Elliott Carter

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Elliott Cook Carter (born December 11, 1908 in New York City , † November 5, 2012 there ) was an American composer .

Life

Elliott Carter was born in 1908 to a wealthy New York textile merchant on the Upper West Side. In 1924 he heard Igor Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps at Carnegie Hall . For him, the new, dissonant sounds were "the greatest thing I had ever heard". It became clear to him that the takeover of the textile business that his parents wanted would not work. At high school, where he was promoted by Charles Ives , he was enthusiastic about the avant-garde music of the time. He studied English and music at Harvard University and the Longy School of Music , and his teachers included Walter Piston and Gustav Holst . There he also sang in the university choir, the Harvard Glee Club . In 1932 he graduated from Harvard with a master's degree. He studied from 1932 to 1935 at the École Normale de Musique in Paris with Nadia Boulanger as a doctor of music. Since then he has lived as a composer and teacher in New York and Waccabuc (NY), and since 1945 in Greenwich Village .

From 1940 to 1944 Elliott Carter taught at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. During World War II he worked for the United States Office of War Information . After the war, he taught at the Peabody Conservatory (1946–1948), Columbia University , Queens College, New York (1955–1956) and Yale University (1960–1962). Since 1967 he worked at Cornell University and since 1972 at the Juilliard School . For the Tanglewood Music Center he gave annual master classes in composition.

Carter was considered the nestor of American modern music. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1960 and 1973 and was the recipient of numerous other awards. In 1963 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1956 he was accepted as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1985. In 1993 he was made an honorary member of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM). On February 7, 2009, he received a special Grammy Award , the Trustees Award , for his life's work as a non-performing musician .

Carter's first compositions can be assigned to " neoclassicism ". Increasingly dissatisfied with his own musical language, he went to "Sonora Desert" near Tucson / Arizona in 1950 and wrote his first string quartet there. This 40-minute work marks a turning point in Carter's work. It is rougher, more dissonant and complex than his earlier works. The individual instruments are assigned certain intervals, gestures and rhythmic proportions (e.g. triplets, quintuplets, septoles) in advance. This technique is best observed in his 3rd string quartet. The players are divided into two duos (violin I and cello / violin II and viola), which, far apart from each other, play different movements at the same time.

In 1997 Carter, almost 90 years old, wrote his first opera What Next , which premiered with great success in Berlin at the State Opera Unter den Linden by Nicolas Brieger and Daniel Barenboim . With increasing age his music became lighter (but not in the technical sense), more transparent and more humorous.

The musicians Pierre Boulez , Heinz Holliger and Daniel Barenboim are the best-known supporters of his music. Aaron Copland , Nicolas Nabokov , Leonard Bernstein and Conlon Nancarrow were among his friends.

Carter married the sculptor Helen Frost-Jones on July 6, 1939 ; the couple had a son, David Chambers Carter. In order to support him, his wife later gave up sculpture. Carter nursed her during a serious illness until her death in 2003.

Works

Orchestral works

  • Symphony No. 1 (1942, revised 1954)
  • Holiday Overture (1944, revised 1961)
  • Variations for orchestra (1955)
  • Double concerto for harpsichord and piano with two chamber orchestras (1961)
  • Piano Concerto (1964)
  • Concerto for Orchestra (1969)
  • A Symphony of Three Orchestras (1976)
  • Penthode (1984)
  • Oboe Concerto (1987), commissioned by Paul Sacher
  • Three Occasions for Orchestra (1986-89)
    • A Celebration of some 100 × 150 notes (1986)
    • Remembrance (1988)
    • Anniversary (1989)
  • Violin Concerto (1990)
  • Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretiam Spei (1993–96)
    • I. Partita (1993)
    • II. Adagio tenebroso (1994)
    • III. Allegro scorrevole (1996)
  • Clarinet Concerto (1996)
  • Cello Concerto (2000)
  • Boston Concerto (2002)
  • Three Illusions for Orchestra (2002-04)
    • Micomicón (2002)
    • Fons Juventatis (2004)
    • More's Utopia (2004)
  • Soundings (2005)
  • Horn Concerto (2006)
  • Interventions (2007)
  • Sound Fields (2007)
  • Flute Concerto (2008)

