinion on the late music especially from someone who is so knowledgable and generally insightful. I wish I could remember more of the lecture - but it is now over two weeks ago and I haven't been around. Maybe I'll ask him stuff in the new year.

[Joe Barron]

I, too, have to disagree with Mr. Holloway. Mr Carter has produced some very string music in his extended chamber pieces, which he still writes from time to time. I like the Oboe Quartet, the Piano Quintet and the Trilogy for Oboe and Harp and the Fifth String Quartet, especially. I'd need to hear the Clarinet Quintet a couple more times to put in that company, but I think its certanly an attractive piece. I also like the works for large ensemble, like the Asko Concerto and Reflexions, and the short piano works. Drying up?  I don't think so, but 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. I expect the controversy about which is the real or best Carter will continue and grow, like trying to pick the best Beatles album or Sinatra's best period: an endless source of discussion with no conclusions reached.

[Mark G. Simon]

I might have said something similar before last Saturday. I always figured it was because my head only had enough room for so many Carter pieces. The Clarinet Quintet has convinced me that I need to make more room.

I remember hearing a lecture by Robin Holloway, around 1981 when I was still at Cornell. He was talking about his own music. He was starting to write multi-stylistic pieces, as were many composers at that time. I think it was his Second Concerto for Orchestra he was talking about. I recall some gnarly and complex music, and also a sudden full-orchestral outburst of "Arrivaderci, Roma". I don't remember anything of what he said about it.

[Guido]

I'm looking to get a recording of a mirror on which to dwell and both of these CDs look appealing as I don't have the couplings of either of them. Is one more recommendable than the other? The oboe concerto looks intriguing, but then I know nothing about the other vocal works either.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Carter-Concerto-Espirit-Mirror-Penthode/dp/B00005MO9P/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1229375979&sr=1-3
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Carter-Vocal-Works-IMPORT/dp/B000003GI9/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1229376084&sr=1-1