Elliott Carter
b.11 December 1908, New York City2000 MeredithHeuer.jpg "Elliott Carter Photo © Meredith Heuer")
Biography
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Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, first composer to receive the United States National Medal of Arts, one of the few composers ever awarded Germany's Ernst Von Siemens Music Prize, and in 1988 made "Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres" by the Government of France, Elliott Carter is internationally recognized as one of the leading American voices of the classical music tradition. He recently received the Prince Pierre Foundation Music Award, bestowed by the Principality of Monaco, and is one of only a handful of living composers elected to the Classical Music Hall of Fame.
First encouraged toward a musical career by his friend and mentor Charles Ives, Carter was recognized by the Pulitzer Prize Committee for the first time in 1960 for his groundbreaking String Quartet No. 2. Stravinsky hailed Carter’s Double Concerto for harpsichord, piano, and two chamber orchestras (1961) and Piano Concerto (1967), as "masterpieces." While he spent much of the 1960s working on just two works, the Piano Concerto and Concerto for Orchestra (1969), the breakthroughs he achieved in those pieces led to an artistic resurgence that gathered momentum in the decades that followed. Indeed, one of the extraordinary features of Carter’s career is his astonishing productivity and creative vitality as he embarks on his eleventh decade.
Of his creative output exceeding 130 works, Carter composed more than 40 pieces in the past decade alone. This astonishing late-career creative burst has resulted in a number of brief solo and chamber works, as well as major essays such as Asko Concerto (2000) for Holland’s ASKO Ensemble. Some chamber works include the playfully humorous Mosaic (2004), Two Thoughts About the Piano (2005-06), now widely toured by Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and In the Distances of Sleep (2006), for mezzo soprano and ensemble. Carter continues to show his mastery in larger forms as well, with major contributions such as What Next? (1998), a witty first opera premiered in both Berlin and New York City, Boston Concerto (2002), Three Illusions for Orchestra (2004), called by the Boston Globe “surprising, inevitable, and vividly orchestrated,” Horn Concerto (2006), and a piano concerto, Interventions (2008), which premiered on Carter's 100th birthday concert at Carnegie Hall with James Levine, Daniel Barenboim, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (December 11, 2008).
Carter's centenary celebrations continue this season with more than 600 performances of his works scheduled around the globe.
Elliott Carter is published by Boosey & Hawkes.
This biography can be reproduced free of charge in concert programmes with the following credit: Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes
