Elliott Carter facts for kids

Carter in the 2000s

Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (born December 11, 1908 – died November 5, 2012) was an American composer who created modern music. He was one of the most respected composers in the second half of the 1900s. He mixed ideas from European modern music with American "ultra-modern" styles. This created his own special way of using harmony (how notes sound together) and rhythm (the beat). Before this, he wrote music in a neoclassical style, which looked back at older forms.

His music is played all over the world. It includes pieces for orchestras, chamber music (small groups of instruments), solo instruments, and singers. Carter won many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize twice! He was born in New York City and became interested in modern music in the 1920s. He even met the famous composer Charles Ives. Carter kept composing for a very long time. He wrote over 40 pieces between ages 90 and 100, and more than 20 after turning 100 in 2008. His very last work, Epigrams for piano trio, was finished on August 13, 2012.

About Elliott Carter's Life

Elliott Cook Carter Jr. was born in Manhattan, New York, on December 11, 1908. His father was a rich lace importer. Elliott spent much of his childhood in Europe. He even spoke French before he learned English! As a teenager, he became very interested in music. His parents didn't really encourage this, but they did give him early piano lessons.

A famous composer named Charles Ives helped him a lot. Ives sold insurance to Carter's family. In 1922, when Carter was a student at the Horace Mann School, he wrote a letter to Ives. Ives wrote back and told him to keep exploring music. Carter also started to like modern music as he learned about new ideas in other arts.

In 1924, when Carter was 15, he went to a concert that changed everything. He heard the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) play The Rite of Spring in New York. This music really "galvanized" him, meaning it excited him greatly. Later, Carter learned to love American "ultra-modern" composers. These included Henry Cowell, Edgard Varèse, Ruth Crawford, and Conlon Nancarrow. Charles Ives often took Carter to BSO concerts. The conductor, Serge Koussevitzky, often played new music. After the concerts, they would go to Ives' home and talk about the music.

Starting in 1926, Carter went to Harvard University. He studied English but also took music classes. He felt the music classes at Harvard weren't enough, so he also studied at the Longy School of Music nearby. He sang in the Harvard Glee Club. His teachers at Harvard included Walter Piston and Gustav Holst. Carter got a master's degree in music from Harvard in 1932. But he still felt he needed to improve his composing skills.

So, Carter moved to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger. She was a very famous music teacher. He worked with her from 1932 to 1935. In 1935, he earned a doctorate in music.

Later in 1935, he came back to the US to write music for the Ballet Caravan. The founder, Lincoln Kirstein, asked Carter to compose two ballets: Pocahontas and The Minotaur. These were some of his longest works from his Neo-classicist period. However, they weren't very successful.

On July 6, 1939, Carter married Helen Frost-Jones. They had one son, David Chambers Carter. They lived 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. During World War II, he worked for the Office of War Information. After the war, he taught at several universities. These included 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 the 1950s, Carter became interested in experimental music again. He had helped edit music by Charles Ives. After his experiences in the war, he wanted to create music that was truly free and new. He did this by looking at all parts of music in a new way. Important works from this time include the Cello Sonata, the first string quartet (which had very complex rhythms), and Variations for Orchestra. These two pieces were a turning point in his career.

Elliott Carter wrote music every morning until he died peacefully on November 5, 2012. He was 103 years old and passed away at his home in New York City.

First Performances of Carter's Music

Carter wrote his only opera, What Next?, between 1997 and 1998. An opera is a play where most of the words are sung. It was created for the Berlin State Opera because the conductor Daniel Barenboim asked for it. The opera was first performed in Berlin in 1999. Its first performance in the United States was at the Tanglewood Music Festival in 2006.

His piece Interventions for Piano and Orchestra was first played on December 5, 2008. The Boston Symphony Orchestra performed it with James Levine conducting and Daniel Barenboim on piano. This happened at Symphony Hall, Boston. On December 11, 2008, Barenboim played the piece again at Carnegie Hall in New York. Carter was there for his 100th birthday!

Carter also attended the 2009 Aldeburgh Festival. There, he heard the first performance of his song cycle On Conversing with Paradise. A song cycle is a group of songs meant to be performed together. This piece was based on poems by Ezra Pound. It was performed on June 20, 2009.

