Words matter. These are the best Elliott Carter Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Right at the end of the war I wrote a piano sonata, which was written at a time when Sam Barber used to come down here and we used to have lunch together in a very nice old hotel that’s now not there.
Almost every one of my various zero numbered birthdays has had a big concert in London and often in Paris.
When I was in Paris, all of the German refugees began to flow in and it was a very sad time.
I mean the public likes it more in Europe than they do here because the state supported organizations have felt that playing contemporary music was part of the education of the public.
The Quartets have been a major part of my work.
Yes, I get a report from BMI about the frequency of performances, and it is very surprising. They played one of my most advanced pieces, and one of my most unusual ones on the radio.
Well when I was young, when I was very young, when I was a little boy I don’t remember the music I heard, but there was an article in the Brooklyn Daily written by my Aunt about how I could choose phonograph records.
I’ve known those pieces ever since I was about 16 or 17; I also at that time was taken to meet Charles Ives whom I got to know fairly well. He was the one who wrote a recommendation for me to get into college.
That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.
An auditory scenario for the players to act out with their instruments.
Aaron Copland was a man that had a very specific point of view about what music should be which was that, he felt that new music should have the composer should show a personality in his music.
It was only later on that I became more interested in older music.
Then, when the Depression came, all of this changed completely. Since that time, the entire public is of a very different sort and there was not so much support for contemporary music in a direct way.
Well I tried to, but I could never write anything that I liked or was worthwhile. I threw it all out and realized that I had to make a serious study- that my tastes were far more advanced than my abilities.
