Elliott Carter 100th Birthday Concerts (review)

Those of us who consider ourselves devotees of so-called classical music are accustomed to hearing pieces that are a century or several centuries old. It is a rather rare experience to find oneself listening to a relatively new piece written by a composer who is himself 100 years old. Yet that was precisely the situation confronting many of us last year during the centenary of the birth of Elliott Carter. Having lived for a century, Carter remains active, seemingly vigorous, and more prolific than many people a third his age. At this rate, he threatens to single-handedly force musicology to reconsider its profligate use of the term “late period.” While it may have always struck some of us as odd to think of Mozart, Schubert, and Mendelssohn having late periods, after Carter we may find ourselves blushing at the notion of a late period for Bach, Verdi, and Beethoven as well! The sheer quality of Carter’s latest works can lead his listeners to question the wisdom of retiring in their sixties.

Carter has always been considered a difficult composer for listeners—although he appears to be a most genial human being. I am happy to report that, despite claims to the contrary, the recondite nature of his music shows no signs of abating—at least not for those who listen for the rich musical detail in even his most lucid of scores. Indeed, it rankles me somewhat to see so many commentators and authors of program notes insisting that Carter has become more readily palatable either by coming to terms with his craft (an outrageous example of false reasoning—as though the string quartets demonstrate anything other than sureness of hand and a mastery of craft) or by mellowing with age. Both claims strike me as an appeal to a shopworn critical platitude rather than reflecting anything found within the music itself. Carter has aged certainly, but his music has hardly mellowed.

Of course, such claims are made without malice. I find it quite natural when listening to Carter to want to convince others that they will come to love it, too, if they just listen closely. Attempting to convince listeners that his music is approaching the easily digestible, however, is clearly the wrong tack to take inasmuch as it betrays the very nature of Carter’s achievement. There is something unapologetically cerebral about Carter’s music. This is not to say that it lacks emotional warmth. Indeed, I heard very little last year that has moved me as deeply as Carter’s settings of poems by William Carlos Williams performed by Michelle De Young and the New York Philharmonic conducted by David Robertson on October 31. The emotions in which Carter traffics, however, appeal as much to the intellect as to the heart. Perhaps they demonstrate in the manner of Hermann Broch, W. H. Auden, or indeed William Carlos Williams that the heart and the mind are not really different entities at all when it comes to true emotion. Emotion is always a confrontation between our rational and irrational natures. That is to say, emotion is a process of unfolding in which seemingly static states of being turn out upon closer examination to be caught up in the perpetual thrust of becoming.

Centenaries typically celebrate closed chapters. Carter’s 100th, however, sees him still very much in the act of becoming. But to be 100 years old! As historians, we privilege the century as a unit of chronological measurement. We teach our students the differences between sixteenth- and seventeenth-century musical styles. Devotees of Romantic music have grown accustomed to the habit of calling the nineteenth century the “long century” as though one duration of 100 years might last longer than another by stretching its affective duration beyond...