Animating Points and PointCollections in Silverlight

Animating Points and PointCollections in Silverlight 2009/01/Animating-Points-and-PointCollections-in-Silverlight.html Comments (0) January 5, 2009
New York, N.Y.

In an ancient blog entry I presented a XAML file that had 13 PointAnimation objects running in parallel to animate a square into a circle and back again.

The animations in that XAML file target the various properties of BezierSegment objects, and it converted very smoothly into Silverlight. Here's the SquaringTheCircle.zip source code (everything I did is in Page.xaml) and you can see it action here:

SquaringTheCircle.html

But I've also been wondering about the feasibility of doing more interesting vector animations in Silverlight. For example, almost two years ago I wrote an article for MSDN Magazine about extending the WPF animation classes to include interpolations between entire PointCollection objects. One example was a templated CheckBox that morphed between a vector "yes" and "no" when it was toggled.

I know that it's not possible to extend the Silverlight animation classes, but perhaps there are workarounds. Here's a feasibility study of a Silverlight text morph:

YesNoYesNoEtc.html

Later this week I'm going to try to clean this up, make it more generalized, use Silverlight animation rather than the CompositionTarget.Rendering event, and get to a point where I can put it into a CheckBox template, but you can see it basically works. Here's the source code. Everything I did is in Page.xaml and Page.xaml.cs.

Of course, once I start messing around with Silverlight PointCollection objects in code, it's going to be hard to know when to stop.

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:36:35 GMT Mind Your Freeze and Q’s 2009/01/Mind-Your-Freeze-and-Qs.html Comments (1) January 4, 2009
New York, N.Y.

Whenever the subject of performance in the Windows Presentation Foundation comes up, the issue of Freezables is likely to be mentioned. But regardless how much we think we know about the subject, it's still easy for experienced WPF programmers to get burned. I'll be describing something that happened to me recently that reinforced how much we need to pay diligent attention to objects of type Freezable.

Some background: The Freezable class derives from DependencyObject and adds extra layers of change notifications. A dependency property of type Freezable will fire a change notification whenever the object itself changes, of course, but also when any property or sub-property of the object changes, as long as those properties are also of type Freezable.

For example, suppose you have a class containing a dependency object of type PathGeometry. Your class will receive notifications whenever a different PathGeometry is assigned to that property, of course, but also when any component of that PathGeometry changes, for example, the Point1 property of a BezierSegment object that is a member of a Segments collection that belongs to a PathFigure object that is a member of the Figures collection that belongs to the PathGeometry. The PathGeometry, PathFigure, BezierSegment, PathFigureCollection, and PathSegmentCollection classes all derive from Freezable.

The WPF graphics system is filled with classes that derive from Freezable, and it is this sub-property notification feature of Freezable that allows WPF graphical objects to respond so well to animations.

However, this notification scheme has a cost, so whenever you have a Freezable object that won't be changed, it is recommended that you freeze it and make it unchangeable. You can freeze a Freezable in code simply by calling the Freeze method. (You can also freeze a Freezable in XAML but it's rather messy and is described here.) You must freeze a Freezable when accessing it from a thread other than the one that created it.

Recently I was working on an article for the March 2009 issue of MSDN Magazine about ItemsControl performance. I had an occasion to write a class that used the x:Array markup extension — which I hadn't previously used much at all — and all of a sudden performance just got terrible.

Of course, I was positive that x:Array was at fault, so like a good programmer I tried to isolate the problem in a small project I naturally called ArrayIssue.

The ArrayIssue project contains a small FrameworkElement derivative named RandomPlot that displays a simple scatterplot. The class has two dependency properties: Num of type int, which is the number of points displayed, and BrushArray of type Brush[]. The constructor initializes the BrushArray property:

The OnRender method displays a bunch of random points, randomly colored with one of the elements of the BrushArray array:

A XAML file creates two Buttons and two instances of RandomPlot. The second instance uses x:Array to redefine a different array of Brush objects:

The Click handlers for the buttons set the Num property of the corresponding RandomPlot to 10000, which triggers a re-render. If you compile and run this program, you'll discover a very dramatic performance difference. The first RandomPlot with the array defined in code updates very quickly, but the second RandomPlot with the x:Array in XAML requires a few seconds.

The difference has nothing to do with the x:Array element but everything to do with the way the children of x:Array were defined. Recall that the RandomPlot class initialized the BrushArray with statements like this:

BrushArray[0] = Brushes.Red;

The static members of the Brushes class return objects of type SolidColorBrush but these objects are frozen. The XAML file, however, creates unfrozen objects of type SolidColorBrush:

Who cares whether the brush used to color the dots of the scatterplot is frozen or unfrozen? The composition system cares. If you pass an unfrozen Freezable into the composition system (which occurs during the OnRender method), the system has to treat this is in a special way because it must respond to changes in the properties of the object. (See my blog entry WPF Retained Graphics and the SubPropertiesDoNotAffectRender Flag for ways to exploit this.) When the objects are frozen, however, there's no way they can be changed and the composition system can handle them more simply with no performance penalty.

Try adding this little piece of code to the OnRender method in RandomPlot after the check for a non-null BrushArray:

That fixes the problem. So will defining the children of the x:Array element like this:

This object element syntax of x:Static is rather unusual, of course, and I don't think I would have remembered the name of the Member attribute on my own, so I suspect my laziness in this regard was what caused me to use elements of SolidColorBrush instead.

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 14:43:00 GMT Reading “For the Thrill of It” 2009/01/Reading-For-the-Thrill-of-It.html Comments (0) January 2, 2009
Roscoe, N.Y.

I think I first became aware of the Leopold & Loeb case from seeing the 1959 movie Compulsion on TV when I was a kid. Based on a 1956 novel by Meyer Levin, the movie stars Dean Stockwell as the brilliant but deeply disturbed "Judd Steiner," Bradford Dillman as the charming but deeply disturbed "Artie Straus," and Orson Welles as the world-famous "atheist" attorney "Jonathan Wilk." (The movie still holds up quite well. It's much more historically accurate than you might assume, and it's great fun seeing how the filmmakers get away with suggesting the nature of the relationship between "Judd" and "Artie" without being explicit about it.)

About 10 years ago I attempted to supplement my knowledge of this fascinating case. Aided by the new (but now pretty much defunct) online used-book search engine Bibliofind, I found one book containing trial transcripts (albeit somewhat censored) and what was apparently the only existing book-length study, Hal Higdon's The Crime of the Century: The Leopold and Loeb Case from 1975. Oddly enough, no-one else thought the case interesting enough for another history.

Enter historian Simon Baatz, who first became aware of Leopold & Loeb after seeing Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 film Rope in a Brighton repertory cinema. Rope was an Americanized adaptation of a 1929 play by Patrick Hamilton, certainly inspired by Leopold & Loeb, but retaining only the psychology of the killers while completely re-imagining the rest.

(If you want to schedule a "Leopold & Loeb Film Trilogy" night for yourself and some dear friends, you'll definitely want to supplement Compulsion and Rope with Swoon, a 1992 indie film by Tom Kalin that is quite historically accurate except for a few minor points, such as the fact that Leopold and Loeb did not possess touch-tone phones. Total viewing time of the three movies is under 4½ hours.)

Simon Baatz's researches into the case culminated in his book For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder that Shocked Chicago (Harper, 2008). This is an extremely well-documented history but also a great read — combining a police procedural, a courtroom drama, and a social history of beliefs about crime and biological determinism circa 1924.

The basic facts are these:

In May 1924 in Chicago, Nathan "Babe" Leopold (age 19) and Richard "Dickie" Loeb (age 20) lured Bobby Franks (age 14) into a rented car, almost immediately killed him, and hid his body in a pipe in a drainage culvert. Leopold and Loeb then contacted Franks' parents and demanded a ransom of $10,000 for the return of their child. However, the body of Bobby Franks was discovered the next day, and through some excellent police work, Leopold and Loeb were identified as the kidnappers and killers. As the police mounted a case against them, they confessed.

If Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were poor boys trying to scrape out a meager living on the harsh streets of Chicago, the potential $10,000 ransom would have been perceived as the sole motive for the crime, and everybody would have understood. But Leopold and Loeb both came from very wealthy and well-known families. Nathan Leopold's grandfather had built up "the largest shipping line plying the Great Lakes" (p. 30). The family owned five cars — "a Packard, two Lincolns, a Willys-Knight, and a Wills Saint Claire" (p. 127) — and a chauffeur to take care of them. Richard Loeb's father was vice president of Sears, Roebuck. Both young men had sufficient allowances and didn't seem to need the extra money.

If Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were mentally deficient in some way and unaware of the gravity of their acts, everyone would have grieved over the killing of Bobby Franks, but there would have been sympathy for the killers themselves as well. Yet, Leopold and Loeb were both college students, and in particular Leopold seemed to be quite intelligent (although probably not as smart as he pretended to be). The two of them had planned this crime in meticulous detail for as long as six months prior to the actual act.

