Elliott Carter

Elliott Carter celebrated his 100th birthday on 11 December 2008 – with no less than ten premieres. His career spanned 75 years and produced more than 150 works, many of which reflect Carter’s distinctive sense of humour. His final compositions include the orchestral piece Instances and the piano concerto Dialogues II dedicated to Daniel Barenboim, which was successfully premiered at La Scala in Milan a few weeks before Carter’s death.

Elliott Carter was born in New York 1908 and grew up in a wealthy merchant family. His early interest in exclusively contemporary music was encouraged early on by Clifton Furness, his music teacher at the Horace Man School. When Carter heard Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps in New York at the age of fifteen, he was captivated. He would later become friends with the composer. Furness also introduced Carter to Charles Ives, who became a mentor for the teenager. From 1926, he studied English literature at Harvard University, as he found the university’s music department too conservative. He also attended the Longy School of Music in Boston, where he received oboe lessons. After completing his Bachelor of Arts, Carter continued his music studies under Walter Piston and Gustav Holst at Harvard, where he received his Master of Arts two years later. The composer then went to Paris to take lessons under Nadia Boulanger. In 1935, Carter returned to the USA, where he worked as a critic and as music director of Lincoln Kirstein’s Ballet Caravan. As part of his wide-ranging teaching activities – including at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, Queens College New York, and Yale University – he was appointed to numerous professorships. After works such as the Neoclassical ballet Pocahontas, the First Symphony and the Holiday Overture, Carter withdrew to the Sonoran Desert in Tucson (Arizona) with the help of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1950/51 to compose his groundbreaking First String Quartet. It was awarded first prize at the International Quartet Competition in Liège in 1953, and established his international success as the leading American representative of Modernism. In 1984, Carter withdrew from all public positions, which led to an astonishing increase in his compositional productivity with works such as Three Illusions for Orchestra and the flute concerto premiered by Emmanuel Pahud. Elliott Carter died at the age of 103 on 25 October 2012.

Concerts