Elliott Carter - String Quartet No. 1 (1/4)

I was very surprised to not find this on youtube. Definitely a masterpiece, and one of my favourites by Carter. The opening in particular is really amazing.

I haven't divided the piece up into movements properly - sorry - since the recording I have is in three tracks, each over 10 minutes, when in fact there are four movements.

Wikipedia: Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. (born December 11, 1908) is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music. His compositions, which have been performed all over the world, include orchestral and chamber music as well as solo instrumental and vocal works.

The First String Quartet by American composer Elliott Carter (1908-) was written during a year spent in the Arizona desert from 1950-51. To some extent, it can be said that this was his first major breakthrough work as a composer.
A primary compositional technique used in the quartet is the principle of metric modulation (temporal modulation)—one for which Carter was to become particularly renowned. Although he was not the first composer to use this device (such as Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments, (1920)) he was seemingly the first to develop such complex transformations. It is said that Carter assigned to tempo the structural role that earlier composers gave to tonality.
The quartet embeds four movements in three sections, all contained between two solo cadenzas acting as bookends at each end of the quartet. The two cadenzas—the first for cello and the concluding for first violin—frame the piece conceptually.

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• Elliott
• Carter
• String
• Quartet

[violadude0987]

Love this piece. Didnt understand it at all when I first listened to it. But repeated listening almost ALWAYS leads to better appreciation of a piece, unless the piece just sucks.

[justaddcorn]

a universe of rhythmic variation

[LesbianStraightGay]

@arondrusek Arditti Quartet

[arondrusek]

Who's playing in this recording?

[joebassplayer]

My favourite quartet of his I think. I've recently been listening to his 5th and find it a bit hard to listen to at times, but also very exciting and vital.

[LesbianStraightGay]

I'm sure this is arditti

[medanzig]

Tonight was my first hearing of his string quartets O_O whoa... Absolutely mind boggling music, beautiful.

[padleynj]

If you love Carter...you would appreciate the StringTrio of New York, CD, The River of Orion. I saw them recently and they managed to mix Carter's style with Bop and Bossa Nova.

[jhg12989]

This is my favorite Carter String Quartet although I love the 2nd and 3rd also, and the 4th and 5th...

[froob1928]

@jparky23 I think it's arditti, but I can't remember exactly (I have several recordings and I can never remember which one's which)