What was so disturbing about this murder — and what keeps it interesting after 80 years — is that Leopold and Loeb seemed to have done it for kicks, for the challenge of plotting and carrying out a crime, as a test of their skill in being undetected, for the pleasure in knowing that they were superior to everyone else. Here's Leopold's explanation:

I am sure, as sure as I can be of anything, that is, as sure as you can read any other man's state of mind, the thing that prompted Dick to want to do this thing and prompted me to want to do this thing was a sort of pure love of excitement, or the imaginary love of thrills, doing something different; possibly ... the satisfaction and the ego of putting something over." (p. 157)

They didn't seem to believe that the normal rules of behavior applyed to them. If you want a label, "psychopath" might do, but what Leopold and Loeb did derived as much from their unique symbiotic relationship as from their own individual pathologies.

After both Leopold and Loeb had confessed to the crime (the only difference in their accounts being that both accused the other of wielding the actual murder weapon) and the state psychologists judged them perfectly sane, there was just no way they were not going to pay for their crimes. In desperation, their parents hired another Chicago resident, and the most famous lawyer in America, Clarence Darrow, who already knew both families. They didn't expect Darrow to get their boys exonerated. By now, the only thing they could hope for was to save them from the noose.

Baatz's book is particularly strong in examining Clarence Darrow's conviction that human behavior is largely determined by forces other than free will. In Chapter 8, Baatz traces Darrow's evolving beliefs, from the idea that criminal activity is caused by social pressures (such as poverty) to a recognition that it can also be a result of biological forces within the body and mind. The people we call criminals are, in this sense, victims, and they deserve help rather than punishment. (Of course, this is a concept that really tends to curl the toes of some people — as much today as in 1924.)

Darrow had an especial hatred of the death penalty as a barbaric anachronism that had no place in American society. Capital punishment, he believed, was a relic of a bygone era; the death penalty was a cruel, brutal, purposeless punishment that failed to deter criminals. It was legal murder by the state, Darrow claimed, and, more often than not, it caught innocent persons in its maw.... The death penalty was born out of hatred toward the criminal. It had no purpose except revenge. There was no evidence that capital punishment was a deterrent to murder. Indeed, Darrow argued, since the taking of a life was an act of violence that corroded sentiments of charity and respect toward one's fellows, it followed that the death penalty cheapened and devalued human life and that it was more an inducement to murder than a deterrent. (p. 170, 173)

In Chapters 11, 12, and 13, we discover how Darrow called in psychiatrists and experts in the emerging field of endocrinology to perform state-of-the-art tests on Leopold and Loeb to discover what glandular imbalance or mental defect could have caused the emotional immaturity of the two young men that prompted them to commit this act. These chapters are really the core of Baatz's book, and I found them fascinating for their insights into 1920's era neurobiology.

Contributing greatly to the drama and readability of For the Thrill of It is the extensive dialogue. As a careful historian, Simon Baatz has obtained all of this dialogue from public sources (p. xv), which include the transcripts of the police interrogations, the trial transcripts, and Chicago's six daily newspapers of the era. The narrative is extensively documented with hundreds of footnotes. Baatz sometimes indulges in supposition:

But Nathan found it impossible to concentrate. He thought again of Richard Loeb; he turned their scheme over in his mind, asking himself if they had missed anything. They had arranged the murder for that afternoon; could anything go wrong?

I never felt these passages were unwarrented, however, and only once did a piece of dialogue ring false for me (a passage on pages 144-145). It turned out to be taken from Irving Stone's 1941 book Clarence Darrow for the Defense: A Biography. I suspect Baatz wrestled with himself about including these snatches of dialogue, but I think he made the wrong decision. Whether Irving Stone wrote novelistic biographies or biographical novels, they should not be treated as reliable histories.

What I missed from Baatz's book are a broader sense of the era, and reactions to the case beyond the actual players. It was my impression that the case kicked up a lot of anti-Semitism directed at the wealthy Jewish families that had produced these two young men. But there is almost no discussion of that, and the popular reactions we do get are so tantalizing that we want more of the sort, like this little sermon from famous preacher Billy Sunday that the killing could be

traced to the moral miasma which contaminates some of our "young intellectuals." It is now considered fashionable for higher education to scoff at God. The world is headed for Hades so fast no speed limit can stop it. Precocious brains, salacious books, infidel minds — all these helped to produce this murder. (p. 319)

And, as Baatz reminds us,

No organization was more hostile to the licentiousness of the 1920s than the Ku Klux Klan. The abrupt revival of the Klan in the early 1920s, after several decades of quiescence, centered less on white supremacy and more on Protestant fundamentalism. The Klan was still violently opposed to blacks, of course, but now other groups in the Klan's worldview also threatened traditional morality: Catholics, Jews, and immigrants.... In July the Klan burned a fiery cross, fourteen feet high, on a vacant lot not far from the Loeb family home. On another occasion, toward the conclusion of the hearing, Klan members left a human skull and bones near the Loeb house with a note that promised a lynching of the two defendents. (p. 322)

In the film Compulsion, the Klan burns the cross outside the home of lawyer "Jonathan Wilk."

(A year after the Leopold & Loeb case, Clarence Darrow travelled to the foothills of East Tennessee for the famous Scopes Trial. Darrow headed the team that defended high-school teacher John Scopes, who had defied a Tennessee law by teaching evolution in the classroom. The prosecution team recruited the famous evangelical, creationist, and three-time candidate for President, William Jennings Bryan. On this occasion the Klan lit up a cross in honor of Bryan, who the Klan regarded as a lifelong friend to their cause. When Bryan died soon after the trial, the Klan lit up another cross bearing the inscription "In memory of William Jennings Bryan, the greatest Klansman of our time, this cross is burned; he stood at Armageddon and battled for the Lord." It should be noted that Bryan wasn't actually a member of the Klan.)

Simon Baatz concludes his book with a brief survey of fictional renditions of Leopold & Loeb, including Compulsion, Rope, and Swoon. But this subject deserves a much more extensive analysis. The legacy of Leopold & Loeb lives on in an extremely common (and what is now an extremely tired) convention in novels, movies, and TV episodes: the brilliant but amoral serial killer, his elaborately complex murders, and his persistent cat-and-mouse provocations of the police. ("We're a lot alike, you and me.")

Perhaps the most successful fictional killers of this sort are Hannibal Lecter (who is a grown-up amalgam of the personalities of Leopold and Loeb) and the mastermind behind the crimes of Se7en. (Reading Leopold and Loeb's fantasies in For the Thrill of It made me think of the excessively rich fantasy life of the Vincent D'Onfrio character in The Cell.) There are even a few Leopold & Loeb-like teams of clever teens, as in Murder by Numbers and Funny Games, or somewhat older, as in the crap that James Patterson coughs up. One of the most recent atrocities of the "intellectually superior serial killer" genre was the ridiculous "Masterpiece" episode of Criminal Minds featuring a potentially career-ending performance by Jason Alexander.

Of course, Leopold and Loeb weren't exactly serial killers, but it's amazing how we tend to think of them in that way, for surely if they had escaped undetected after the killing of Bobby Franks, they would have gone on to kill others. Yes, Leopold and Loeb were serial killers, but just not very prolific ones.

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:46:10 GMT Re-Infection with Recurrent Ear Worm 2008/12/Re-Infection-with-Recurrent-Ear-Worm.html Comments (10) December 16, 2008
New York, N.Y.

I've been re-invected by an extremely nasty ear worm. It has gotten inside my head and plays in a continuous loop. This particular strain of ear worm has been mostly dormant for several months, ever since the movie based on a musical based on a song based on an Italian expression of surprise arrived in theatres and then left — I hesitate to mention the title because that alone is capable of touching off a vicious outbreak that can last for hours — but now the DVD has been released, and again the culture is awash with that song and several others from the same source.

I wouldn't complain if I had brought this on myself. But I have never sought out this music. It has instead oozed out of the environment into my ears. Without my permission, it has attacked my central nervous system and burrowed deep into my brain, stealing essential neurons to forever preserve the memory of those silly lyrics and insipid tunes.

Of course there's no legal recourse. If instead of playing music, a quartet of Swedes were following me around on the streets and knocking me on the back of my head, I could probably find a way to make them stop. Even if they had no physical contact with me but were instead flashing images in my eyes of apple-cheeked adolescents joyously dancing with arms waving above their empty heads, I might be able to make a case for legal restraint.

But music falls into a whole other category. Apparently there's nothing you can do to prevent insidiously tuneful music from leaking out of speakers located in public places, or interrupting otherwise innocent television programs.

I guess what bothers me most is that I'm not learning anything new from this music. Anything that could possibly be known about these songs was totally assimilated the first time they were ever heard, even before the songs had concluded. Repeat performances convery nothing new, only the placental comfort of a security blanket. With each replay, the brain dies a little more.

You would think that with all the music pumped into the aural environment these days, people would have an increased knowledge of a wider range of musical forms and ideas. But this is not the case. The massively destructive commercialization of music has required that it be immediately accessible and persistent. There is no room for hesitation or doubt. In the commercial marketplace, the ear worm is the ultimate sign of success.

