Carter in the Seventies

In the last ten years Elliott Carter has completed as many works as he had in the previous two decades combined. The increased rate of composition—A Symphony of Three Orchestras was written in six months—has been matched by even greater formal and poetic daring. Indeed the works from the Third Quartet onward are so adventurous in conception that there is little in the way of traditional musical terminology that can be used to describe their forms, harmonies, or even, as in the case of the most recent work, Syringa, their genre. And while Carter's continued exploration of abstract discourse in the Third Quartet, Duo and Brass Quintet was to be expected, the preoccupation with the voice and poetic subjects in the next three works seemed, at first, a surprising development. Carter turned to song composition in 1975 with A Mirror on Which to Dwell, a cycle of six poems by Elizabeth Bishop dedicated to the artists who gave its first performance 24 February, 1976: Susan Davenny Wyner, soprano, and Speculum Musicae. By the end of 1976 he completed A Symphony of Three Orchestras, a purely instrumental work stemming from the various projects for a choral setting of Hart Crane's ‘The Bridge’ that Carter had planned since the 1930's. A Symphony was premièred by Pierre Boulez and the New York Philharmonic, to whom it is dedicated, on 17 February 1977. On 10 December last, the eve of Carter's 70th birthday, Syringa was given its première by Jan de Gaetani (mezzo-soprano), Thomas Paul (bass) and Speculum Musicae, conducted by Harvey Sollberger. Dedicated to Sir William and Lady Glock, this work superimposes John Ashbery's retelling of the Orpheus legend, ‘Syringa’, sung by the mezzo, upon fragments of classical Greek texts sung by the bass. It might be termed a polytextual motet, a cantata, a chamber opera, or a vocal double concerto.