Chamber music

  • Cello Sonata (1948)
  • Woodwind Quintet (1948)
  • Eight Etudes and a Fantasy for wind quartet (1949)
  • String Quartet No. 1 (1951)
  • String Quartet No. 2 (1959)
  • String Quartet No. 3 (1971)
  • Brass Quintet (1974)
  • Triple Duo (1983)
  • Canon for 4 - Homage to William (1984)
  • Esprit Rude / Esprit Doux (1985)
  • String Quartet No. 4 (1986)
  • Birthday Flourish (1988)
  • Enchanted Preludes (1988)
  • Con Leggerezza Pensosa - Omaggio a Italo Calvino (1990)
  • Quintet for piano and wind instruments (1991)
  • Always New (1992)
  • Fragment No.1 (1994)
  • String Quartet No. 5 (1995)
  • Quintet for piano and string quartet (1997)
  • Luimen (1997)
  • Fragment No. 2 (1999)
  • Asko Concerto (1999-2000)
  • Oboe quartet (2001)
  • Hiyoku (2001)
  • Oboe Quartet (2001)
  • Au Quai (2002)
  • Call (2003)
  • Dialogues (2003)
  • Mosaic (2004)
  • Reflections (2004)
  • Clarinet Quintet (2007)
  • Wind Rose (2008)
  • Tintin Abulation (2008)
  • Tre Duetti for violin and violoncello (2008-09)
    • I. Duettone (2009)
    • II. Adagio
    • III. Duettino (2008)
  • Concertino for Bass Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra (2009)
  • Nine by Five (2009)
  • Two Controversies and a Conversation (2011)
  • Dialogues II (2010)
  • The American Sublime (2011)
  • Double Trio (2011)
  • String Trio (2011)
  • Rigmarole (2011)
  • Trije glasbeniki (2011)
  • Epigrams (2012)
  • Instances (2012)

Vocal music

  • Harvest Home (1937)
  • In Sleep, in Thunder (1981)
  • Of Challenge and of Love (1994)
  • Tempo e Tempi (1998-99)
  • Of Rewaking (2002)
  • In the Distances of Sleep (2006)
  • La Musique (2007)
  • Mad Regales (2007)
  • On Conversing with Paradise (2008)
  • Poems of Louis Zukofsky (2008)
  • What Are Years (2009)
  • A Sunbeam's Architecture (2010)
  • Three Explorations (2011)

Works for solo instruments

Bass clarinet

  • Steep Steps (2001)

cello

  • Figment (1994)
  • Figment II (2001)

English horn

  • A 6 Letter Letter (1996)

bassoon

  • Retracing (2002)

guitar

  • Changes (1983)
  • Shard (1997)

harp

  • Bariolage (1992)

horn

  • Retracing II (2009)

clarinet

  • Gra (1993)

piano

  • Piano Sonata (1945–46, revised 1982)
  • Night Fantasies (1978-80)
  • 90+ (1994)
  • Two Diversions (1999)
  • Retrouvailles (2000)
  • Fratribute (2008)
  • Matribute (2007)
  • Carter, Elliott: Two Thoughts About the Piano (2007)
    • I. Intermittences (2005)
    • II. Caténaires (2006)
  • Tri-Tribute (2007-08)
    • Sistritbute (2008)

double bass

  • Figment III (2007)

Marimba

  • Figment V (2009)

oboe

  • Inner Song (1992)
  • HBHH (2007)

trombone

  • Gra (1993)
  • Retracing V (2011)

Trumpet

  • Retracing III (2009)

tuba

  • Retracing IV (2011)

Flute

  • Scrivo in Vento (1991)

viola

  • Figment IV (2007)

violin

  • 4 Lauds (1984-2001)
    • I. Statement (1999)
    • II. Riconoscenza (1984)
    • III: Rhapsodic Musings (2001)
    • IV. Fantasy (1999)
  • Mnemosyné (2011)

Stage works

  • Pocahontas , ballet (1938–39)
  • The Minotaur , ballet (1947)
  • What Next , opera (1997)

Fonts

  • Collected Essays and Lectures, 1937-1995 , University of Rochester Press, 1996

literature

  • A labyrinth of time , biography by Frank Scheffer, Allegri Film BV, 2004
  • David Schiff: The Music of Elliott Carter . 2nd Edition. Faber and Faber, London 1998, ISBN 978-0-571-17639-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Elliott Carter, Composer Who Decisively Snapped Tradition, Dies at 103 , nytimes.com
  2. ^ Daniel J. Watkin: Turning 100 at Carnegie Hall, With New Notes . The New York Times . December 11, 2008. Retrieved November 25, 2009.
  3. ^ Members: Elliott Carter. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed February 21, 2019 .
  4. ^ ISCM Honorary Members
  5. ↑ Recording Industry Salutes Musical Alums. The Horace Mann Record. ( Memento of February 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Volume 106, Issue 15 of January 23, 2009 (English), accessed on April 23, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Carter, Elliott
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Carter, Elliott Cook
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American composer
DATE OF BIRTH December 11, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH 5th November 2012
Place of death New York City