And thus, few people these days even understand the concept that good music might be deliberately lacking in toe-tappable beats or hummable tunes, that it might be "challenging" or "difficult" or even "unlistenable" on first encounter, and that maybe a little effort might be required, and that this work might have a delayed pay-off of gratification.

To quote the concluding line of another famous musical ear worm from four decades back — this one based on characters from a well-known Victorian children's book —

Feed your head.

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:01:07 GMT Elliott Carter's Birthday Bash 2008/12/Elliott-Carters-Birthday-Bash.html Comments (1) December 11, 2008 (closing in on midnight)
New York, N.Y.

It would have been a wonderful concert regardless. It began when James Levine and Daniel Barenboim came out on the Carnegie Hall stage, sat down side-by-side at a piano, and played Schubert's sublimely heartbreaking Fantasy in F Minor for Piano Four Hands, D. 940. They were then joined by the members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 with Levine conducting and Barenboim at the piano. Following intermission, James Levine and the BSO treated us to a rip-roaring head-bouncing brass-smacking performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.

It would have been a wonderful concert regardless. But between the intermission and the Stravinsky was the New York premiere of Elliott Carter's sweetly subversive Interventions for piano and orchestra, which Carter composed specifically for James Levine and Daniel Barenboim to play on his 100th birthday. (It was actually premiered a couple days ago in Boston.)

In Interventions, the piano and orchestra (augmented with tons of percussion) seem to want to play two different kinds of compositions entirely, and so they keep intervening in each other's progress. The orchestra led by Levine concentrates mostly on long majestic string lines, while Barenboim plays some of Carter's jazziest piano writing ever, but the orchestra finally gets into the festive spirit for a (uncharacteristically for Carter) loud crashing finale.

After Interventions, Carter was helped on stage, a cake was rolled out, the orchestra played "Happy Birthday," and the crowd went wild.

The choice to close the concert with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was very deliberate: It was the American premiere of Rite of Spring by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall in January 1924 that caused the 15-year old Elliott Carter to want to become a composer.

I left Carnegie Hall hoping there was another 15-year old in the audience suitably blown away by what she heard tonight.

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 04:30:05 GMT Elliott Carter Music on YouTube (a Selection) 2008/12/Elliott-Carter-on-YouTube.html Comments (0) December 11, 2008
New York, N.Y.

Recent Interview from NewMusicBox.org

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzs8Ov2p-Rc

Sonata for Violoncello and Piano (1948)
Norman Fischer, cello; and Jeanne Kierman, piano; at Rice University

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqpbfxiVieQ

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdQqIiKBbZI

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoT1c61sZLc

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lbivEE8kPU

Enchanted Preludes (1988)
John McMurtery, flute; and Craig Hultgren, cello; at Birmingham Southern College in August, 2006

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z1N9BLS0B4

Luimen (1997)
Joseph Brent, mandolin; Oren Fader, guitar; Megan Levin, harp;
Steven Merrill, vibes; Patrick Pfister, trombone; Chris Coletti, trumpet;
Christoph Altstaedt, conducting

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR6Sk4yX6uc

4 Lauds (2001)
Sean Y. Wang, violin

www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_sZ9CUi8EA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZDQSP8k5B8

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmYNUUIaYUQ

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F90LkVDLGQ

Hiyoku (2001)
Justin Harbaugh and Dr. Tod Kerstetter, clarinets

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHE-WgCHgDo

Call (2003)
Bryn Rector and Christopher Coletti, trumpets; Michael Winter, horn

www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3xn2VqYn4A

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:00:00 GMT Elliott Carter’s Nineties (1999 – 2008) 2008/12/Elliott-Carters-Nineties.html Comments (0) December 11, 2008
New York, N.Y.

In December 1908, William Howard Taft had recently been elected President, but perhaps more importantly, December 1908 was also the month in which Gustav Mahler conducted the American premiere of his Symphony No. 2 (the Resurrection) with the New York Philharmonic, the month in which Arnold Schoenberg's groundbreaking String Quartet No. 2 (also known as "the one with the soprano") was first performed, the month in which French composer Olivier Messiaen was born, and the month in which American composer Elliott Carter was born 100 years ago today.

Photograph of Elliott Carter from the Boston Globe web site.

According to information available when clicking the Performances link from the Elliott Carter page on the website of Boosey & Hawkes (the publisher of Carter's music), today there will be performances of Carter's music in Montréal, Berlin, London, Birmingham (England), Amsterdam, Helsinki, Vienna, Washington D.C. (the Library of Congress), Mill Valley (California), and Carnegie Hall in New York City (which is where I'll be tonight). Friday evening and the weekend adds Hamburg, Paris, Porto (Portugal), Boston, Cologne, Munich, and Basel to the list.

Over the past two weeks I've been celebrating Elliott Carter's multiple compositional decades with some brief, personal, and superficial descriptions of his music. Today's look at the past ten years will not be quite as long — not because Carter hasn't been keeping up his customary pace, but simply because many of his works composed since 2003 have not yet been recorded.

During his nineties, Carter continued to compose many small works, generally commissions or birthday presents (or both). Carter's larger works are not quite as long as they used to be. Whereas the "typical" Carter work might have been 20 minutes in length, now they're somewhat shorter. In many cases, the longer works contain many short movements or sections, which makes the often episodic character of his work even more explicit. This is the first decade since his forties in which Carter did not write a string quartet.

The 15-minute Tempo e Tempi (1999) is one of my very favorite recent Carter works. Virtually all of Carter's previous vocal music has been based on poems by prominent American poets (although Carter did set Latin texts in Tarantella of 1936 and Greek in Syringa of 1978). Tempo e Tempi sets eight Italian poems: two by Eugenio Montale, two by Salvatore Quasimodo, and four by Giuseppe Ungaretti (but two of these are extremely short). Written for soprano and tiny ensemble (oboe doubling English horn, clarinet doubling bass clarient, violin, and cello), Tempo e Tempi is simply gorgeous, with elegant vocal lines that marvelously caress the Italian syllables, and the last song ("The Poet's Secret" with a text by Ungaretti) is truly haunting.

Two Diversions (1999) for piano is an 8-minute study in polyrhythms but intended to be easy enough to be played by piano students. The 3-minute Fragment II (1999) for string quartet is slow and elegaic, with a nearly constant harmonic drone punctuated with loud outbursts.

The two-minute Retrouvailles (2000) ("homecoming") for piano is yet another birthday tribute to Pierre Boulez, this one for his 75^th birthday, mostly more pointillistic than Carter's other piano works, but breaking into fast figures and dense chords. (On March 10, 2009, Boulez will conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in the New York premiere of Réflexions for small orchestra, which Carter composed for Boulez's 80^th birthday in 2005.)

The 12-minute ASKO Concerto (2000) was commissioned by the Asko Ensemble of Amsterdam, and written for 16 players, including a percussionist who handles three mallet instruments (xylophone, vibraphone, and marimba) and a pianist who doubles on celesta. The orchestral color isn't quite as obvious as the various fascinating duets and trios sprinkled through the work.

The cello is very much in the foreground in the 18-minute Cello Concerto (2000), commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Daniel Barenboim with Yo-Yo Ma on the cello. Although the orchestra is large and extensively percussioned, it mostly plays in the background or provides punctuation (often loudly) when the cello happens to pause. This is an exceptionally enjoyable work. The cello writing is quite lyrical (particularly in the Lento and Tranquillo — sections 4 and 6 out of 7), and the finale is hair-raising.

4 Lauds (2001) for solo violin combines four commemorative pieces, the second of which was composed in 1984, and the third in 1999:

The score indicates a length of 15 minutes, but the recording I have by Rolf Schulte clocks in at 19:36, and doesn't seem too long at all.

For the listenser, 4 Lauds is a very accessible work: majestic, powerful, moving, lyrical (there are — I swear — brief sections of the Riconoscenza that sound almost like Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending!), and with a crowd-pleasing finish. I'd love to see Hilary Hahn take on this work. Judging from her recent breathtaking recording of the Schoenberg Violin Concerto, she should have no problem with the technical aspects, and would bring to it her usual intelligent perspective.

Steep Steps (2001) is a 3-minute virtuoso solo for bass clarinet, composed for Virgil Blackwell, so titled because the bass clarinet overblows at the interval of a twelfth.

The Oboe Quartet (2001) is a 17-minute work for oboe and string trio (violin, viola, cello) with six sections built around all the possible duets among the four instruments. This is a playful and exciting work, with some wonderfully fast intricate interplay.

Figment No. 2 (Remembering Mr. Ives) (2001), like the first Figment, is for solo cello. (The score says it's 5 minutes in length, but the two recordings bring it in in under 4.) This is actually more Ivesian sounding than one might even expect from the subtitle. There's a wonderful lyricism in this work, calling to mind the hymns and camp-songs peppered in Ives' music.

Hiyoku (2001) ("two wings" in poetic Japanese) is a 4-minute work for two clarinets with fast complex interplay at the beginning, a lovely slow middle section of long tones, and a fast rippling of notes towards the end.

