Elliott Carter's 'String Quartet No. 1'

Of all the composers in recent American history, Elliott Carter stands as a unique and influential individual who created his own harmonic and rhythmic language. Born in New York to a wealthy family in 1908, Carter showed an interest in music at a young age, and by his teens, had discovered the idea of modernism through the music of Stravinsky among others. It was during his teenage years that Carter came in contact with the prolific composer Charles Ives, who became an influential mentor to the young teenager. He encouraged Carter’s interest in music, and by the time Carter entered Harvard University in 1926, Ives helped Carter discover the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who was at that time performing many contemporary works under conductor
1”. This piece was written in between 1950-1951, and is an atonal work that has a contrasting variety of dynamics that creates many different textures of interesting music. This quartet contains many ideas that Carter would explore in later works, such as metric modulation. Another piece that started to solidify Carter as a master composer of the twentieth century was “Double Concerto”. This piece, regarded as a masterpiece by Stravinsky, contains two chamber orchestras, with one lead by a harpsichord and the other a piano. This piece is separated by “String Quartet No.1” by ten years, and brought with it a wave of complex structures of both rhythm and harmony. A notable presence in this piece is the harpsichord, which has many complex passages that run throughout the piece, especially towards the beginning during the harpsichord cadenza. A remarkable aspect of Carter’s career was his creative output later in life. Of his roughly 150 works, about 60 of them were composed after ninety years old. This era of Carter’s career saw him composing many new exciting pieces that further explored new lengths of his personal techniques. One piece that stands out in particular is “Sound Fields” (2007). This piece was written for string orchestra, and creates a rich atmosphere that changes in texture as the piece
Written for solo flute, this piece explores the sudden changes in dynamics and range on the instrument, and for those reasons this piece is quite complex. The piece starts with a nice melodic passage in the lower register of the flute at a piano dynamic, and then suddenly jumps up to the extreme register at a fortissimo dynamic. The rest of the piece follows this pattern more or less, with a few melodic notes at a piano dynamic followed by fast, complex rhythms at the extreme register of the flute at a forte to fortissimo dynamic. I think this piece shows Carter’s ambition as a composer, as he explores new possibilities and ideas on this instrument. The sudden dynamic changes and bursts from long sustained notes to fast, percussive like runs creates an atmosphere of unexpected twists and