The greatest string quartets ever composed by an American...

That is how I regard the five string quartets written by the amazing Elliott Carter (b. 1908, and now at 99 still composing and going strong!). Pierre Boulez has once said that Elliott Carter is the only American composer of importance and I have to agree with that statement. Carter is the greatest and most original of all American composers. His five string quartets - beyond doubt the most important set of string quartets after Bartok - are all masterpieces showing an astonishing range of depth, power and invention. Each of his string quartets is highly original, written in his characteristic, uncompromisingly modernist and dissonant musical language. My favorite is No.3, an immensely complex, intellectual and exciting composition (which deservedly won a Pulitzer Prize), and in my opinion, the most original and innovative string quartet ever written by an American.

Thank God there are still original composers writing intelligent music like Carter out there (other interesting composers include Milton Babbitt and Charles Wuorinen) in the American contemporary music scene which is mainly dominated by conservatism, mediocrity, regression to neo-styles and an amazing lack of original ideas (think of Philip Glass, John Adams, John Corigiliano, John Harbison, Aaron Jay Kernis, Joan Tower, and so on).

Are there more people here who are familiar with Carter's string quartets, if so, what do you think of them, which one is your favorite?

Wow, don't hold back your criticism. Please, feel free to dump on people all you want.

I happen to be of the opinion that Carter is a hack.

And an endorsement by Boulez is FAR from being particularly meaningful... this from the man who once said "avant moi, il n'y avait pas de musique".

Why exactly is "uncompromisingly modernist and dissonant musical language" an asset? Thankfully, not everyone sees things the way you do.

As for your criticism of "conservatism, mediocrity, regression to neo-styles and an amazing lack of original ideas", I think you're wrong. I see no reason to support my opinion, as you do not support yours either.

One could just as easily say that Carter and his ilk are purveyors of a "new conservatism, mired in a pass

And here is a question that needs to be asked:

Why is it that modernists feel the absolute need to trivialize and insult anything that does not fit their "modern vision" of art?

The modernists get upset when people complain that "contemporary music is nothing but noise". Yet the audience has a valid point to make. Music is about communication.

If you are capable of of treating fellow composers in the manner demonstrated above, then why should anyone from the audience treat YOU with any more respect or civility?

I think the largest fault in this entire debate modernism vs (for lack of a better term) conservatism lies with the modernists, who repeatedly fall back on insults and demeaning comments to anyone not in their camp.

I know countless "musical conservatives" who still hold the highest regard for many modernists.

Isn't it strange that the same courtesy cannot be extended in the inverse direction?

In the little private universe of the Carters and Boulezes of this world, there is only room for themselves. Far be it from them to accept that there is room for anyone with musical ideas different from their own!

To the modernists who denigrate anything not falling into their particular definition of "modern music", I say shame on you, shame on your for your intolerance, shame on your for your arrogance and narrow-mindedness.

There is room for healthy debate on the lines that define modern music and "historicist" practice.

However, if the modernists insist that the only valid line is the one THEY themselves have drawn, then there is no debate.

It is like talking to a brick wall.

Thank God there are still original composers writing intelligent music like Carter out there...in the American contemporary music scene which is mainly dominated by conservatism, mediocrity, regression to neo-styles and an amazing lack of original ideas.

to gianluca:

From my perspective, there is so much enjoyable music composed in the 20th century, not just string quartets or by Americans, in a wide variety of styles, that it really isn't useful to denigrate an entire group of composers simply because you don't care for them. Unless you had particular criticism for them, I usually find it best to just accept that you don't care for a particular composer or style and MOVE ON. Who are you to say that any one composer is better than another?

When I hear blatant expressions of how a composer is sooooooo great and how other composers are trash I can't help but roll my eyes, think "that's nice...", and go read something else.

*applauds QCC*

So....what are some good string quartets to check out? I'm actually not hip to too many good 'modern' works for string quartet. I did like Ruth Crawford's ... :whistling:

Somehow you need to stop insulting and bashing everything in your way, except what happens to appeal to you, you know... Then again huge egoism and amazing amounts of self confident, along with complete rudeness have helped some composers and musicians... Others very recently dead, others almost dead and French.