Carter's Boston Concerto (2002) was commissioned by (surprise!) the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This 19-minute work is divided into 13 contrasting sections, none of which is longer than two minutes and not a clunker in the lot, making the mood and tempo changes very frequent, and exposing the audience to a variety of shimmering, often skittering, orchestral colors.

Au Quai (2002), is an energetic 3-minute piece for the unlikely duet of bassoon and viola, which together give the work a deep rich feel. The title, of course, is pronounced "OK," which are the initials of the 50^th birthday dedicatee Oliver Knussen. (Knussen conducted the first performances of Carter's In Sleep, In Thunder, two of the Three Occasions, the complete Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretiam Spei, Tempo e Tempi, and Dialogues, and has recorded Concerto for Orchestra, Three Occasions, Violin Concerto, ASKO Concerto, Cello Concerto, Boston Concerto, and Dialogues.)

Dialogues (2003) is a 14-minute concerto-of-sorts for piano and 18 instruments (but no percussion), and the title indicates the back-and-forth conversational roles of the piano and chamber orchestra. Only rarely can the orchestra match the motor-mouth spritz of the piano, although it certainly tries, and is sometimes driven to dominate strictly with volume. But the piano gets the last word.

Early on in Mosaic (2004), a 10-minute work for harp and 7 instruments (strings and winds), often the harp is virtually unaccompanied, or accompanied by only a fairly sparse texture of instrumentation. But you can't keep a good chamber orchestra down, and whenever the harp stops, it awakens to play and pretty much dominates towards the end.

Matribute (2007) for piano was commissioned by James Levine as a birthday gift to his mother (and really raising the bar on gifts to Mom in the process, I must say). It's a jittery piece with some shifting tempos and rhythms, not quite the ma-tribute that one might imagine. The score indicates a length of 4 minutes, but Ursula Oppens plays it in 2.

Two Thoughts About the Piano (2008) consists of two slightly earlier piano works, the 6-minute Intermittences (2005), with runs of rapid notes intermittentally separated by slower, more chord-heavy passages, while Caténaires (2006) is a jaw-dropping continuous fast run that goes on forever (or at least the 4-minute duration) without a single let-up or change in tempo, and hence sounds like nothing else Elliott Carter has ever composed. Amazing!

(Recordings of many of the compositions I've mentioned can be purchased from the Elliott Carter page at ArkivMusic.com. Bridge Records has released seven CDs of Elliott Carter's works that are essential sources for his music of the last three decades.)

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:00:00 GMT Elliott Carter’s Eighties (1989 – 1998) 2008/12/Elliott-Carters-Eighties.html Comments (0) December 10, 2008
New York, N.Y.

American composer Elliott Carter will turn 100 years old tomorrow, and he has certainly taken the typical advice for people past retirement age: Carter has kept active. Not by playing shuffleboard or bingo, of course, but by continuing to compose, and to evolve as a composer. In his eighties Carter composed more works for solo instruments and small ensembles, including very unusual ensembles and classical quintets. But this decade also includes several works for large orchestral forces, and Elliott Carter ended his eighties by writing his first opera.

Three Occasions (1989) is a 16-minute work that brings together three short orchestral works composed in the past few years: A Celebration of 100 × 150 Notes (1986) was commissioned by the Houston Symphony Orchestra to celebrate the 150^th anniversary of the founding of Texas, and climaxes in a big timpani roll and large orchestral bursts. Remembrance (1988) was composed in memory of Paul Fromm, a benefactor of the Week of Contemporary Music at the Tanglewood Music Festival, a slow work with a solo trombone part and shimmering strings. Anniversary (1989), which Carter composed for his wife Helen for their 50^th wedding anniversary, is a gentle meandering work dominated by the strings with amusing little quips from the woodwinds.

In the opening of the Violin Concerto (1990) the violin seems to emerge from the orchestra like a hesitant volunteer for solo-dom, but soon losing its shyness and engaging virtuostically in many wonderful passages. This 26-minute work has a traditional three-movement fast-slow-fast structure, but with a twist: The first movement is marked Impulsivo and the last movement is Scherzando, but the middle movement is marked Angosciato ("anguished") for the violin and Tranquillo for the orchestra. It is this middle movement that I find the most interesting, as the violin weaves long melodic lines with an under-texture of shifting chords and colors. In the last movement the violin skips around in rhythmic patterns in a finale as exhilarating as the Brahms Violin Concerto (but in a completely different way, of course). Near the end the violin even decides to play a traditional solo cadenza, but that seems to baffle everyone and the whole concerto disappears quickly in a puff of smoke.

Con Leggerezza Pensosa (1990) ("with thoughtful lightness," from a passage by Italo Calvino) is a 5-minute trio for clarinet, violin, and cello, with styles that shift from long held notes, to fast bouncy passages, to the wonderful sound of the clarinet playing to string pizzicato accompaniment. The 5-minute flute solo Scrivo in vento (1991) ("I write in the wind," from Petrarch) mixes soft lyrical passages with fiercer, more frenetic episodes.

The 24-minute Quintet for Piano and Winds (1991) combines the piano with oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and French horn, the same combination Beethoven wrote for in Opus 16, and Mozart in K. 452. (Pianist Ursula Oppens has recorded both the Carter and the Mozart.) This is the first of two quintets in this decade, and to me they constitute Carter's most demanding work of his eighties. There are many wonderful passages in this piece, and it builds to a rousing conclusion, but I just can't get a sense of the whole, which usually means I need to listen to it more.

The 17-minute Trilogy (1992) was composed for Heinz and Ursula Holliger, which is why it's for the unusual combination of oboe and harp. The intricate first movement is primarily for harp alone (although the oboe sneaks in there occasionally), the second is a wistful reverie for oboe (with some interjections from the harp), and then the instruments combine as equals in the conclusion — or as equal as an oboe and harp can be as they weave in and out of each other's musical space.

Carter composed the solo-clarinet Gra (1993) ("game" in Polish) for Polish composer Witold Lutosławski's 80^th birthday (which was to be Lutosławski's last.) The 4¾ minute piece is marked Ghiribizzo ("whimsically"), with bouncy runs similar to those in Con Leggerezza Pensosa.

For the 80^th birthday of Italian composer Goffredo Petrassi in 1984 Carter wrote a work for solo violin. For Petrassi's 90^th birthday, Carter followed up with the 5½-minute 90+ (1994) for piano, whose seeming steadiness speeds up and slows down and occasionally breaks out into flurries.

Fragment (1994) is a mournful 4-minute piece for string quartet with shifting shimmering textures built largely upon string harmonics.

Of Challenge and of Love (1994) consists of five songs for soprano and piano set to poems of John Hollander and running about 20 minutes total. This is a very accessible work, with gracefully arcing vocal lines and dramatic climaxes. This is Carter in an "easy listening" mode (relatively speaking, of course).

For Pierre Boulez's 70^th birthday, Carter wrote a sequel to last decade's esprit rude / esprit doux, called esprit rude / esprit doux II (1995), of course, adding a marimba to the flute and clarient duo. (The small ensemble of Boulez's most famous work, Le Marteau sans Maître of 1955, has two mallet instruments: a xylorimba and a vibraphone, so this additional instrument is fitting.)

Figment (1995) (not to be confused with Fragment) is a 5-minute work for solo cello that incorporates a variety of string techniques but with a dominant feel of long langourous melodic lines.

The String Quartet No. 5 (1995) is Carter's last string quartet so far. This 20-minute work is quite different from Carter's previous string quartets. It is divided into 12 short sections that explore several different soundscapes, including dense evolving chords, scurrying melodic lines, ethereal harmonics, and clouds of pizzicato.

Carter explores some of these same soundscapes in the 18-minute Clarinet Concerto (1996). The work is divided in 7 constrasting sections dominated by various groups of instruments, and although the accompanying orchestra has only 17 players, 3 of them are percussionists, and at times the work seems like a nostalgic golden oldie form the percussion-laden 1960s. Unlike the Violin Concerto, the clarinet here is mostly in stylistic harmony with the ensemble, sometimes playing together, and sometimes in back-and-forth conversation.

I've never heard A 6 Letter Letter (1996), a 3-minute piece for solo English horn.

Shard (1997) is a driving 3-minute piece for solo guitar, and the 10-minute Luimen (1997) ("whimsy" in Dutch), for an odd sextet consisting of trumpet, trombone, harp, vibraphone, guitar, and mandolin (making its debut appearance in a Carter composition), expands on the material in Shard in an engrossing manner that makes the earlier work seem like a sketch.

The Quintet for Piano and String Quartet (1997) is Carter's second piano-based quintet of this decade. The 15-minute work begins very hectically — the listener might feel almost like being dropped into a cold bath — but the action calms down quickly. An initial constrast between the piano and strings breaks down, it seems, when the strings begin imitating the piano. A series of loud dense chords on the piano in the middle of the piece give the strings more to mull over. Towards the end, both the piano and strings are playing very quickly, and they both slow down at the same time, but they never do come together, and can't even figure out how to end the quintet at the same time.

