The Carter-Nancarrow Correspondence

Elliott Carter (b. 1908) and Conlon Nancarrow (1912–97) represent two poles of American art music in the late twentieth century: Carter the highly decorated, academically pedigreed Pulitzer-prize composer, Nancarrow the isolated maverick exile, a cult figure of experimentalism. Yet their musical personalities converge in a common devotion to rhythmic relativity and the rationalizing of both duration and tempo. Thus their compositions, from both sides of the ideological spectrum, have fueled much of the twenty-first century’s discourse about style and method.

According to Carter’s recollection, the two men met for the first time in 1939 when Nancarrow—who had not long before returned from the Spanish Civil War—was giving Spanish lessons in New York City.¹ One of his students was Elliott Carter himself: “He was penniless when he came to New York, and some friends and I took Spanish lessons from him to help him make ends meet. . . . We became very good friends while he was living in New York.”² The last time Carter and Nancarrow met was at the Thirty-Ninth Holland Festival in Amsterdam, held from June 26 to 28, 1987.³ In the meantime, Nancarrow and Carter also met sporadically: in 1947 and 1951 in Mexico City, as well as in 1957, most likely in Mexico.⁴

But amid these fleeting encounters over almost five decades the two men wrote letters to each other. Their correspondence, much like their “live” encounters, was marked by a striking discontinuity, with the intervals sometimes being—judging from the available documents—longer than ten years (1974–87).⁵ Whenever the resumption of their correspondence is in evidence, that does not necessarily imply the beginning of a two-way communication; it just means that at least one of the authors sent a letter to his colleague. Nevertheless, the warmth and mutual supportiveness of their letters belies many of the clichés that surround the “uptown vs. downtown” dichotomy that pervades academic discourse.⁶

The Beginnings: An Invitation for Cooperation

The first (or rather, the first extant) letter of this correspondence was the one that Conlon Nancarrow sent to Elliott Carter the year of their first meeting—June 16, 1939. It is the only letter from the entire correspondence that begins with “Dear Mr. Carter”; all the other letters begin with Nancarrow addressing his colleague as “Dear Elliott.” There is an obvious difference between the initial courteous yet reserved form of address and the later form of address suggesting a closer friendly relationship. The first extant letter from Carter to Nancarrow dates from as late as March 5, 1945.⁷ Like all the other extant letters from Carter to Nancarrow, it begins with “Dear Conlon.”

In 1939 Nancarrow was still living in the United States, first briefly in Texarkana, Arkansas and then, again for a relatively short period, in New York.⁸ However, this was also the period leading up to Nancarrow’s leaving the United States and moving to Mexico City.⁹ The next extant letter to Carter—albeit written twelve years later—Nancarrow wrote from his Mexican home, where he had been living for quite some time.¹⁰

Based on the content of Nancarrow’s first extant letter to Carter, it is clear that it was written in response to an earlier letter of Carter’s. Among other things, Nancarrow wrote: “I just received your letter. Sorry it had to go thru so many channels to reach me.” It was, therefore, Carter who started the correspondence. In fact, Nancarrow did not keep many of the letters that he had received by the early 1970s. It was not until the 1970s that he started to feel he should file all (or at least the bulk of) the letters in his archive.

In his 1939 letter, Nancarrow was actually replying to Carter’s offer to write ballet music. Carter was the music director of Lincoln Kirstein’s Ballet Caravan in New York at the time, so he wanted to incorporate Nancarrow’s music into the troupe’s work.¹¹ Nancarrow’s answer was affirmative: “I’d like very much to do the music for...