elliott carter, 1908-2012

Leonard Bernstein (l) and Elliott Carter at a rehearsal for the premiere of Carter's Concerto for Orchestra (1970)

As I'm sure most of you know, composer Elliott Carter passed away this past Monday at a very young 103. I've written more about Carter over the years than about any other subject, I can't begin to express what his music and his example have meant to me over the years, but I'm going to continue to try.

In the meantime, Phil Freeman has posted a lengthy excerpt from an article of mine that appeared in Burning Ambulance. Please give it and the rest of the site a read.

what stays with me: john cage

John Cage entered into silence twenty years ago today. Allan Kozinn of The New York Times has a fine appreciation here. My own take on 4'33" is here.

The picture above is from this excellent Cage resource.

On Babbitt

I never met Milton Babbitt, who died this past Saturday at 94, nor have I heard many of his works in concert,but his impact on my work was direct nonetheless.

Bill Hibbard, my teacher at Iowa, was a fan of Babbitt's music and had studied it extensively. When looking over a passage in a piece I was working on at the time (I don't remember what it was, what it was scored for, or even if I ever finished it), Dr. Hibbard seemed to sense that I was trying to do something with register (the high/low placement of notes in musical space) that I didn't have the experience or means of doing. Over the course of that lesson (which ran long) he decribed in extraordinary detail how Babbitt had dealt with registral issues in a few measure of Composition for Four Instruments (1948).

Part of the beauty of Hibbard's teaching was that he did not require or even expect me to use the specific techniques he or Babbitt or any other composer used. He wanted me to see how it's possible to use any aspect of sound to create expressive music. It's clear to me that he himself had learned that from his study of Babbitt's music.

And part of the beauty of Babbitt's music (and his writings and his work with young composers of many stylistic stripes), for this then-young composer anyway, was how it seemed to show that there are many paths to an individual musical voice.

*     *     *     *     *

Phil Freeman, proprietor of Burning Ambulance, asked me to respond to a quote from Babbitt's most notorious article. My response is here.

Amazing

It was a long time ago, and I remember very few of the details.

When I was an undergrad, I attended a recital by coloratura soprano Joan Sutherland. Among the details I don't remember is the repertoire, though if memory serves, it consisted of chansons and French arias. She was astonishing--the sound of her voice and what she was able to do with it was overwelming. She held a lsrge audience in the palm of her hand for the length of the evening. The spell wasn't broken (at least for me) until long after the performance had ended.

Ms Sutherland passed away on Sunday at 83.

Liberality of Spirit

The critic John Leonard died earlier this week, at 69, of lung cancer.

When I first started writing music criticism I read everything of his I could get my hands on, and eagerly awaited his appearances on CBS' Sunday Morning, where he usually reviewed television shows. He was a fine stylist--his long, looping sentences were characterized by Whitmanesque lists and elegant punctuation.

The title of this little post is taken from A. O. Scott's appreciation in yesterday's New York Times.

Mauricio Kagel

The Argentinian composer Mauricio Kagel, whose music exhibits a very Modern sense of serious play, has died in Germany at the age of 76.

Matthew Guerrieri writes about his former teacher here.

David Foster Wallace.

I don't know what to say.

Fortunately, Daniel Wolf does.

UPDATE: So does Darcy James Argue.

Robert Rauschenberg, 1925-2008

New York Times obituary here.

John Cage said that fear in life is the fear of change. If I may add to that: nothing can avoid changing. It’s the only thing you can count on. Because life doesn’t have any other possibility, everyone can be measured by his adaptability to change.

Henry Brant (1913-2008)

Composer Henry Brant, best known for his use of musical space, has died. Some tributes (I'll add more as they come in):

Kyle Gann

Daniel Wolf

Stockhausen and The End

Tom Service of The Guardian has compiled memories of the late Karlheinz Stockhausen from people associated with the composer in one way or another. The last line of the article is from a reminiscence of Barbican artistic director Graham Sheffield: In a way, his death marks the end of 20th-century music.

That struck me as having a lot of truth in it. Now I see that it struck Alex Ross more or less the same way:

The last line of the piece is absolutely right: the twentieth century, the epoch of vastly ambitious, at times megalomaniac musical conceptions, which really began with the late works of Wagner, is indeed over. But its echoes reverberate all around us. What next?*

What next, indeed. To that question I would add this: If Stockhausen's death signals the end of 20th century music, when did (or when will) the 21st century start?

*NOTE: What next? is the title of Elliott Carter's only opera, which ended a succesful run in New York Tuesday, the composer's 99th birthday.

Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra: Holiday Concert

Review, Tallahassee (FL) Democrat, 10 Dec 2007.

Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1928-2007

As most of you who read concert music blogs probably know by now, German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen has died. He was the first important lving composer whose music I got to know and love during my formative years. I'll have more to say about him later. For now, I leave it to Alex Ross, who gets it:

At his greatest, in works such as Gruppen, Kontakte, and Momente, Stockhausen released sounds of mind-opening and mind-bending power. Exerting an influence that extended from the recondite circles of the postwar avant-garde to the Beatles and Björk he was, for all his bewildering eccentricities, a giant of late-twentieth-century music.

Listening:

STOCKHAUSEN: Gruppen, Punkte. WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln/Peter Eötvös, Arturo Tamayo, Jacques Mercier, Wolfgang Lischke.

Luciano Pavarotti

The larger-than-life Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti has died at 71. The blogosphere is filling up with links and tributes:

A. C. Douglas

Alex Ross

Steve Smith

AllAboutOpera

La Cieca

Beverly Sills

The great soprano, administrator, and ambassador for the arts Beverly Sills has died. Here is a fine obituary by Anthony Tommasini:

In a conversation with a Times reporter in 2005, reflecting on her challenging life and triumphant career, Ms. Sills said, “Man plans and God laughs.” She added: “I have often said I’ve never considered myself a happy woman. How could I, with all that’s happened to me. But I’m a cheerful woman. Work kept me going.”