At 45 minutes in length, Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretiam Spei (1997) ("I am the prize of flowing hope" from a 17^th century Latin poem) is easily Carter's biggest and longest work for symphony orchestra. The very existence of this work might seem at odds with my introductory comments about the sad state of orchestras yesterday but this work originated with three separately commissioned short works, Partita (1993), Adagio tenebroso (1995), and Allegro scorrevole (1997), that Carter had always intended to be part of this large triptych.

One of these commissions did not go smoothly. Originally the New York Philharmonic had commissioned Carter to write the Allegro to celebrate its 150^th anniversary, but then backed out in a grossly insulting manner. The movement was premiered instead by the Cleveland Orchestra. Here's the story by Paul Griffiths in the New York Times. He writes:

Since Pierre Boulez left the music directorship of the Philharmonic two decades ago, the orchestra has not played any new piece by either of the two venerable composers who have spent their working lives in or near New York: Mr. Carter and Milton Babbitt.... [I]t is scandalous that the city's premier concert orchestra should go on ignoring composers of such stature and originality.

Indeed, the New York Philharmonic itself is not playing a new Carter work this season. Their entire celebration of the Carter Centennial is relegated to a Saturday afternoon Day of Carter (actually 2 hours and 45 minutes) not even taking place in a real concert hall. I'm still looking forward to it, of course; the participating musicians are mostly members of the New York Philharmonic (who generally have a wider vision than the orchestra administration).

Symphonia is an extraordinary dazzling work, almost Mahlerian in its scope and ambition. The opening Partita is an aggressive and powerful display of orchestral color rarely heard these days, and the closing Allegro is of a completely different character altogether, building on much quieter elements in a massively joyful crescendo and a characteristic quiet ending.

But the most sumptuous part of this work is the Adagio, a vast landscape of shifting colors and sudden swells, with hints of Ives' Unanswered Question peeking through, and an overall mood that is reminiscent of the opening Adagio of Mahler's unfinished Symphony No. 10, with Mahler's aching loud dissonant chord substituted with a frantic loud quickening of tempo towards the end of this movement.

On the eve of his nineties, not only was Elliot Carter composing his most ambitious symphonic work, but also his first opera — a one-act work (the score indicates a running time of 47 minutes but the only recording is 40 minutes) entitled What Next? (1998) to a libretto by Paul Griffiths (the author of the Times article cited above).

With a plot inspired by the Jacques Tati film Trafic, Paul Griffiths' libretto has a rather absurdist bent in a static setting. The action of the opera takes place immediately after an automobile accident. No one is seriously hurt, but the six passengers wander disoriented around the stage and, of course, sing of their predicament and confusion and derailed lives.

The small orchestra has an augmented percussion section, including Carter's first use of non-traditional percussive devices such as trash cans and brake drums. The metallic sounds at the opening are obviously intended to suggest the accident happening in slow motion, but largely the orchestra provides the minimum of accompaniment to the singers engaging in sections for solo, duets, trio, and on up. In a quintet entitled Uproar near the end, the memories of their previous lives begin coming back, and they are none too happy about this little plot twist.

(More detailed descriptions of Carter's music can be found in David Schiff's The Music of Elliott Carter, second edition, Cornell University Press, 1998. Recordings of many of the compositions I've mentioned can be purchased from the Elliott Carter page at ArkivMusic.com. Bridge Records has released seven CDs of Elliott Carter's works that are essential sources for his music of the last three decades.)

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 12:00:00 GMT Elliott Carter’s Seventies (1979 – 1988) 2008/12/Elliott-Carters-Seventies.html Comments (0) December 9, 2008
New York, N.Y.

In his seventies, Elliott Carter increasingly focused on smaller ensembles and began giving his works more sensually evocative names, such as Night Fantasies and Enchanted Preludes rather than the more generic Piano Sonata or Duet for Flute and Cello. During this period Carter composed three works for solo instruments (piano, guitar, violin), two duets (for flute and clarinet, and for flute and cello), a new string quartet (of course), and several works for chamber ensembles.

Missing from the works of this decade is anything for a full symphony orchestra.

That perception is not entirely accurate, however. Carter actually wrote two short orchestral works during this decade that later became part of Three Occasions, which was completed during Carter's eighties. But Carter's shift away from the symphony orchestra is very real, and it was partly a very practical one:

Following the heyday of contemporary music performances in the 1960s and 1970s, an increased conservatism and timidity seemed to characterize symphony orchestras in the 1980s and later years, particularly in the United States, and as the audience has aged, this trend has gotten worse and worse. Orchestras are now deathly afraid of offending what little audience they have left, and if these orchestras have been reluctant to commission or program new works by Elliott Carter, there is little incentive for Carter to write them.

It didn't have to be like this, and the New York Philharmonic under the Music Directorship of Pierre Boulez during the years 1971 to 1977 showed a clearly different approach. Boulez was (and remains) a great champion of 20^th century and contemporary music, and he felt it was his obligation to educate and enlighten the New York City audience in a variety of different ways — not least of which was his ability to deliver first rate performances of difficult works.

Elliott Carter outside Avery Fisher Hall, 1973
Photo by Nancy Crampton printed in the Carnegie Hall Playbill, December 2008

During Boulez's reign, the New York Philharmonic seemed to acquire a new enthusiastic young audience as eager to hear Messiaen, Varèse, and Carter as Bach and Beethoven. (I know this because I was one of them; my college years just across the Hudson River coincided with the first four years of Boulez at the Philharmonic.) Pierre Boulez demonstrated that music was still a vibrant exciting living force, and not something that suddenly disappeared just prior to 1913.

Pierre Boulez had shown what could be done, but after he left New York City in 1977, few others seemed to match his tenacity and courage, and many American cities had not benefited from a Pierre Boulez at all. How bad has the situation gotten? Well, in two days, America's pre-eminent composer will celebrate his 100^th birthday, yet some American orchestras (here's one chosen not quite at random) are entirely ignoring this unprecedented event out of pure fear that some of their audience might hear a few tunes they can't quite hum. This is not just irresponsible. It is suicide.

Elliott Carter's 24-minute Night Fantasies (1980) was his first work for piano since the Piano Sonata of 1946 and was dedicated to Paul Jacobs, Gilbert Kalish, Ursula Oppens, and Charles Rosen, all well-known pianists with a particular interest in Carter's work. As befitting the title, the work begins with slow eerie chords, but it is not Carter's habit to stick to a particular mood, and the music unfolds with many contrasting sections that contribute to a feeling of wandering free association. It almost sounds — and this is rare for a Carter work — improvised.

Night Fantasies is a popular work and seven different recordings are currently available on CD, including two by Ursula Oppens, but Paul Jacobs' old recording for Nonesuch Records has regrettably not been made available on CD.

In Sleep, In Thunder (1981), a 21-minute song cycle of six poems of Robert Lowell for tenor and chamber orchestra, is a complement of sorts to A Mirror on Which to Dwell, composed just six years earlier to six poems by Elizabeth Bishop, but can also be viewed as the conclusion of a trilogy of American poetry that includes Syringa, with a text by John Ashbery. The instrumentalists don't exactly accompany the singer but rather provide commentary and punctuation, sometimes opposition, sometimes comfort. I particularly like the setting of "Careless Night," with comparatively sparse instrumentation, often a flittering flute, building as almost each word becomes a strain to enunciate.

As the title suggests, Triple Duo (1982) is for six instrumentalists divided into duos of flute and clarinet, percussion and piano, violin and cello. Carter characterized this 19-minute work as "quirky" and "comic" (The Music of Elliott Carter, p. 124) and at least the fast parts sometimes sound to me like a wild dance of three partners, each periodically trying to steal the spotlight and often bumping into one other.

The 7-minute Changes (1983), composed for David Starobin, is Carter's first work for solo guitar, although he had used the guitar to accompany a singer in the 1938 song Tell Me Where is Fancy Bred and it also shows up in some later chamber works, including Syringa. Changes has much varied guitar playing ranging from violent strums to soft picks.

Elliott Carter wrote several even shorter works during this decade to celebrate birthdays and other events. Canon for 4 (1984) is a 3' 45" quartet for flute, bass clarinet, violin, and cello written for William Block on his retirement from the Bath Music Festival. I love the sound of this combination of instruments and the intricate structure of the canon.

Riconoscenza ("gratitude") per Goffredo Petrassi (1984) commemorated the Italian composer's 80^th birthday. (Petrassi died in 2003 at the age of 98.) This is Carter's first composition for solo violin, a generally slow, gentle work punctuated with more active passages. (Although the score indicates that the length is 3 minutes, the three recordings I've checked range from 4½ to 6½ minutes.)

Carter wrote the 4-minute esprit rude / esprit deux (1984) for flute and clarinet "Pour Pierre Boulez en célébration de son soixantième anniversaire," although Boulez didn't really turn 60 until the following year when the work was premiered.

Carter gave this piece an amusingly Boulezian title with trademark lowercase and slash — it actually translates as the "rough-breathing" and "smooth-breathing" characteristics of classical Greek pronunciation — and some Boulezian sounds, including long held notes that suddenly break into fast sequences.

