This is a comprehensive guide to research on the American composer Elliott Carter (b. 1908), widely acknowledged as one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century. It contains a chronology, complete list of works, detailed discography, and fully annotated bibliography of over 1,000 books, articles, interviews, video recordings, and Carter's own writings. This essential reference book covers the most significant works in English, French, German, and Italian, from the 1940s-when Carter's music first began to attract attention-to the 1990s.
The first comprehensive study of the late music of one of the most influential composers of the last half century, this book places Elliott Carter's music from 1995 to 2012 in the broader context of post-war contemporary concert music, including his own earlier work. It addresses Carter's reception history, his aesthetics, and his harmonic and rhythmic practice, and includes detailed essays on all of Carter's major works after 1995. Special emphasis is placed on Carter's settings of contemporary modernist poetry from John Ashbery to Louis Zukofsky. In readable and engaging prose, Elliott Carter's Late Music illuminates a body of late work that stands at the forefront of the composer's achievements.
Timothy (later St. Timothy) is in his study in Thessalonika, where he is bishop of Macedonia. It is A.D. 96, and Timothy is under terrific pressure to record his version of the Sacred Story, since, far in the future, a cyberpunk (the Hacker) has been systematically destroying the tapes that describe the Good News, and Timothy's Gospel is the only one immune to the Hacker's deadly virus. Meanwhile, thanks to a breakthrough in computer software, an NBC crew is racing into the past to capture—live from the suburb of Golgotha—the Crucifixion, for a TV special guaranteed to boost the network's ratings in the fall sweeps. As a stream of visitors from twentieth-century America channel in to the first-century Holy Land—Mary Baker Eddy, Shirley MacLaine, Oral Roberts and family—Timothy struggles to complete his story. But is Timothy's text really Hacker-proof? And how will he deal with the truth about Jesus' eating disorder? Above all, will he get the anchor slot for the Big Show at Golgotha without representation by a major agency, like CAA 1,896 years in the future? Tune in.
Elliott Carter (1908-2012) was the foremost composer of classical music in America during the second half of the 20th century. Over the course of a career that spanned seven decades, he consistently produced works that critics hailed as creatively daring, intellectually demanding, and emotionally complex. Distancing himself from the various "schools" and movements that grew and waned in popularity during the postwar era, Carter cultivated a deeply personal musical style that he developed and refined up until the very end of his life. This book of the composer springs from author David Schiff's life-long interest in Elliott Carter's music and his close personal connection with the composer which spanned over forty years. This critical overview of Carter's life and work explores aspects of the composer's life about which he was usually reticent--and occasionally misleading--such as his complicated relationships with Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, Nicolas Nabokov, and his own parents. Schiff's study of Carter's complete oeuvre--from his politically charged Depression-era ballets to the deeply personal and reflective late works--is based on extensive study of the composer's personal sketches and letters. Featuring an in-depth look at the legacy project of Carter's final decade, seven settings of American modernist poetry by E.E. Cummings, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams, this newest addition to the Master Musicians Series paints with a fine brush the story of America's foremost composer of the second half of the twentieth century.
Joel Sachs offers the first complete biography of one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century American music. Henry Cowell, a major musical innovator of the first half of the century, left a rich body of compositions spanning a wide range of styles. But as Sachs shows, Cowell's legacy extends far beyond his music. He worked tirelessly to create organizations such as the highly influential New Music Quarterly, New Music Recordings, and the Pan-American Association of Composers, through which great talents like Ruth Crawford Seeger and Charles Ives first became known in the US and abroad. As one of the first Western advocates for World Music, he used lectures, articles, and recordings to bring other musical cultures to myriad listeners and students including John Cage and Lou Harrison, who attributed their life work to Cowell's influence. Finally, Sachs describes the tragedy of Cowell's life, being sentenced to fifteen years in San Quentin -- of which he served four -- after pleading guilty to a morals charge that even the prosecutor felt was trivial. Providing a wealth of insight into Cowell's ideas and philosophy, Joel Sachs lays out a much-needed perspective on one of the giants of twentieth-century American music.
Includes critical essays on Henry James, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Stendhal, Balzac, Marcel Proust, Andre Malraux, Paul Valery, Thomas Mann, William Shakespeare (Antony and Cleopatra), and other topics.
The Wind Band Music of Henry Cowell studies the compositions for wind band by twentieth-century composer Henry Cowell, a significant and prolific figure in American fine art music from 1914-1965. The composer is noteworthy and controversial because of his radical early works, his interest in non-Western musics, and his retrogressive mature style—along with notoriety for his imprisonment in San Quentin on a morals charge. Eleven chapters are organized both topically and chronologically. An introduction, conclusion, series of eight appendices, bibliography, and discography complete this comprehensive study, along with an audio playlist of representative works, hosted on the CMS website.
