Elliot Carter staring at a candle

A reasonably well-informed member of the musical audience has probably never heard—or even heard of—Carter’s Double Concerto for piano and harpsichord, from 1959-1961, for instance, or his Piano Concerto from 1964 or the Concerto for Orchestra from 1969. His numerous chamber works, including the five string quartets composed between 1951 and 1995, are occasionally played, and have been recorded by the Juilliard String Quartet and some younger ensembles. However, none of Carter’s music has won a wide audience in the six decades since he became one of the most well-known exponents of what is loosely referred to as musical “modernism.”

Of course, to challenge the audience and not find immediate success is by no means unheard of. Recognition of some of the works of Beethoven, Schubert and other masters came after their lifetimes. This general problem, of a “lag” between a wide audience and composer, does not seem to apply in Carter’s case or help explain why his major works have found little or no audience after 60 years and show no signs of doing so in the future.

As the obituary in the New York Times acknowledged in somewhat understated language, “Some listeners found [Carter’s] music cerebral, elitist and devoid of emotion. Even some who respected Mr. Carter’s erudition and the detail inherent in his compositional method were unmoved by his music.” Carter’s long life makes his career in many ways emblematic of the trajectory of music, or significant portions of it, in the decades since the end of the Second World War. He was a leading figure in both the US and Europe. To more fully understand his music and musical legacy, it is necessary to look at them not primarily as the products of his own overly “cerebral” ideas, but as part of a definite historical trend. And the trend of which he was a prominent representative must be seen as the outcome of broader social and historical forces.

A key to understanding Carter’s development can perhaps be found in his comment cited in a number of the obituaries. It makes clear that the composer decided not so much to challenge his audience as ignore it. “As a young man, I harbored the populist idea of writing for the public,” he declared. “I learned the public didn’t care. So I decided to write for myself. Since then, people have gotten interested.”

In fact, while Carter did attract wide interest in academic musical circles, he did not, as noted above, connect with a broader audience. How is this relationship connected to the broader questions of the nature of the period in which he lives? What did Carter’s decision “to write for myself” have to do with the circumstances in which he matured and set out on a musical career? Carter became an institution, and many younger musicians asked him to write pieces specifically for them. He twice won the Pulitzer Prize for music, taught at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the Juilliard School and elsewhere.