Carter also dedicated a much more substantial work, Penthode (1985) to Pierre Boulez, who conducted its first performance. This concept of this 18-minute work is rather like Triple Duo, only more so, featuring five groups of four instruments each. One might expect a corresonding increase in frenzy, but this is not so. Penthode is a particularly contemplative work for most of its duration, with much opportunity for lyrical solo passages.

(The CD I have of Penthode is an Apex release that I found in the Imports bin at J&R. The CD also includes the Oboe Concerto, esprit rude / esprit deux, and A Mirror on Which to Dwell played by the Ensemble InterContemporain under the direction of Pierre Boulez. It's definitely worth trying to track down.)

As usual, Elliott Carter reserves some of his most complex compositional writing for the string quartet, and the 24½ minute String Quartet No. 4 (1985) is as different from its predecessors as they are from each other. Part of that difference is an extremely conventional overall structure: four movements of about equal length titled Appassionato, Scherzando, Lento, and Presto. However, the movements are played without breaks, and the music is anything but conventional. This is a very dense work, particularly in the outer movements, with the Lento certainly the easiest to follow.

Carter wrote the 20-minute Oboe Concerto (1987) for Heinz Holliger. The accompanying chamber orchestra includes strings, four wind instruments, and two percussionists, but it sounds almost as fat as a full symphony. This is an exciting work, with the oboe and orchestra in constant contrast, and the oboe performing tricks that Holliger taught to Carter (who was himself an oboe student many years ago) during his active assistance during the concerto's composition.

The 6-minute Enchanted Preludes (1988) for flute and cello was commissioned by Harry Santen for the 50^th birthday of his wife Ann Santen, who was director of a public radio station in Cincinnati that played a lot of contemporary music. It is tempting to identify the two instruments with the husband and wife, and while the two instruments don't play in unison, they toss thematic material back and forth in a bewitchingly manner.

Carter also wrote a birthday tribute for his own wife Helen, but the 1-minute Birthday Flourish (1988) for brass quintet has never been recorded.

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 12:00:00 GMT Reading “Revolutionary Road” 2008/12/Reading-Revolutionary-Road.html Comments (0) December 8, 2008
New York, N.Y.

I've been wanting to read Richard Yates' novel Revolutionary Road (1961) ever since April 9, 2000, when I read an essay by Richard Ford about it in the New York Times Book Review. That essay was also the Introduction to a new paperback edition of Revolutionary Road by Vintage that I bought soon thereafter and which has been sitting around here begging to be read ever since.

The matter of reading Revolutionary Road became much more critical recently. I knew I better hurry before the movie came out and forever distorted our perceptions of the novel.

Unfortunately, I wasn't quite fast enough. From just a few glimpsed seconds of movie trailer, throughout my reading of Revolutionary Road I pictured the character of Frank Wheeler as Leo DiCaprio (although part of that could just be attributed to perfect casting). For April Wheeler, however, Kate Winslet was far from my mind. Instead I pictured January Jones, the actress who plays Betty Draper in the splendid AMC series Mad Men. There was something in April's focused determination, in the cold clipped rhythm of her short sentences, that seemed very much like Betty.

My identification of April Wheeler with Betty Draper might not be just in my fanciful head. Revolutionary Road must have been required reading for the writers of Mad Men, and I wouldn't be surprised if more than just period flavor made it into the series.

It is 1955. Frank and April Wheeler, both on the edge of turning 30 years old, live with their two small children on Revolutionary Road in the Connecticut suburbs, near the Revolutionary Hill Estates (and yes, that's an ironic use of the word "revolutionary"). Frank takes the train into New York City to his job at Knox Business Machines, a tired old company that might find itself in the advent of the computer revolution. April stays home to watch the children. Everybody drinks and smokes, even during pregnancy. There are no designated drivers.

Revolutionary Road grabbed me with the first chapter: a terrifying description of an evening gone horribly wrong. It is the debut performance of the Laurel Players, a new community theater group founded by the Wheelers and their friends and neighbors. They have chosen The Petrified Forest as their first play, and at first it seems to be going well, but then it just crumbles and all that anybody can do is just wait for it to end.

The applause, not loud, was conscientiously long enough to permit two curtain calls, one that caught all the Players in motion as they walked to the wings, turned back and collided with one another, and another that revealed the three principals in a brief tableau of human desolation: the director blinking myopically, Shep Campbell looking appropriately fierce for the first time all evening, April Wheeler paralyzed in a formal smile. (p. 10)

It turns out the Wheelers and their neighbors founded the Laurel Players not just to have fun putting on a play, but to prove to themselves that they are better than the soul-sucking Suburbs in which they live. Frank and April, after all, had lived in a dingy hip apartment in the West Village while Frank finished Columbia and April was an aspiring actress, and when Frank says that he now has "the dullest job you can possibly imagine," (p. 13) he means it as a point of pride, that it's just a job and he is way to cool to actually enjoy it.

After the Laurel Players disaster, however, the most painful conclusion seem unavoidable: that The Suburbs is precisely where they all belong, and it gets worse when Frank actually begins to enjoy the new possibilities of his work:

“... Basically it's just a terrifically big, terrifically fast adding machine,” he was saying, in reply to her sober wish to know how a computer really worked. “only instead of mechanical parts, you see, it's got thousands of little individual vacuum tubes...” And in a minute he was drawing for her, on a paper napkin, a diagram representing the passage of binary digit pulses through circuitry. (p. 298)

This is a vivid compelling novel of two ordinary people trying to find extraordinary meaning in their lives, and it packs a powerful punch.

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:17:43 GMT Elliott Carter’s Sixties (1969 – 1978) 2008/12/Elliott-Carters-Sixties.html Comments (0) December 8, 2008
New York, N.Y.

In his sixties, Elliott Carter showed no signs of slowing down, writing more music in this decade than in his fortieth or fiftieth (measured both by the number of compositions and total running time) . He continued to compose texturally dense orchestral works, and another challenging string quartet, but as Carter zipped past standard retirement age, there was also a certin shift in emphasis. In this decade you can begin seeing the advent of smaller chamber works that are not quite so overwhelming, including Carter's first vocal music in almost 30 years.

In his fifties, you'll recall, Carter composed two concertos: the Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano with Two Chamber Orchestras and the Piano Concerto. Each is what we usually think of as a concerto: a work for one or more solo instrument and orchestra. Carter called his new concerto Concerto for Orchestra (1969), which sounds like an oxymoron, yet the title has been used by many composers, most notably Bartok. (Wikipedia has a list of them.)

A concerto for orchestra is generally a work in which various instruments or sections of the orchestra are treated as soloists, and Carter's 23-minute long Concerto for Orchestra fits that definition. It was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 125^th anniversary and first performed in February 1970 under the baton of Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein recorded it later that month, and that recording is still available on a Sony CD coupled with some works by Ives.

The Concerto for Orchestra has four movements played without a break, each dominated by a particular combination of instruments. In terms of sheer orchestral sound color, the composition is a feast. Percussion plays a major role in this work, and Carter's mix of the orchestral and percussive sounds — including a major role for the piano, played in the first performances and Bernstein's recording by Paul Jacobs — makes this one of his most easily accessible orchestral works.

Elliott Carter received his second Pulitzer Prize for Music for his String Quartet No. 3 (1973). The work has an unusual form: The performers are divided into two duos, which are instructed to sit as far from each other on the stage as conveniently possible.

Duo I, consisting of the first violin and the cello, is instructed to play with rubato. The various sections of their score are sections marked Furioso, Leggerissimo ("light"), Andante expressivo, and Pizzicato giocoso ("playful"). Duo II (the second violin and viola) plays in strict rhythm and have sections marked Maestoso; Grazioso ("pretty"); Pizzicato giusto, meccanico; Scorrevole ("flowing"); Largo tranquillo; and Appassionato. During the course of this 20-minute work, each of the duos play each of the differently marked sections alone, and also each in duo with all of the other sections of the other, providing many contrasting moods and styles.

Some of the descriptions of the String Quartet No. 3 seem to imply that the performers themselves determine when to begin the different sections. This is not so. The two duos always play in strict synchronization with each other as indicated by the score. Some descriptions make it seem as if (for example) each Furioso section that the Duo I plays is the same. This is not so either. The sections marked the same are similar in character but there is no literal repetition. Although the two Duos often have different time signatures and different tempi, these are set so that the two Duos always begin and end each measure in the score at the same time.

In the 1991 recording by the Julliard String Quartet, Duo II is heard in the left channel and Duo I on the right, although I wish the stereo separation were greater than it is. In the 2005 recording by the Arditti String Quartet, there appears to be no stereo separation at all.

The String Quartet No. 3 begins in a fast and loud fury with an intensity that seems frighteningly severe. If the quartet retained this tone, it would truly be difficult. But once the listerner is softened up, the music gets rather less hectic. There is much amazingly complex pizzicato in this work, with sometimes both duos playing in pizzicato, but usually just one or the other. This is the most obvious type of contrast between the duos. The work is played without a break, but often one of the two duos has nothing to play for several bars.These occasions are almost like little intermissions of comparative relaxation that let us focus more closely on the often striking beauty of Carter's string writing.

