Early Elliott Carter

Elliott Carter is famously not a composer that many people find comfortable to hear, although he is widely considered one of the greatest American voices of the 20th century - and even into the 21st.

Young Elliott Carter

Notably long-lived, Carter survived until his 104th year, and died only a few years ago - composing to the end. But it's interesting and perhaps instructive to go back to his earlier years and listen to what he devised in his 20s and 30s.

In his late 20s, Carter became the music director for Lincoln Kirstein's Ballet Caravan. The impresario commissioned the young composer to produce a score for a ballet on the Pocahontas tale, which would have choreography by Lew Christensen. Charles Rosen's notes for this present recording state that much of the music comes from 1937, although an orchestrated version did not arrive until 1939. In may be true that some of the music is even earlier - the George Platt Lynes production photo below is dated 1936, when Carter was 28.

Pocahontas production photo

Rosen notes that the music, presented here in its 1941 suite form, is derivative, mentioning Hindemith. I might add the contemporary Russians, and the Americana movement as well - at the time Kirstein was commissioning ballet music from Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson along with Carter. (Thomson's Filling Station, also choreographed by Christensen, appeared here several years ago.) But the score also has a assured quality and powerful sweep that carries through to Carter's later, more idiosyncratic scores. The performance here by Zurich forces led by modern music specialist Jacques-Louis Monod is very fine.

Rosen considers the Piano Sonata to be a revolutionary work, a "new departure in piano writing with few analogies in the literature of the past." His penetrating analysis in the liner notes is helpful in understanding what Carter is doing, and his performance is sympathetic. This may have been one of Rosen's first published writings on music; he went on to be known as much for his scholarship as his pianism. (Rosen's thoughts on Carter and his music can be found here.) To what Rosen has to say in his notes, I might merely note that Carter also shows the influence of the Americana movement in the sonata's second movement.

The sound on this Epic recording, from about 1962, is quite good. I own other recordings of early Carter works anyone is interested.

Charles Rosen and Elliott Carter in 2007