Elliott Carter

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Biography

Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. (born in New York City on December 11, 1908) is an American composer from New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music. His compositions, which have been performed all over the world, include orchestral and chamber music as well as solo instrumental and vocal works.

Carter's father, Elliott Carter, Sr. was a businessman and his mother was the former Florence Chambers. The family was well-to-do. As a teenager he developed an interest in music and was encouraged in this regard by the composer Charles Ives (who sold insurance to his family). Although Carter majored in English at Harvard College, he also studied music there and at the nearby Longy School of Music. His professors included Walter Piston and Gustav Holst. He sang with the Harvard Glee Club. He did graduate work in music at Harvard, from which he received a Master's degree in music in 1932. He then went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger (as did Aaron Copland, George Gershwin and many other American composers). Carter worked with Mlle Boulanger from 1932-35 and in 1935 he received a doctorate in music (D Mus) from the Ecole Normale in Paris. Later in 1935 he returned to the US where he directed the Ballet Caravan.

From 1940 to 1944 Elliott Carter taught courses in physics, mathematics and classical Greek, in addition to music, at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. On July 6, 1939, Carter married Helen Frost-Jones. They had one child, a son, David Chambers Carter. During World War II, Carter worked for the Office of War Information. He later held teaching posts at the Peabody Conservatory (1946 - 1948), Columbia University, Queens College, New York (1955-56), Yale University (1960-62), Cornell University (from 1967) and the Juilliard School (from 1972). In 1967 he was appointed a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

 

Recent years

Carter has lived in Greenwich Village[citation needed] and has recently completed Interventions, to be premiered by pianist Daniel Barenboim and the Boston Symphony Orchestra under James Levine when the composer turns 100 in 2008.[2] According to John Link, Carter "is now working on a song cycle on Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos."[3]

 

References

   1. ^ 'Minimalism is death'. Telegraph, 26 July 2003.
   2. ^ Boston Symphony concert listing
   3. ^ Link, John. "Elliott Carter's Late Music?" in the Tanglewood Music Center's program guide Carter's Century: Festival of Contemporary Music, July 20-July 24, 2008.

Doering, William T. Elliott Carter: A Bio-Bibliography. Greenwood Press, 1993.