And btw, of course I'm European, but why the complete US centered post in the first place? Only America makes string quartets? Or maybe you only listen to US string quartets! :D I mean:

and in my opinion, the most original and innovative string quartet ever written by an American.

Well, my favorite string quartets of all time are Beethoven's last few, but I'd probably get accused of being old fashioned.

I agree, Beethoven before his grand last symphony and soon after devoted his time to string quartets, some of my favorites are in this group.

Ravel's String Quartets are amazing, just too good to be true :)

Before the OP gets lambasted for the wrong reason, he is NOT being "americanocentric".

His intent was not to point to the quartets of Carter as being greater than european quartets... he is saying they are the ONLY American quartets that are worthy of our praise.

Where I believe he overstepped the bounds of decency, however, is when he pointelessly attacked OTHER American composers in a failed attempt to bolster his opinion on Carter's quartets.

If you want to lambast him, do so for the RIGHT reason.

Thing is that being Greek in the UK makes me think a bit different. I can't see in the first place why to "group" composers as Americans, etc (I would do the same if someone came and said the "best" European, etc...)

Qccowboy, your last message was quite an apt one. Indeed, what I meant to say was that within the American contemporary music scene, Carter

Gianluca... you obviously completely misunderstood what I was saying.

You take offence at my comments regarding Carter, yet you yourself have no qualms about belittling other very fine composers?

Didn't you get it?

I was just repeating everything YOU said, but applying it to your "idol".

Your entire post was offensive, because you chose to, instead of simply praising Carter, do EXACTLY what it is Carter himself has done in the past - belittle those who are not "like him".

had you come here and posted that you love teh Carter quartets, and you thought they were works worth getting to know, there would have been no commotion. There would have been no negative reaction.

Instead you come here and start by praising one composer, but to bolster your stance you felt the need to put down other very fine composers.

I happen to think Corigliano is a very fine composer. One worth getting to know, both as a person and as a musician. I've met John Corigliano, and I can tell you that I found your gratuitous attack on him extremely offensive.

THAT is what flew right over your head. You are completely blind to how your stupid attacks on other composers put you in a VERY bad light.

Put it this way, if you want to get anywhere in life, don't be an donkey. You can't build one person up by putting another down.

However, Qccowboy, I strongly disagree with most things you said in your first two posts. The way you refer to Carter and his music – pretentious wannabe, mediocrity of mathematical complacency, lack of MUSICAL ideas, etc. - seems to me like the typical response of someone who doesn’t understand Elliott Carter’s music.

This is where your arguments always seem to fall down: you have a tendency to use "opinion" and "fact" interchangeably to favour your own viewpoint.

You hold the opinion that composers such as Glass and Adams are an example of "conservatism, mediocrity, regression to neo-styles and an amazing lack of original ideas". This is your opinion, based on your subjective outlook. It is a negative spin on these composers' outputs. Qccowboy/Michel holds the opposite opinion, based on his own subjective outlook and constituting a more positive spin. Yet, you consider your opinion "fact", and his merely "opinion" (not to mention "wrong").

My own opinion is that regression and conservatism are not necessarily bad things! I think a lot of the time, people like yourself who are stuck in the "avant-garde" mode of thinking ignore the fact that a lot of very strong, highly effective musical principles have come about during Western art music's (and indeed all music's) development. Utilising these principles is not necessarily a "bad" thing, because they work well, no? I'm not only speaking on a technical level, but on an emotional level as well. Carter has stated that he does not care about the emotional qualities of his music. This is something I can't really relate to. However, he has also stated that he believes there is some validity in composers writing for an audience, not for themselves.

