Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (December 11, 1908 – November 5, 2012) was an American composer known for his modernist style. He was one of the most respected composers in the second half of the 20th century. Carter mixed ideas from European modernism and American "ultra-modernism" to create a unique style with his own way of using harmony and rhythm. His early work was influenced by neoclassical music. His compositions, which include orchestral, chamber music, solo instrumental, and vocal pieces, are performed worldwide. Carter won many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for his string quartets twice. He also composed a large orchestral work called Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei.

Carter was born in New York City. He became interested in modern music in the 1920s. He later met Charles Ives and began to appreciate American ultra-modernist composers. He studied at Harvard University with Edward Burlingame Hill, Gustav Holst, and Walter Piston. Later, he studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris during the 1930s before returning to the United States. In his later years, Carter remained very productive. He published over 40 works between the ages of 90 and 100, and more than 20 additional pieces after turning 100 in 2008. His final work, Epigrams for piano trio, was completed on August 13, 2012.

Biography

Elliott Cook Carter Jr. was born in Manhattan on December 11, 1908. He was the son of Elliott Carter Sr., a wealthy lace importer, and Florence Chambers. Much of his childhood was spent in Europe, and he learned French before learning English. As a teenager, he became interested in music, though his parents only supported this by arranging early piano lessons. However, he was encouraged by Charles Ives, who sold insurance to Carter's family. While a student at the Horace Mann School in 1922, Carter wrote a letter to Ives, who replied and encouraged him to continue exploring music. Carter began to study modern music as part of his interest in modernism in other art forms.

In 1924, at age 15, Carter attended a performance of The Rite of Spring by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in New York. The concert, conducted by Pierre Monteux, deeply inspired him. Later, Carter admired American modernist composers such as Henry Cowell, Edgard Varèse, Ruth Crawford, and Conlon Nancarrow. Ives often took Carter to concerts led by Serge Koussevitzky, who frequently performed contemporary works. After the concerts, Ives and Carter would return home to discuss and mock the techniques used by European composers like Debussy, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev, whom Ives considered only "superficially modern."

From 1926 to 1932, Carter studied at Harvard University, where he majored in English but also took music classes. He studied at Harvard and the nearby Longy School of Music, and he sang with the Harvard Glee Club. His professors included Walter Piston and Gustav Holst. Carter earned a master’s degree in music from Harvard in 1932, but he felt the courses did not help him improve his composition skills. He then moved to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, both privately and at the École Normale de Musique de Paris. He studied with her from 1932 to 1935, though he did not think much of the music he composed during that time was worth keeping. In 1935, he received a doctorate in music (Mus.D.).

In 1935, Carter returned to the United States to write music for the Ballet Caravan. Lincoln Kirstein, the founder of the Ballet Caravan, asked Carter to compose two ballets: Pocahontas and The Minotaur. These were his longest works during his Neo-classicist period, though they were not very successful.

On July 6, 1939, Carter married Helen Frost-Jones. They had one child, a son named David Chambers Carter. They lived together in the same apartment in Greenwich Village from 1945 until Helen’s death in 2003.

From 1940 to 1944, Carter taught at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. During World War II, he worked for the Office of War Information. After the war, he taught at the Peabody Conservatory (1946–1948), Columbia University, Queens College, New York (1955–56), Yale University (1960–62), Cornell University (starting in 1967), and the Juilliard School (starting in 1972). In the 1950s, after editing Charles Ives’ music, Carter returned to studying experimental composers. He wanted to create a new way of using music by rethinking all aspects of it. Important works from this time included the Cello Sonata, the rhythmically complex first string quartet, and Variations for Orchestra. These works marked a major change in his career.

Carter wrote music every morning until his death on November 5, 2012, in his home in New York City. He died of natural causes at age 103.

Premieres and notable performances

John Carter wrote his only opera, What Next?, between 1997 and 1998 for the Berlin State Opera, as requested by conductor Daniel Barenboim. The opera first performed in Berlin in 1999 and had its first performance in the United States at the Tanglewood Music Festival in 2006, conducted by James Levine. Later, Carter thought about writing operas about communal suicide and a story by Henry James, but he stopped those ideas and decided not to write any more operas.

The work Interventions for Piano and Orchestra had its first performance on December 5, 2008, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), conducted by James Levine, with pianist Daniel Barenboim at Symphony Hall in Boston. On December 11, 2008, Barenboim performed the piece again with the BSO at Carnegie Hall in New York, where the composer was present for his 100th birthday. Carter also attended the 2009 Aldeburgh Festival to hear the world premiere of his song cycle On Conversing with Paradise, based on Ezra Pound’s Canto 81 and one of Pound’s notes for later Cantos. The premiere took place on June 20, 2009, by baritone Leigh Melrose and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, conducted by Oliver Knussen.

The piece Figment V for marimba had its first performance in New York on May 2, 2009, by Simon Boyar. The work Poems of Louis Zukofsky for soprano and clarinet had its first performance on August 9, 2009, by Lucy Shelton and Thomas Martin at the Tanglewood Festival. The U.S. premiere of the Flute Concerto occurred on February 4, 2010, with flutist Elizabeth Rowe and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Levine. The final premiere of Carter’s lifetime was Dialogues II, written for Barenboim’s 70th birthday and conducted in Milan in October 2012 by Gustavo Dudamel. The last piece ever performed by Carter was The American Sublime, a work for baritone and large ensemble, dedicated to and conducted by Levine, which premiered after Carter’s death.

