Elliott Carter: A Guide to Research (review)

Elliott Carter: A Guide to Research. By John F. Link. (Composer Resource Manuals, 52.) New York: Garland, 2000. [xiv, 331 p. ISBN 0-8153-2432-4. $90.]

When reviewing a book such as this, I am reminded of the Amish farmers near my home. Farming is arduous work that always begins with breaking the hard ground, particularly difficult with horse and plough. In the same way, all scholarship begins with a knowledge of primary source collections and relevant bibliography. John F. Link's work has "broken the ground" for us. Elliott Carter, now more than ninety years old, continues to be one of the most productive American composers. As he continues to compose, others continue to write about him and his compositions; thus we have a constant need to keep up with the literature.

Elliott Carter: A Guide to Research appears in the Garland series Composer Resource Manuals. Garland has undergone the fate of so many other publishers of music books in our time, having been taken over by a large conglomerate, the Taylor & Francis Group. While we can be happy that Taylor & Francis has decided to continue the Composer Resource Manuals series, we can expect that with profit-driven motivation the prices will be high, as is the case with this volume.

Link's work does not include a biography; instead, there is a chronology of important dates in Carter's life and career. The chronology is useful in gaining a general and succinct view of Carter's life, but it necessarily leaves out a great many details. Carter has had a very interesting life, with many awards and composer-in-residence positions. Scanning the chronology gives the impression that he may be one of the few contemporary composers who has made his living primarily from composing rather than teaching. The same impression may not come to mind when reading one of his biographies.

Link lists Carter's music in three categories: "Works Presumed Lost or Destroyed," "Juvenilia and Unpublished Works in Manuscript," and "Published Works." The compositions are listed alphabetically by title, though there is an appendix listing them in chronological order. In each entry, Link provides details of the work's date of origin, instrumentation, publisher, commissioner, dedication, and premiere, as well as information on autograph materials and bibliographic references. I have already found this section useful in answering a reference question: a visiting Finnish pianist, Paavali Jumppanen, wanted to find out about Carter's Piano Concerto. The Link entry shows that there was a 1991 printing by Hal Leonard, in both full score and two-piano reduction.

The remainder of Link's book consists of a discography of commercial recordings and an annotated bibliography, the latter subdivided into "Sources Written by Elliott Carter," "Interviews and Panel Discussions with Elliott Carter as a Participant," and "Sources on Elliott Carter and His Music by Other Authors." With nearly 800 entries (277 in the discography and 497 in the bibliography), these sections are up-to-date and comprehensive. The annotations are quite extensive and valuable, showing a great deal of scholarly work. Link has set specific boundaries: he has omitted newspaper articles, articles in popular magazines, concert announcements and reviews, acceptance speeches, and entries in biographical dictionaries and textbooks. He includes dissertations but not theses, and book reviews but not record reviews. He cites his personal Web site, where corrections and new materials are listed (1 April 2001, www.wpunj.edu/coac/music/link/index.html [accessed 22 September 2001]).

All the entries in the book are numbered consecutively (in contrast to the letter-and-number systems used in the Bio-bibliographies in Music series of Greenwood Press), making index entries and cross-references easy to find. The book ends with a useful, detailed general index.

The Elliott Carter shelf in the music library is not as full as it could be, though we may undoubtedly expect more book-length studies in coming years. Link's book should be in every music library, together with...