As someone who considers John Adams (along with other minimalists like Reich and, to a much lesser extent, Glass) one of his musical heroes, I find this distinction a little hard to swallow, since I also consider myself an "audience member". This means that in writing for myself, I'm also writing for a semi-large audience. If I were a much better composer, and I continued to write in the same vein I'm writing in at the moment, my music would probably have quite a broad appeal. I can't really help this. Neither can Carter help writing to accommodate people like you. It just so happens that most people tend to view music on a much less academic level than Carter, so he inextricably writes for a smaller audience. (By that, I mean his potential audience appeal is smaller than Adams', for example, not that he is out to write for an audience)

For the record, I find Carter's music abrasive, but extremely well-crafted. I derive listening pleasure from the skill of construction - I'm not able to get "lost" in his music in the same way I can get lost in Adams' Harmonielehre. I view Thomas Ad

Kaboom!

Solid post Mike. :thumbsup:

You know what? Sometimes those posts, which we read with all the time in our hands, and a beer by our side, have a tendency to get overanalysed. While I certainly agree with Michel/QCC and Mike, I also think that under a pub environement (for example), or in my house for dinner, or whatever "unofficial" setting, things would be different. I mean it's one thing posting your detest to a few composers, but in the speed of the discussion it wouldn't be so weird to hear someone go "Bliah... I really don't like Malher..." or something to that end. It just comes naturally, doesn't it?

So why do I think an uncompromisingly modernist idiom such as Carter

You know what? Sometimes those posts, which we read with all the time in our hands, and a beer by our side, have a tendency to get overanalysed. While I certainly agree with Michel/QCC and Mike, I also think that under a pub environement (for example), or in my house for dinner, or whatever "unofficial" setting, things would be different. I mean it's one thing posting your detest to a few composers, but in the speed of the discussion it wouldn't be so weird to hear someone go "Bliah... I really don't like Malher..." or something to that end. It just comes naturally, doesn't it?

Hehe, it all comes out at the pub! :D

If gianluca was sitting at my dinner table and suddenly came out with his diatribe in the opening post of this thread, I certainly wouldn't pass the sprouts. ;) (Or maybe I would, since a lot of people dislike them...)

I think the difference in real-life conversations is that each point is divulged individually, in a fairly unelaborate form, and is then responded to pretty much immediately by the other person. There's less scope for hearing one thing after the other that you disagree with. That's probably the problem with reading these mini-essays.

That, and the fact that I'm pretty sure people hold back less on here than they might do in real life, for the simple reason of anonymity...

Qcc, I am not belittling composers who are not "like Carter" per se, I am simply being very critical of those neo-tonal composers currently dominating the American contemporary music landscape. Too bad if you take my criticism as offensive, but I just state openly what I think about their music- a newspaper critic would do the same.

Yes, Nikolas, if your inner voice really tells you to write music in a conservative neo-romantic style, if you really feel that that is the music you need to write and this is not motivated by what the audience wants to hear, then of course you have to write in that neo-romantic style (although personally I don't see the point of reverting to a style of the past, since history never goes backwards). However, what is often the case is that a composer reverts to a more accessible, tonal musical idiom at the expense of a more challenging and artistically motivated idiom, in order to reach the public. That is not a good attitude.

Elliott Carter himself has explained why he thinks it's such a bad thing to be too much concerned with reaching the audience. Let me post a few quotes of his on this matter:

"[Audiences] were - and still are - in the position I was in as a little boy, when it comes to modern music - they aren't able to distinguish very much of it; they just know new music doesn't sound very much like Brahms, and that's about all as far as I can see."

"The small public that we had [50 years ago] we felt were very musically literate, and repetition was something that was not a very interesting thing to do. Now, the public apparently likes to hear the same thing over and over again because they can't understand it until they've heard it 10 times (referring to the music of Glass and Reich). [...] It's a way of destroying intelligence"

"As a serious composer, one has to write for a kind of intelligent and knowledgeable listener one seldom comes across in any number."

"We [modern composers] are always condemned as being elitist in our field, but the entire repertory of classical music was written for an elite. The Beethoven symphonies were not written for the general public of Vienna."

Gianluca, you're in no way interested in generating discussion. You just need to belittle others and agrandize yourself.

