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Century mark: composer Elliott Carter turns 100
By RONALD BLUM,Associated Press AP - Saturday, December 13
NEW YORK - Elliott Carter haltingly climbed up a few steps with the help of a cane and walked onto Carnegie Hall's stage as the audience applauded.
Not one, but two famous conductors were there to greet him.
On a rare night, a composer was on hand to help an audience celebrate his 100th birthday.
Carter even had an urbane new composition ready, "Interventions," which was given its world premiere last week and was repeated Thursday night by James Levine, Daniel Barenboim and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The composer was presented a huge birthday cake, with musical notes on the first tier, piano keys on the second and third, and a sparkling candle on top. He poked a finger in the side to get a taste.
Born a day after Olivier Messiaen, who died in 1992, Carter is still going strong, composing 16 new works in the past two years. The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner is taking on new commissions. The history of his works at Carnegie stretches out for eight pages.
"I'm always proud of the ones I've just written," he said recently in the living room of his New York apartment.
He's surrounded by sheet music, written in pencil, and argues with his friend and assistant, Virgil Blackwell, over whether mistakes have been made in the copying.
"Such is the life of a composer," he said, laughing.
"As an old person, I get tired rather quickly. I wish I had more time to write than I do," he went on. "I write from let's say 9:30 to 11:30, and I go out for a walk, and eat lunch, have a nap, and then I probably sometimes work in the late afternoon. I can't work at night. I try to read, and I drop the book on the floor."
The grandson of a Civil War veteran and the son of a lace importer, Carter grew up in New York, went to school with the sons of former Romanov diplomats and was best friends with Eugene O'Neill's son.
In January 1924, he went to Carnegie Hall with a music teacher, Clifton Furness, and heard the New York premiere of Stravinsky's "The Right of Spring" played by the BSO and Pierre Monteux.
It was a life-changing experience.
"I thought it was the greatest thing I ever heard, and I wanted to do like that, too," Carter recalled. "Of course, half the audience walked out, which was even more pleasant to me. It seemed much more exciting than Beethoven and Brahms and the rest of them."
Furness introduced Carter to Charles Ives, who wrote a recommendation to Harvard, where Carter got his undergraduate degree. Carter's most acclaimed works didn't come until years later, when his second and third string quartets won Pulitzers in 1960 and 1973.
His music is unfailingly modern and increasingly playful. Thursday's premiere included a pair of brass and woodwind trios near Barenboim's piano.
"It's hard to characterize it because I've always written what I've wanted to write," Carter said. "I became a modernist practically from the cradle."
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