Musical style and language

Carter's early music was influenced by composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, and Paul Hindemith. His style was mainly neoclassical, meaning it was inspired by older musical traditions. He studied counterpoint, which involves how different musical parts work together, from medieval music to Stravinsky's work. This training is evident in his early ballet Pocahontas (1938–39). During World War II, some of his music used simple, clear melodies similar to those of Samuel Barber.

Starting in the late 1940s, Carter's music became more unique, with complex rhythms and harmonic patterns. His use of chromaticism (notes that are not part of the basic scale) and tonal vocabulary (how he uses notes and chords) was similar to composers who used serial techniques, but Carter did not use these methods. He instead created a book called the Harmony Book, listing all possible combinations of notes, such as three-note or five-note chords. A version of this book was published in 2002. Musical theorists like Allen Forte later organized similar ideas into a system called set theory, possibly inspired by Howard Hanson's work on modern harmony. In the 1960s and 1970s, Carter's compositions used all possible chords of a specific number of notes.

Some of Carter's most well-known works include Variations for Orchestra (1954–55), Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano with Two Chamber Orchestras (1959–61), Piano Concerto (1964–65)—written as a birthday gift for Stravinsky—Concerto for Orchestra (1969), and Symphony of Three Orchestras (1976). He also composed five string quartets, two of which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1960 and 1973. These quartets are considered among the most important works in that genre since Bartók. Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei (1993–96) is his largest orchestral piece, featuring complex layers of sound.

Carter's music often uses specific chord types. For example, his Piano Concerto (1964–65) uses three-note chords, his Third String Quartet (1971) uses four-note chords, his Concerto for Orchestra (1969) uses five-note chords, and Symphony of Three Orchestras uses six-note chords. He also used "tonic" 12-note chords and "all-interval" 12-note chords, which include every possible musical interval. His 1980 piano work Night Fantasies uses all 88 symmetrical-inverted all-interval 12-note chords. Each instrument or section in his music is assigned unique chords, rhythms, and textures, creating a layered, complex style. After Night Fantasies, his music became less structured but retained earlier characteristics.

Carter's use of rhythm involved assigning different speeds to each musical part, creating a layered effect. His works often use a slow, complex rhythm that repeats only a few times. For example, Night Fantasies uses a 216:175 tempo ratio, which matches only twice during the piece. He wanted his music to reflect the smooth acceleration or deceleration of modern vehicles, unlike the steady beats of older music. While his music rarely uses American popular music or jazz, his vocal works often set poems by 20th-century poets, such as Elizabeth Bishop, John Ashbery, Robert Lowell, and T. S. Eliot. Poets also inspired his large instrumental works, like Concerto for Orchestra (based on a poem by St. John Perse) and Symphony of Three Orchestras (inspired by Hart Crane).

Awards and honors

• 1945 and 1950: Received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Music Composition
• 1960: Won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for String Quartet No. 2
• 1963: Chosen as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 1969: Chosen as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• 1973: Won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for String Quartet No. 3
• 1981: Received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize
• 1983: Awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal by the MacDowell Colony
• 1985: Received the National Medal of Arts, given by the President of the United States and the National Endowment for the Arts
• 1987: Named a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government
• 1998: Inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame and Museum
• 2005: Received the Thomas Jefferson Medal, awarded by the American Philosophical Society
• 2009: Received a Trustees Award (a lifetime achievement award for people who are not performers) from the Grammy Awards
• 2012: Named a Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur by the French government

Partial discography

• Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord; Sonata for Cello and Piano; Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano With Two Chamber Orchestras. Paul Jacobs, harpsichord; Joel Krosnick, cello; Gilbert Kalish, piano; The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, conducted by Arthur Weisberg. Elektra/Nonesuch 9 79183–2.
• String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2. The Composers Quartet. Elektra/Nonesuch 9 71249–2.
• Piano Concerto; Variations for Orchestra. Ursula Oppens, piano; Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Michael Gielen. New World Records, NW 347–2.
• Triple Duo; Clarinet Concerto; Short Pieces. Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, conducted by Lorraine Vaillancourt. ATMA Classique, ACD2 2280.
• Complete Music for Piano. Charles Rosen, piano. Bridge 9090.
• Vocal Works (1975–81): A Mirror on Which to Dwell; In Sleep, In Thunder; Syringa; Three Poems of Robert Frost. Speculum Musicae with Katherine Ciesinki, mezzo; Jon Garrison, tenor; Jan Opalach, bass; Christine Schadeberg, soprano. Bridge, BCD 9014.
• Dialogues; Boston Concerto; Cello Concerto; ASKO Concerto. Nicolas Hodges, piano; Fred Sherry, cello; London Sinfonietta, BBC Symphony Orchestra, ASKO Ensemble, conducted by Oliver Knussen. Bridge 9184.