You reject anything that is not what YOU think is worthy, and then accuse others of being intolerant of your opinions.

You've actually amply demonstrated this in a number of posts now.

I have no interest in discussing with you. It's exactly like talking to a robot that blindly repeats the dogma with which it's been programmed.

You think of tonality as "going backwards". I disagree wtih you. Actually, I think you're completely wrong about it. As a matter of fact, I think you're so wrong that I'd suggest you find another line of work than music.

You quote Carter. Well, that's just quoting more of the same blinkered, close-minded bullsh** that got the world of music into trouble in the first place.

Music is meant to be listened to and felt, it isn't meant to be analysed. If the only way to appreciate a piece of music is to be one of the "intellectual elite" capable of analysing its mathematical intricacies, then that music has FAILED miserably.

I am capable of riding a motorcycle and hitting a home-run.. but neither of those makes me a composer. Being a glorified adding machine won't make you a composer either.

And the composers you dismissed out of hand are FAR greater musicians and artists than Carter ever was. He's a glorified construction worker. A mathematician with delusions of artistic grandeure.

And the worst part is, people like him, and like YOU, are trying to IMPOSE their mean, narrow, limited vision on everyone else, and not only viciously trying to convince the establishment that THEIR vision is the only valid one, but ALSO trying to tear down anything anyone else is doing at the same time. How sad. How pathetic. How small-minded.

Well, guess what?

You're wrong.

Carter is dead wrong about audiences. He's just an idiot who's forgotten there's an exit to that ivory tower he lives in, all alone. Let him write "music" for himself. But do NOT come in here telling us that THAT is the only way to go. And by the way, Carter obviously doesn't know his musical history, nor has he read any of Beethoven's writings, now has he. He's just demonstrating that he's spent WAY too much time in that tower of his and has completely lost touch with reality. He's so completely off base with that beethoven comment that it's really pathetic.

And before you accuse me of rejecting advancement, I DON'T reject it. I just know that it's not the ONLY thing there is.

Wow...

2 small comments. We have to assume that composers (certainly composers of stature) want to create beautiful music, however they may choose to do it. Carter won 2 Pulitzer prizes... often awarded for some pretty conservative music!

He is a genuine composer. Had he begun by writing jarringly atonal music in his childhood, we might suspect him. But he went through a development, an expansion of his concept of beauty, no different than Beethoven, or more strikingly, Schoenberg. Could the composer of Verklaerte Nacht suddenly decide that beauty of sound does not matter? Could the composer of Carter's First Symphony? Of course not. To dislike the music of this or that composer is natural, but to question the motives of a true composer is not worthwhile.

We need not question a composer's goal... to produce beauty for whoever can receive it. I well remember an early moment of illumination experienced through Carter's music. I was listening to his Piano Concerto and thought, "You know, this is not some big bad boy writing 'difficult' music... it's just beautiful sounds."

As for great composers not writing for the public, I would say that is not at all true. Bach wrote all his vocal music for the public, while not compromising his genius. Mozart wrote some of his greatest concertos for the public, so much so that when he deviated from this, he pointed it out in letters, saying that he wrote for "connoisseurs".

Of course, many composers wrote differently for the (ignorant) public (think early 19th century England)... generally their worst music!

Yes, Nikolas, if your inner voice really tells you to write music in a conservative neo-romantic style, if you really feel that that is the music you need to write and this is not motivated by what the audience wants to hear, then of course you have to write in that neo-romantic style (although personally I don't see the point of reverting to a style of the past, since history never goes backwards). However, what is often the case is that a composer reverts to a more accessible, tonal musical idiom at the expense of a more challenging and artistically motivated idiom, in order to reach the public. That is not a good attitude.

history does not go backwards

You don't know where you're going, if you don't know where you've been.

You don't know where you're going, if you don't know where you've been.

and you can't build on the past if you constantly remove (deny) the foundation.

The question is not whether or not you build on the past. The question is how you build on the past. Every well-informed composer builds on the past, as surely as today builds on yesterday.