RIP Elliott Carter

[Serial_Apologist]

The last of the pre-WWI modernist pioneers to go, someone in whose music one instinctively recognised as exemplifying authority in the best and only sense worth getting to grips with, and more.

RIP Elliott Carter

[ahinton]

I heard about Carter's death only early this morning; I think that most of us had long since assumed his immortality and I am finding it hard to concentrate on things today because of the shock of discovering that someone who’s always been with us is no longer so; I’m almost reminded of Busoni who, on hearing of the death of Scriabin, refused to believe it until he had also heard it from several other sources.

I did not know him at all well and met him only four times, but he was certainly an inspiration and a half; his patience and courage to find himself and to be true to that self when found, as Norman Douglas would have put it, as well as the irrepressible energy and imagination that propelled him to become the only known composer to continue to work after his centenary (he’s written some 16 or more works since then). Apparently, he died in his sleep peacefully at around 21.00 our time last night; I understand that he’d contracted pneumonia and this eventually got the better of him, but not until he had wound himself up with frustration at this preventing him from getting on with work. When I saw him just before the UK première of the Boston Concerto at the Proms, his wife of almost 64 years had not long died and I overheard him telling someone that her last words to him (when she knew that she was about to depart) were "get back to your desk!" – which, of course, is just what he did – and how! – although there were inevitably limits to the extent to which he came to terms with her death. I was shaken when I heard of Henze’s death just recently, but although he was a very significant figure in the music of the past 50+ years, Elliott Carter was a giant among composers and, thankfully, much more widely appreciated and performed now than was the case a quarter century ago. What’s the most significant and impressive aspect of his music? – well, not the metrical modulation techniques or even his way of setting players up as characters in several simultaneous dramas but, the sheer humanity.

On the occasion of the première of what was then Dialogues for piano and chamber orchestra (now renamed Dialogues I – a second for the same forces was composed last year) – Nic Hodges / London Sinfonietta / Oliver Knussen – we spoke afterwards and he mentioned that he wouldn’t write any more orchestral music – “all that big manuscript paper – all those staffs! – no, I’m done with that!); last year, however, he was commissioned to write a new piece for Seattle SO and agreed to do it – Instances was completed in April this year and I believe that his last completed work is 12 Epigrams for piano for Pierre-Laurent Aimard which he finished in mid-August.

His earliest known extant work is a Joyce setting, My love is in a light attire; from there to the Epigrams took some 84 years…

The obituaries are already flowing.

He will be very much missed. In endorsing ferneyhoughgeliebte's sentiments wholeheartedly, I would only add that Carter's powers defied just about everything!

[Tevot]

I very much remember Radio 3's showcase of his music - Get Carter! - back in 2006.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/getcarter/pip/cbms0/

I wonder whether R3 could repeat any of it?

Best Wishes,

Tevot

[Boilk]

An extraordinary musical mind. Body willing, he would still have been composing at 150.
For me he wrote the greatest Cello Sonata ever, and had he composed only the Concerto for Orchestra and Double Concerto (1961) his place in the 20th century pantheon would still be assured.

[ahinton]

An extraordinary musical mind. Body willing, he would still have been composing at 150.
For me he wrote the greatest Cello Sonata ever, and had he composed only the Concerto for Orchestra and Double Concerto (1961) his place in the 20th century pantheon would still be assured.

Well, for me, he wrote one of the great cello sonatas and the two other works that you mention are utterly astonishing, especially the Concerto for Orchestra which EC himself said was one of his favourites among his output - but, of course, whilst I take your point, there was no way that he could have written those world without a lot of the others that he'd composed by then! But look at the interview with Alisa Weilerstein about his Cello Concerto from just last July and ask yourself whether something just went horribly wrong for him; he seems very much on the ball and full of it all in that video (check it out on Youtube - I don't have the ref to hand right now and it's getting very late here!) and, as you say, body willing...

I'm still trying to figure out how and where we go from here without this utter giant in our midst as he has been for longer than most of us can remember...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

He will be very much missed. In endorsing ferneyhoughgeliebte's sentiments wholeheartedly, I would only add that Carter's powers defied just about everything!

Indeed.


I "met" Carter only once - at the 1998 Huddersfield Festival. During a "Q&A" section of a public Conversation with Richard Steinitz, I asked him if composition got easier for him as he got older. He thought for a moment before answering "Well, only in the sense that I know what I want to write more than I did when I started."

[EdgeleyRob]

Very sad news. RIP.

[eighthobstruction]

On LAST WORD R4 obituary prog just about NOW i.e. 1600hr Fri....http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/radio/b...rfm/listenlive

[Serial_Apologist]

On LAST WORD R4 obituary prog just about NOW i.e. 1600hr Fri....http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/radio/b...rfm/listenlive

Must've been pretty short... while I wuz gettin' me tea...

[ahinton]

Must've been pretty short... while I wuz gettin' me tea...

The usuall have five people in a programme that occupies only around 25-26 minutes, so it would have been but, you can either get it from BBC iPlayer or listen to the repeat that usually goes out on Sunday evening at 20.30.

[eighthobstruction]

Apparently there is more on Music Matters tomorrow SAt 10th NOV 1215 hr + HW Henze....

[Serial_Apologist]

Apparently there is more on Music Matters tomorrow SAt 10th NOV 1215 hr + HW Henze....

Ta, eighth - I'd noted that down; there usually is other stuff on MM beside what's mentioned in RT

[Wheels of Cheese]

Here's my celebration of Elliott Carter and what his music meant to me...

http://www.peter-salmon.co.uk/petersalmon/category/wheels-of-cheese/

[Serial_Apologist]

Here's my celebration of Elliott Carter and what his music meant to me...


http://www.peter-salmon.co.uk/peters...els-of-cheese/

[ahinton]

Here's my celebration of Elliott Carter and what his music meant to me...
http://www.peter-salmon.co.uk/peters...els-of-cheese/

Many thanks for this - yet another meaningful and moving tribute to this giant of Western music! You write in it that he was born in the year that Scriabin completed his Poem of Ecstasy; as a matter of fact, Elliott Carter's father attended that work's world première in New York the very day before the birth of his son; he view of it was apparently as negative as his son's was later positive!