In April 1971, Igor Stravinsky died at the age of 88. Stravinsky was a powerful influence on Carter and many other composers of the 20^th century. Carter first knew he wanted to be a composer when he heard the American premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in January 1924 when he was 15 years old. On Carter's 100^th birthday Thursday, the Boston Symphony Orchestra will again play the Rite of Spring at Carnegie Hall, as well as the New York premiere of a new Carter work for piano and orchestra.

Igor Stravinsky and Elliott Carter, photo from the Carter 100 web site.

The Canon for 3 (1971) is a short 2-minute work for "three equal instrument voices" composed in memoriam for Igor Stravinsky. Carter rarely gives his interpreters much leeway in the performances of his work, so this piece is rare in that it doesn't even specify the instruments to be used — only that they be "equal." The first performance was for oboe, clarinet, and trumpet. The only CD recording contains two versions: one on three trumpets, and other with flugelhorn, cornet, and trumpet. This is obviously a minor work but its Stravinskian melodic leaps and harmonies make it a fitting tribute.

The Duo for Violin and Piano (1974) is an 18-minute work in one movement that for much of the opening sounds almost like a work for solo violin, so softly is the piano playing in the background. This work is not quite so (let us say) exhausting as Carter's String Quartet No. 3. The violin playing is fairly slow but dense with fierce stabs of double and triple stops, punctuated with more melodic sections and very little pizzicato. The piano gradually assumes a more dominant role, and helps to move the music in different directions, including faster tempos and more frenetic violin lines.

Elliott Carter's Brass Quintet (1974) is an oddity. This 17-minute work was commissioned by the American Brass Quintet and requires two trumpets, two trombones, and French horn. Judging from Carter's other compositions, these would appear to be his least favorite instruments, and indeed he seems a little weighted down here, as if he can't quite make the brass move with quite the same agility as he can the strings and woodwinds.

Following the premiere of the Brass Quintet Carter gave the American Brass Quintet a Christmas present — the only time he explicitly based a composition on something by another composer reaching back three centuries. The English composer Henry Purcell (1659 – 1695) wrote a number of works for the viol (also known as viola da gamba), which comes in a variety of sizes and is the predecessor to the string instruments we know today. (A recent CD of Purcell's Fantasias for the Viols played by the Hespèrion XX ensemble features a consort of seven viols in five sizes, which have an amazingly deep rich sound when played together.)

Purcell's Fantasia upon One Note in F major is in five parts, one part of which plays a constant C, hence the title, and is generally played on viols. Elliott Carter wrote his 3-minute variation A Fantasy on Purcell's "Fantasia on One Note" (1974) for brass quintet. This is obviously another minor work, but an amusing one.

In 1975 Elliott Carter arranged his three songs to poems by Robert Frost for chamber orchestra, and in the same year wrote his first new vocal music since the 1940s. A Mirror on Which to Dwell (1975) is a 20-minute song cycle for soprano and chamber orchestra set to six poems by Elizabeth Bishop. These poems are too long and not structured quite right for normal song settings (with virtually unsingable passages such as "Days that cannot bring you near or will not, Distance / trying to appear somewhat more obstinate, / argue argue argue with me endlessly neither proving / you less wanted nor less dear"), and so Carter sometimes has the soprano scurry rather quickly through the verses, reminding me somewhat of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire but with a normal singing style. As the work goes on, however, the tempo becomes more relaxed and contemplative. This is a work that has steadily grown on me; I like it more each time I listen to it.

A Symphony of Three Orchestras (1976) was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and first performed in concerts conducted by Pierre Boulez in February 1977, one of which I attended. In that same month, Boulez recorded the work, and it's still available in a Sony CD along with three works by Edgard Varèse.

A Symphony of Three Orchestras was one of six works by contemporary American composers commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to celebrate the American Bicentennial. Earlier in the 1976/1977 Philharmonic season, the premiere of another one of these Bicentennial compositions — Renga with Apartment House 1776 by John Cage, featuring an orchestra accompanied by solo singers representing the Sephardic, Black, Protestant Hymn, and Native American traditions often performing simultaneously — was the scene of a minor scandal when hundreds of audience members walked out during the performance, as reported by the New York Times the following day. ( abstract, full article) That was a Thursday concert and I know I wasn't there; I probably saw the performance on Saturday or Tuesday, and only a few people walked out then. It's amazing how much power a chastisement from the New York Times has.

(And while I'm accessing the New York Times web site, here's the abstract and full article of the New York Times review of Carter's Symphony of Three Orchestras three months after the Cage, and the abstract and full article including a photograph of the composer of the review of Concerto for Orchestra in 1970. The patronizing tone of both reviews is characteristic of the work of Harold C. Schonberg, who had little regard for contemporary music and did not attempt to hide his contempt.)

The single-movement 17-minute Symphony of Three Orchestra has some similarities with the earlier Concerto for Orchestra. Both works divide the orchestra into parts, and both works feature much solo playing and percussion to effect constantly evolving shimmering textures of sound.

Like most people, I guess, there was a period in my life where I struggled with the poetry of John Ashbery, considering myself a hopeless nitwit unless Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror and The Double Dream of Spring made at least a little bit of sense to me. In retrospect I guess there are worse fates than not comprehending Ashbery. I didn't know at the time that Ashbery was a fan of Elliott Carter, and his poetry had been influenced by Carter's music, but it probably should have been obvious.

It was Ashbery who suggested to Carter that they collaborate on a work. Ashbery contributed his poem "Syringa" (published in his book Houseboat Days) based on the Orpheus legend. Carter struggled with setting this poem, and had a breakthrough we he decided to supplement Ashbery's text with simultaneously sung texts in Greek consisting of excerpts of Plato, Aeschylus, Sappho, and others. The result is Syringa (1978), a 20-minute work for mezzo-soprano (singing the Ashbery), baritone (singing the Greek), and chamber orchestra. The simultaneous singing — not exacly a duet — works extraordinarily well, much better than one might expect, partly because Ashbery's poetry turns out to sound terrific when sung, and the Greek counterpoint (stretching the work's meaning back over two millennia) never gets in the way.

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:00:00 GMT Elliott Carter’s Fifties (1959 – 1968) 2008/12/Elliott-Carters-Fifties.html Comments (2) December 5, 2008
New York, N.Y.

The compositions Elliott Carter published in his fifties total just 90 minutes of music (based on the estimated lengths printed in the scores) but include three of his major works. For the most part, Carter has used these compositions to continue exploring the relationship between individual instruments and the ensembles in which thay are presumed to be cooperating.

In the String Quartet No. 2 (1959) each of the instruments is associated with a different set of musical intervals, a different type of rhythm, and a different expressive character. The work is ostensibly divided into four movements with a rather traditional structure (fast, faster, slow, fast) but these movements are preceded and separated by other sections:

	Introduction
I.	Allegro fantastico
	Candenza for Viola
II.	Presto scherzando
	Candenza for Cello
III.	Andante expressivo
	Candenza for Violin I
IV.	Allegro
	Conclusion

These nine sections all have different degrees of cooperation and independence among the four instruments. Over the course of the work, the sections identified by the numbered movements become increasingly cooperative, while the instruments in the cadenzas become increasingly independent. (In the first cadenza, the viola is accompanied by the other instruments, but in the last cadenza, the violin plays mostly alone. Yet this is not like a triumphant cadenza in a violin concerto. The violin seems positively lonely playing by itself, and actually stops playing for several seconds as an invitation for the others to join in.) The Conclusion (like the Introduction) finds what might be assumed to be a happy medium.

This operatic drama isn't all that apparent on casual listening — there aren't any helpful breaks between the sections — or need it be. What is most apparent is the vibrancy and excitement of the string writing. My favorite section is the beautiful Andante, which moves almost like a canon of long-held notes punctuated by fierce interjections.

The String Quartet No. 2 was awarded the first of Carter's two Pulitzer Prizes for Music.

Elliott Carter's second work requiring harpsichord, the Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano with Two Chamber Orchestras (1961) was suggested by the well-known harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick, who played the harpsichord part in the early performances. The performers are requested to sit in a particular arrangement with the harpsichord and piano in front on either side, the two small orchestras behind them, and rows of percussion at the rear. (In the Paul Jacobs/Gilbert Kalish performance on a Nonesuch CD, the harpsichord section is heard on the left channel, the piano section on the right.)

The Double Concerto has much more percussion than Carter ever used before. The work begins with this percussion, obviously suggesting Bartok and Varèse, and uses percussion in combination with the other instruments in building melodic passages buit on timbre. (In German this is known as Klangfarbenmelodie, a word coined by Arnold Schoenberg in 1911.) Both the harpsichord and piano play two kinds of roles in this piece. They both have several solo passages, but at other times they seem to belong to the percussion ensemble.

