Juilliard String Quartet rehearses Carter with Carter

[miker2001]

I wonder if it is all scripted, the dialogue and the music parts.

Seriously, Elliott Carter's mind is as sharp as a tack. How is it possible?

[xatzidakis]

100 y old and with a so powerfull mind!

[gdionne1000]

This video is such a gift. Think of the value of it fifty or a hundred years from now.

[ebkurd]

Fuck this is awesome! Thanks!

[theviolinist47]

I may not "understand" his music. but i still think that this music is a work of art and still deserves respect and appreciation. I think its a cool peice hearing instruments pushed to their limits.

[hikarikage01]

Tonality sprang from the overtone series, not something that was "force-fed" to all children. Even more so, Schoenberg was incorrect in the idea of the end of tonality, as if somehow around the world, everyone was screaming that "tonality" had come to an end. What really came to an end was a particular style of music, not tonality itself. There really isn't something atonal, since the overtone series doesn't just stop because someone claims it to stop.

[cincijazzdrummer]

@hikarikage01 Right on buddy right on. Just because the rest of the spectrum has not been more thoroughly studied enough to be more codefied and taught in theory doesn't make it more or less music. Just think if we would have stopped at the tri tone just because we thought it sounded demonic

[nrjkdogg]

I think listening to music is exactly the same as listening to a foreign language. It might sound dissonant and strange at first, but anyone who has ever lived in a foreign country is immersed in the language and eventually learns the complexities and nuances of the language.Music is the exact same way. The fact that ALL children are force fed tonality from and before birth makes it difficult for modern music to be appreciated on a mass scale. But education and liberalism have historically won.

[Danielpi]

I am sympathetic to your comments, because I love Carter's quartets (maybe the 5th the least), and because there have been so many stupid comments written here about intellect vs. emotion (whatever the hell that means). Still, I am not sure that atonal music (with special emphasis on 12-tone music) is something that we can ever "learn" like a language intuitively. Part of the point seems to be to mathematically confound our attempts to put pitches into neat groupings from the overtone series.

[sarahxboxbeara]

This is... scary? I'm a huge fan of the classical genre and such.. ..but this is not my taste. It doesn't sound like anything really to me.. just a bunch of messing around. It sounds like they're playing it drastically wrong even though it's probably right.

[Defiant5555]

Nice quote, you must also read The Week.

[nyquillll]

The people who claim Carter ruined classical music along with Boulez, Xenakis, etc. are the same as those who said Coltrane ruined jazz.

Jonathan Swift wrote, "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

[IFStravinsky]

@nyquillll Hear hear!

[coolguy9610]

@nyquillll I like Carter's cello sonata, and I respect him, but I find his music afterwords to be overwhelming and almost impenetrable. Could you, or somebody else, explain his music to me in a way that a person who isn't already convinced could understand? I've read quite a few books on music and him, but none are able to help me appreciate it. Could you do so? (I love Schoenberg Ades Berg and Ives, so I've nothing against dissonance, tho I personally love Adams' Nixon in China best of all.)

[Garoosh99]

@coolguy9610

Sure, I'll explain. Its organized chaos.Like synchornous hippopotamus poo splattering against stagnant waters in the Congo.

[GreggaryPeccary]

Can someone tell me what quadruple stops are?

[smmhsc12]

That are chords on string instrument that constist of 4 notes, so one on each string.

[ttoe]

When you watch someone else speak to the performers that way it can feel a bit harsh. However, as a composer, to get the piece to sound exactly as you imagined you have to be a little pushy at times.

I always feel bad about how I treat performers, but what has to be done has to be done.

[NewMusicXX]

Thanks - I enjoyed this very much! Very enlightening. Carter is one of the great ones.

[iambananananananana]

what an ugly noisy mess

[arvidtom]

I agree, even though I passionately love music (including a lot of 20th century classical music), Carter's music sounds like an ugly noisy mess to my ears. It may be highly interesting intellectually, but emotionally it is very, very limited with its grey dissonant idiom. These are the kind of composers who have pushed contemporary classical music into a cultural ghetto.

[tragictravisty]

agreed, its moving to quickly. key changes every two seconds are not moving musically. if he would slow down and define each key change, it would be more moving. it would be interesting to slow down his music, and play inbetween the mess of changes and cromaticism(?). i dont get atonal music.