Figment V for marimba (a type of xylophone) was first played in New York on May 2, 2009. Poems of Louis Zukofsky for soprano (a high female singing voice) and clarinet was first performed on August 9, 2009. The first US performance of his Flute Concerto was on February 4, 2010.

The last piece of Carter's music to be performed while he was alive was Dialogues II. It was written for Daniel Barenboim's 70th birthday. It was conducted in Milan in October 2012. The very last premiere of Carter's music happened after he died. It was "The American Sublime," a work for baritone (a male singing voice) and a large group of musicians.

Elliott Carter's Musical Style

Carter's early music was influenced by composers like Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, and Paul Hindemith. This early music was mostly neoclassical. He had strong training in counterpoint, which is about combining different melodies. This can be heard in his early works, like the ballet Pocahontas (1938–39). Some of his music during World War II used more traditional-sounding notes and had melodies that reminded people of Samuel Barber's music.

Starting in the late 1940s, his music began to sound more personal. He developed his own way of using harmony and rhythm. His music became known for its complex layers of rhythms and "metric modulation." This means he would smoothly change the speed or feel of the beat. While his music used many different notes (chromaticism) and sounds, he didn't use "serial" techniques like some other composers. He said he never used a "twelve-tone row" as the main idea for his pieces.

Instead, Carter created his own system. He listed all possible combinations of notes, like all possible three-note chords or five-note chords. He called this his Harmony Book. Other music experts later created something similar called "musical set theory." In the 1960s and 1970s, many of Carter's works used all the possible chords of a certain number of notes.

Some of his most famous works include:

• Variations for Orchestra (1954–55)
• The Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano with Two Chamber Orchestras (1959–61)
• The Piano Concerto (1964–65)
• The Concerto for Orchestra (1969)
• The Symphony of Three Orchestras (1976)

He also wrote five string quartets. A string quartet is a group of four string instruments. His second and third quartets won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Many people think his string quartets are the most important works in that style since those by Bartók. Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei (1993–96) is his biggest orchestral work. It is very complex, with different layers of sounds, from soft wind solos to loud brass and percussion.

For example, his Piano Concerto (1964–65) uses all the possible three-note chords. The Third String Quartet (1971) uses all four-note chords. The Concerto for Orchestra (1969) uses all five-note chords. And A Symphony of Three Orchestras uses all six-note chords. Carter also often used "tonic" 12-note chords. These are special chords where every musical interval is present between nearby notes. His 1980 piano piece Night Fantasies uses all 88 of these special 12-note chords.

Often, Carter would give different instruments or groups of instruments their own unique sets of chords, sounds, and rhythms. This layering of different musical ideas, where each part has its own character, is a key part of Carter's style. After Night Fantasies, his music became less strict in its system, but it still kept the main features of his earlier works.

Carter's use of rhythm is also very unique. He often gave each instrument its own speed or tempo. He used "structural polyrhythm," which means very slow, complex rhythms that only line up at certain points. For example, Night Fantasies has two different speeds that only match up twice in over 20 minutes! Carter said that the steady beats of older music reminded him of soldiers marching. He wanted his music to sound more like the continuous speeding up or slowing down you feel in a car or airplane.

While Carter's music doesn't sound like American popular music or jazz, his vocal music often used modern American poetry. He set poems by famous writers like Elizabeth Bishop, John Ashbery, Robert Lowell, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and Marianne Moore. These poets also inspired some of his large instrumental works.

Awards and Honors for Elliott Carter

• 1960: Pulitzer Prize for Music, for his String Quartet No. 2
• 1963: Became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 1969: Became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• 1973: Pulitzer Prize for Music, for his String Quartet No. 3
• 1981: Ernst von Siemens Music Prize
• 1983: Edward MacDowell Medal
• 1985: National Medal of Arts, given by the President of the United States
• 1987: Named a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government
• 1998: Added to the American Classical Music Hall of Fame and Museum
• 2005: The Thomas Jefferson Medal
• 2009: Received a Trustees Award from the Grammy Awards. This is a special award for people who don't perform but have made a big impact.
• 2012: Named a Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur by the French government

Important Musical Works

See also

In Spanish: Elliott Carter para niños