Elliott Carter comes to Aldeburgh

The Aldeburgh Festival joins in the Elliott Carter centenary celebrations with a series of inventively-programmed concerts and a visit from the composer himself.

Mosaic (2004) is tucked away in a pre-concert performance on June 20th, as a sort of prelude to one of the evening’s- if not the Festival’s - main events, the world premiere of Carter’s On Conversing with Paradise. In his tenth decade Carter often draws upon his rich store of memories to kindle ideas for new compositions. Mosaic recalls Carter’s old friend Carlos Salzedo (1885-1961), the French-American harpist, pianist and composer who had been active in Edgard Varèse’s International Composers’ Guild, and whom Carter had known in the 1930s. Scored for a chamber ensemble of winds, strings and harp, Mosaic also pays homage to Salzedo’s exploration of advanced playing techniques which helped to bring the harp into the world of twentieth century music. Also on the bill of this pre-concert performance is a new work by the young Canadian composer now living in London, Christopher Mayo, and a short piece by Oliver Knussen.

Louis Lortie is the soloist in the ferociously difficult Night Fantasies (1978-80) on June 23rd. Although Carter has composed a number of works with prominent piano parts, this was his first piece for the solo instrument since the Sonata some thirty years earlier. Night Fantasies was commissioned by four pianists – Paul Jacobs (who organised the project), Gilbert Kalish, Ursula Oppens and Charles Rosen – all experienced performers of Carter’s work. Identifying specific passages that might have been composed with the playing styles and personalities of each of the four in mind has become something of a musicological parlour game. More significant than any hidden code, however, is the sheer variety of the writing in this piece. David Schiff, who was studying with Carter at the time, explains, “Quite early in the course of composing the work he told me that he had already written fifty different kinds of piano music, and was now looking for ways to bring them together.”

Tamara Stefanovich plays two Carter miniatures for solo piano, in a concert scheduled during the afternoon of June 20th in the beautiful setting of Blytheburgh Church. The evening before George Benjamin will conduct the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the premiere of his own Duet for piano and orchestra, alongside Carter’s Three Occasions (1986-89). Although Carter generally conceived his works as unified wholes, these pieces only received their present title post facto. The third piece, Anniversary, was dedicated to his wife, Helen, in honour of their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1989. Three Occasions was premiered by this same orchestra under Oliver Knussen in London’s Royal Festival Hall twenty years ago.

Carter’s attendance will make a unique occasion of the world premiere of his new song cycle, a setting of poems by Ezra Pound. The 20-minute work was commissioned by the Aldeburgh Festival and features baritone Leigh Melrose and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group conducted by Knussen. Carter sets parts of two of Pound's Cantos, where he despairs of not having written the perfect poem, which to him was paradise. The title On Conversing with Paradise is a quote from William Blake that Pound considered as a title for an early book of his own poems.

Elliott Carter’s centenary year of 2008 brought over 700 performances, according to Boosey & Hawkes. As these Aldeburgh concerts demonstrate, the celebrations continue alongside Carter’s own composition schedule. Figment V for marimba is premiered by Simon Boyar in New York on 2 May and the completed Poems of Louis Zukofsky for soprano and clarinet receives its first performance by Lucy Shelton and Stanley Drucker at the Tanglewood Festival on 9 August. The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 2009/10 season includes the US premiere of the Flute Concerto on 4 February 2010 with soloist Elizabeth Rowe conducted by James Levine, as well as performances of Dialogues with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, artistic director of this Aldeburgh Festival.

Descriptions of Carter’s works abridged largely from Elliott Carter: A Centennial Portrait in Letters and Documents by Felix Meyer and Anne C Shreffler, published by the Boydell Press in association with the Paul Sacher Foundation, except for On Conversing with Paradise which was excerpted from the Boosey & Hawkes website. Some tickets remain for the Aldeburgh Festival and may be purchased online via their website. Festivalgoers may also be interested in The New Aldeburgh Anthology, in which an impressive collection of writers examine the history of the Festival and its connection to Benjamin Britten and his circle, as well as aspects of the Suffolk countryside and its history. Both of these books are available from good booksellers and from the new visitors’ centre at Snape Maltings, venue for most of the Festival.

Starbucks and Old Vienna

The latest edition of Boosey and Hawkes’ trade newsletter, Quarternotes, contains a fascinating short interview with Viennese composer, Kurt Schwertsik. Asked why he favours the fleeting, everyday ‘music in the air,’ Schwertsik replies:

When I was searching for a basic strategy as an artist, John Cage was very important to me. He described how you could listen to everyday sounds – in the street, in nature, in conversations. I agree with Cage that we are people that live in the air…At Darmstadt I liked his Zen-inspired spiritual view…he reinvigorated my interest in the Dada movement.

Schwertsik is also one of the interviewees in Peter Dickinson’s acclaimed, CageTalk. There he describes his encounters with Cage at Darmstadt more fully:

He gave three lectures, including the “Lecture on Nothing” where he has those beautiful pauses. And he gave another lecture during which he lit cigarettes. Each one was somehow handled differently – smoked once, twice, not at all, or smoked to the butt.

Schwertsik goes on to describe Cage’s use of the I Ching in composing Music for Piano:

People were very upset. I remember Ligeti asking him if he would use chance operations and then select something that pleased him. He mentioned Kurt Schwitters, who used to look at the landscape through a little frame and then say, “Oh look, this is typical Schwitters!” He thought Cage might have been involved in an objet trouvé venture, which was not true – obviously.

Schwertsik was ostracized by Darmstadt as, under Cage's influence, he moved towards Dada:

I believe the function of art is to denounce seriousness. It should be fun. There’s a halo of awe around modern music. You achieve more if you’re not serious.

Hence, perhaps, the title of his 2007 composition for trumpet and orchestra, Divertimento Macchiato. “After the premiere,” he explains in Quarternotes, “my wife Christa suggested adding Macchiato to the title and this seemed perfect to me, as it captured an ironic image of modern so-called ‘designer coffee’ – more Starbucks than Old Vienna.”

Perhaps too it is fittingly Schwertsikian that he is incorrectly described as deceased in the second edition of Grove.

Divertimento Macchiato can be heard as part of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s Scottish tour in April 2009, and his latest work, a ballet entitled Kafka Amerika, will be premiered in Linz in the autumn. CageTalk: Dialogues with and about John Cage, edited by Peter Dickinson, is available from all good booksellers.