[TheBlackPage1]

I don't intend this as patronizing, but you even though you don't like this music, you should respect it and the opinions of people who can hear its greatness. And, uhm, classical music has been in a cultural ghetto ever since popular idioms like Jazz and Rock came about. Don't blame it on the work of one composer like Carter, because the same would have happened had everyone still composed like Stravinsky.

[arvidtom]

In fact I do not just blame Carter, I blame the whole bunch of high-modernist composers (Boulez, Stockhausen, Xenakis, etc.) for this situation.

I respect Carter for writing such meticulously crafted music, but I stick to my opinion that despite its intellectual complexity this music has very little to say EMOTIONALLY. It has an uniformly grey chromaticism that only a handful of modern music affectionados seem to enjoy.

Oh and BTW, I HAVE given it a chance with an open mind.

[chaimgogol]

And suppose I tell you that many find Carter's music as emotionally satisfying as the best music written at any time in history? You can either claim that we are lying, consider your hearing of the music deficient some way, or simply agree to disagree. If you think it is worthwhile to try to figure out what others are excited about, try listening to the Boston Concerto a few times. Give it a chance to become familiar without being concerned about whether you "like it" or not.

[TheBlackPage1]

I don't buy the "if only a small number of people like it, it must not be good" argument. A small number of people challenged the supposed "great minds" who believed the earth was flat. Oh and "btw", I only like music if I respond to it emotionally. Ultimately, if you haven't a clue about what he does, don't pretend otherwise. It's very disrespectful to a man who's spent a lifetime devoted to music.

[arvidtom]

Read more carefully what I said. I didn't say "if only few ppl like it, it can't be good". I said: it is music of a very limited emotional scope, therefore, only a few will appreciate it.

I admit the intellectual complexity of Carter's music is astonishing. The problem is that he puts so much complexity in it (most of which can't be perceived at all) that it becomes meaningless noise (except to the tiny few who claim to "understand" his music).

[arvidtom]

Well, your comments express the typical pretentious snob's reaction to people criticizing such pompous modernism as Carter's.

I know enough about Carter's music to have a well-informed opinion about it; I've even studied some of his scores.

In fact, the music I love most is music that offers both intellectual challenge AND a rich emotional experience. To me, Carter's

music simply lacks the latter.

[arvidtom]

I may assume that those who read my comments are intelligent enough to separate opinion from fact.

Like I said, I do respect Carter for what he did, but I'm not going to consider him a 'great' composer, because in my opinion he simply isn't.

I'm sure Stravinsky will be remembered in history as a far greater composer than Carter.

[arvidtom]

You completely misunderstood my last comment. What I was saying, I assume people here are smart enough to separate opinion from fact so I don't see the need to word my views differently.

I know Stravinsky praised that piece by Carter. So what? He also loved early Boulez (which I think is boring crap) while bashing the music of Messiaen (who IMO was a genius), so why would his particular opinion make me want to revise my view on Carter?

[TheBlackPage1]

No, no, I'm just saying that these composers both had a very high level of respect for each other. Well, sorry for the countless misunderstandings, but ultimately I just feel that Carter's music is worth way more than you think. Works like Tempo e Tempi (especially the last movement) are among the most beautiful, emotional works I've heard, and far from cold, calculated and complex.

[arvidtom]

I'm still not sure how such uniformly dissonant and chromatic music can be very beautiful or emotional, but ok, you've made your point. Let's agree to disagree on this.

[buddyro57]

This is the oldest, stalest argument in the world. As for Carter's abilities as a composer,anyone with any knowledge of music at all, having the intellectual integrity to do a little background research on the composer before making a pronouncement, knows that Carter's style as morphed throughout 85 years,and that he has written in a multitude of styles, from Coplandesque to ultra-rational, and back to a NeoRomantic style. So if you don't like it, don't listen to it, go find something you like.

[arvidtom]

What argument are you referring to?

Also, what you say is not correct, actually. Carter's basic musical language has remained constant since his First String Quartet. He never went back to a neoromantic style. True, his music has become a bit more lyrical and transparent in recent years, but it's definitely not neoromantic - it's still highly dissonant, modernist music.

[chazums1898]

good point

[plutoohno]

wheres the rest of this tape?