Spring 1999 Volume XXVIII, No. 2

Defining American Music by David Nicholls Post-Canonical Ellington by Mark Tucker Elliott Carter at 90+ by John F. Link Persona non grata: Frank Zappa's Orchestral Subculture by Arved Ashby The Eclectic World of Tom McDermott by Edward A. Berlin ISAM Matters Reviews Twentieth-Century Originals by Wayne Alpern Cage, Notation, and Theatre by Jon Erickson Country and Gospel Notes by Charles Wolfe ISAM Home

Elliott Carter at 90+ At the tender age of ninety Elliott Carter is now in the midst of the most productive period of his career. As if to make up for his relatively slow rate of production in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, Carter has written more than thirty-five new works since 1980 for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal combinations. This tremendous burst of creative activity has substantially enlarged the range of his accomplishments, adding both a host of miniatures (solos, duos, and trios under eight minutes in length) and the most ambitious works of his career, including the forty-five minute orchestral triptych Symphonia–Sum fluxae pretium spei. To cap off his first ninety years Carter has recently completed his first opera, What Next?, to a libretto by Paul Griffiths, which will premiere in Berlin this fall, and arrive in New York the following March. Clarity is one hallmark of Carter’s recent work. The contrasting layers of his music are more sharply defined than ever, and he has begun to notate the complex rhythmic patterns he has always used in ways that make them much easier for performers to execute, mainly by eliminating the most difficult beat divisions like quintuplets and septuplets from his large ensemble pieces. Carter also has moved away from the complex and often multi-layered formal plans he used in the large-scale works of the 1960s like the String Quartet No. 2 and the Double Concerto. The Violin Concerto, for example, is in the traditional three movements: fast, slow, fast; String Quartet No. 4 echoes a typical four-movement plan: Appassionato, Scherzando, Lento, Presto. In other works, Carter has gone in the opposite direction. In Night Fantasies and Partita, and many of the shorter pieces, there are few clear sectional divisions and form arises from the accumulation of an astonishing diversity of short fragments and passing moments. Here the model is the life of the mind, the velocity and uncanny juxtapositions that characterize human thought. The orchestra has featured prominently in Carter’s recent work. From the 1960s to the mid-1980s the majority of his large ensemble works were concertos. In the few purely orchestral works, like A Symphony of Three Orchestras and Penthode, the ensemble is divided into smaller groups that interact in the manner of chamber music, with mass effects reserved for climactic moments. Although he has continued to write concertos, Carter has returned to writing for undivided orchestra without soloist for the first time in more than twenty-five years. This is due in part to the nature of the commissions he has accepted, but it also reflects an approach that has emphasized cooperation over conflict in nearly all of his works since the mid-1980s. The large ensemble works of the 1960s were filled with violent clashes and unreconciled oppositions, such as an isolated piano struggling against a recalcitrant and bullying orchestra, or three opposed orchestras each following its own course. In the recent orchestral music, instruments are less likely to assert their individuality than to join together for a shared expressive purpose. Anniversary, the third of the Three Occasions, is a counterpoint of three extended melodies that move freely throughout the orchestra. Without ties to a particular instrument or section, they gain a kind of autonomy, and the orchestration is richer and more varied. Cooperation also has been a recurrent theme in Carter’s recent chamber music. In the latest string quartets the contrasting personalities of the instruments contribute to movements of a largely unified character. In the Fifth Quartet, for example, the ensemble fuses into a single onrushing stream in the Allegro scorrevole movement, and becomes a kind of super glass harmonica in the ethereal Adagio sereno, composed entirely of harmonics. In the amazing coda of String Quartet No. 4 the conflict between sound and silence is enacted by the ensemble as a whole. These works are a far cry from the earlier quartets, in which the conflict among instruments or instrumental groups is the central drama. The lucidity and vividness of Carter’s recent compositions, both large and small, have made them some of the most approachable and popular of his career. This is due in no small part to the quality of performances his music has received. We can be grateful that through the dedication of a small group of gifted performers and Carter enthusiasts, the pace of new recordings has kept up with his output. Partita, the first panel of the Symphonia triptych, is available on Teldec 4509-99596-2 featuring the Chicago Symphony under Barenboim, and the complete cycle has been recorded by Oliver Knussen with the BBC Symphony to be released this summer by Deutsche Grammophon. The same disc will feature clarinetist Michael Collins playing Carter’s new Clarinet Concerto, which has also been recorded by David Robertson and the Ensemble InterContemporain. The Violin Concerto and Three Occasions for Orchestra are available in incandescent performances by Ole Böhn and the London Sinfonietta, under Knussen (Virgin Classics VC 7 91503-2). Another excellent disc features the Ensemble InterContemporain, under Boulez, playing the Oboe Concerto (with Heinz Holliger as soloist), Penthode, A Mirror on Which to Dwell, and Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux (Erato 2292-45364-2). The chamber works are also amply represented. Among the highlights are recordings of the Quintet for Piano and Winds by a group led by Heinz Holliger (Philips 446 095-2), and the String Quartet No. 5 played by the Arditti Quartet (Auvidis Montaigne MO 782091), which also features a sampling of the smaller pieces of the 1980s and 90s and the classic Duo for Violin and Piano of 1974. Also of note are Lucy Shelton and John Constable’s recording of the song cycle Of Challenge and Of Love (Koch 3-7425-2-H1), to poems by John Hollander, and the Group for Contemporary Music’s recording of eight Carter compositions (Bridge BCD 9044). Carter’s ongoing creative whirlwind has been one of the great joys of American music at the end of the twentieth century. As we get set to enter the twenty-first, we wish Elliott Carter many happy returns, and many new journeys. –John F. Link William Paterson University