Customer Reviews

The Music of Elliott Carter (Photos Not Included)

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Schiff has done a lucid job here for the readers,he writes quite well, not slipping into piles of set theory or analytical jargoneze,that speaks to a diminishing elite. Many have labeled Carter an elite creator,but that's a matter of reference(well Carter did walk out on a performance in Chicago due to Leonard Slatkin's pre-concert remarks). Schiff remarkably covers all the great Carter works, the turbulent works of the Sixties and Seventies, the darkly brooding Piano Concerto(written in West Berlin) and the Concerto for Orchestra,a Sixties work of violence, a reflection on the Anti-War Times. The latter unaccompanied solos are all here as well, all works written,for the most part after the First Edition. Schiff frequently reflects upon what works in a piece, a purely function premise that explains much, and is food for thought to any youngster hoping to someday write just like Elliot Carter. I miss the photographs from the First Edition, those with Stravinsky and Boulez, and the Carter manuscript reproductions included there. Schiff seems quite lucid in speaking about all this complexity whether rhythmic,structural or pitchbound. I didn't know for instance that Carter has kept a harmony book, sort of a creative Oracle to refer to over ones life. The chapters divide things again quite clearly, The Chamber Music, The Vocal Music, The Piano Music and Orchestral, with a nice Appendix of Carter's Listing of Three to Six Note Chords, also a Chronological Catalogue of Works, a select Bibliography and Discography, a List of Charts. A shame however is, although the winner of numerous Pulitzers, Carter until quite recent times has been neglected here in this country fighting in his home territory, the Eastern Musical Establishment and the Bernstein Clique of the Sixties and Seventies. Boulez did much to repair this damage with The New York Philharmonic and now Barenboim has in Chicago, as well as premiere ensembles,Arditti and soloists,Chas Rosen and Ms Oppens. Schiff also always points to Carter's extracurricular interests in literature, where he frequently finds an impetus for a work, as well as the Italian language for a conceptual working premise. The Glossary at the beginning also is a wonderful clarifier, of forms we frequently hear about but seldom understand within the context of the subsequent work these terms refer to.