The Double Concerto is divided into seven sections in a somewhat symmetrical structure built around an inner fast-slow-fast sequence:

But these divisions correspond only roughly with the actual music, which is played mostly without breaks.

After a concert of Elliott Carter's music at the Whitney Museum in November 1974 — a concert that included the Double Concerto with Paul Jacobs playing a harpsichord specifically built for the two Carter works requiring the instrument — I requested Carter's autograph on a score I had brought for the occasion. I asked Carter if the opening of the Double Concerto contained a quotation from the beginning of the slow movement of Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. "No," he replied. When I noted that they were similar, he said "Maybe a little." (Yes, it's a lame story, but it's the only one I have.)

Carter deliberately restrained the piano part in the Double Concerto so it wouldn't overpower the harpsichord. In the work immediately following the Double Concerto he didn't have that restriction. The Piano Concerto (1965) is obviously a more traditional title for a composition, but the form of this particular piano concerto is not. The work has only two movements (identified simply as "I" and "II") of about equal length, but the break is really just a pause in the overall scheme that Elliott Carter once described like this:

The Music of Elliott Carter

Not only is the piano allowed to explore its full expressive power in this work, but it is augmented by its own little ensemble of seven instruments apart from the main orchestra. The increasing dominance of the piano in the second movement, and a seeming counter-attack by the orchestra, is particularly exciting.

Carter dedicated the Piano Concerto to Igor Stravinsky on his 85^th birthday in 1967, the year the concerto was first performed. Stravinsky wrote to Carter the following year "I am more delighted with it than I can tell you. It is a masterpiece, and I like it even more than the Double Concerto." (letter reproduced in The Music of Elliott Carter, p. 263)

Eight Pieces for Four Timpani (1966) is Elliott Carter's first composition for a solo performer other than a pianist. (More solo works would come later.) Six of the pieces were actually composed in 1950 and not published, and two were published in 1960, but these were all revised for the 1966 publication. These pieces explore different interests Carter had in rhythm, and accelerating and decelerating tempi, but in the context of the other three works Carter composed in his fifties, the Eight Pieces is certainly a minor work.

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:48:08 GMT Elliott Carter’s Forties (1949 – 1958) 2008/12/Elliott-Carters-Forties.html Comments (0) December 4, 2008
New York, N.Y.

Elliott Carter dated his Sonata for Violoncello and Piano December 11, 1948, his 40^th birthday, perhaps aware that this work would initiate a new path for his music over the course of the next decade. In his 40's, Carter published only four works totalling less than two hours of music, but nothing here is superfluous.

Although Carter would never again write music with the comparatively simple harmonies and rhythms of works such as the Symphony No. 1, he hadn't quite left neoclassicism behind. The Eight Etudes and a Fantasy (1949) for flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon, originated as examples in a course on orchestration that Carter was teaching at Columbia University. This is a delightful little work: The etudes are short, ranging in length from a minute to two-and-a-half minutes, most based on simple material. In the second etude, for example, a single chord is played for the duration, with different instruments moving in and out of its structure. The third etude is built entirely from a two-note figure tossed around from instrument to instrument. In the seventh etude the instruments play nothing but a G.

The real surprise is at the end. After the eight etudes, the Fantasy begins, and of course we expect something free-form and improvisatory, but the solo eight-bar opening theme of the clarinet sounds oddly like the beginning of... Could it be?... And yes, when the bassoon enters playing the same theme, we know we're in the middle of a fugue. But when the flute enters as the third voice, it suddenly shifts gears and becomes more like the Fantasy we were expecting (or not expecting), as pieces of the previous etudes (and the fugue theme) come together to play.

In 1950 Carter made a temporary move to the desert near Tucson, Arizona, and in the fall and winter of that year continuing into the spring of 1951, he wrote his String Quartet No. 1 (1951):

The Music of Elliott Carter

Carter's five string quartets are among his most important compositions, as essential and as revolutionary as the late string quartets of Beethoven and the six string quartets of Bartok. They are all structured in radically different ways. This first quartet seems to have the traditional four movements, labeled Fantasia, Allegro scorrevole, Adagio, and Variations but these movements flow into one other, and the only breaks in the music are in the middle of the second and last movements, which seems to separate the composition into three parts.

One might think that a stint in the desert might have caused the composer to write a sparse, quiet work, but Elliott Carter's String Quartet No. 1 is easily the most complex music he had written so far. There is a great deal of activity in this work, often several things going on at the same time, and much of it so fast you can't even get a good feel for the rhythms. Yet it never sounds chaotic — at least in the recorded versions I've heard; I suspect a bad performance would be truly a mess — and is instead thrilling and exhilarating with a gorgeous fade-out ending.

The string quartet is of coursey the most common chamber music ensemble since the days of Haydn. But a quartet consisting of flute, oboe, cello, and harpsichord is very unusual. The harpsichord was a staple of the baroque and early classical period (and shows up in the home of every proper young lady in mid-18^th century novels such as Tom Jones and Clarissa) but it was largely supplanted by the louder and more pliable piano in the 19^th century. In the 20^th century, however, the harpsichord made a comeback when performers such as Wanda Landowska and Sylvia Marlowe popularized it for playing the music of Bach, Scarlatti, and other Baroque and early-Classical composers.

Sylvia Marlowe — who was born in 1908 a few months before Elliott Carter but died in 1981 — became professor of harpsichord at the Mannes College of Music in New York in 1948. She commissioned contemporary composers to write new works for the harpsichord, and this is how Elliott Carter came to write his Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello, and Harpsichord (1952).

Score autographed by the composer after a concert probably in November 1974

Carter's sonata has a traditional three-movement fast-slow-fast form, with the movements labeled Risoluto ("bold"), Lento, and Allegro. When listening to this piece, it is always a little startling to discover anew how quiet the harpsichord is when conbined with more modern instruments. In the concertos of Bach, the harpsichord is often in the background playing the continuo part. However, Carter doesn't attempt to mimic Baroque harpsichord playing. Briefly at the beginning the harpsichord seems buried and it pounds out a furious refusal, but soon the other instruments get rather softer to give it some room, particularly in the lovely slow second movement, when the harpsichord alternates with the wind instruments until joining in a fast middle section.

(Although I'm avoiding recommending specific recordings in these blog entries, one essential CD is the Elektra Nonesuch release of both of Carter's harpsichord works with the late Paul Jacobs at the harpsichord, coupled with Paul Jacobs on piano for the Sonata for Violoncello and Piano.)

Everything that Carter had been working on this decade came together in the Variations for Orchestra (1955). In days gone by, the variation form was a particular favorite of music listeners because it was fairly easy to follow. (See Benjamin Britten's Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, a.k.a., Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.) So the first question is: How well can one discern the actual theme and variations in Variations for Orchestra? I'm afraid Carter doesn't make it easy. The work begins with an Introduction, so it's not quite clear when the Theme actually begins or ends. Sometimes the variations appear in bits and pieces before their proper beginnings, and only a few times does Carter insert actual breaks between the individual variations.

Fortunately, some kind soul at New World Records inserted CD index markings to accompany the recording by Michael Gielen and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra:

Index	Time	Section
1	0:00	Introduction. Allegro
2	0:56	Theme. Andante
3	3:05	Variation 1. Vivace leggero
4	4:06	Variation 2. Pesante
5	6:21	Variation 3. Moderato
6	7:52	Variation 4. Ritardando molto
7	8:43	Variation 5. Allegro misterioso
8	9:48	Variation 6. Accelerando molto
9	11:35	Variation 7. Andante
10	13:54	Variation 8. Allegro giocoso
11	14:53	Variation 9. Andante
12	16:47	Finale. Allegro molto

The second column shows the track time corresponding to these indices in case you have a CD player that doesn't show index markings.

Notice the 4^th and 6^th variations: These sections continuously slow down and speed up, respectively, which is a technique that Carter will use in later compositions. And to answer my earlier question: Yes, with a little practice, you can hear the variations, or at least get a vague idea of what's going on, and nevertheless completely enjoy the raucous finale.

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:16:46 GMT Elliott Carter’s Late Twenties and Thirties (1936 – 1948) 2008/12/Elliott-Carters-Late-Twenties-and-Thirties.html Comments (0) December 2, 2008
New York, N.Y.

Listeners familiar with any music of Elliott Carter composed during, say, the past half century are often surprised when they hear Carter's earliest compositions. Carter had studied classical harmony and counterpoint with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and his early compositions certainly make use of that training. This is often described as Carter's neoclassical period — works that rather ignore the innovations of early 20^th century composers such as Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and others, in favor of a rhythmic and harmonic vocabulary closer to the 19^th century, and even the pre-Wagner 19^th century.

Carter's neoclassical phase was probably partly due to the long time he spent finding his own voice. However, the period also stretches into the time of the Second World War, during which it was considered patriotic to create popularly accessible music. It was only following the war that Carter's musical style began to change and become more rhythmically and harmonically complex. Beginning in his late thirties, Elliott Carter became the composer we've come to know and love rather than a lesser Aaron Copland.

The earliest published compositions of Carter (and available on CD) are from his late twenties. The choral works Tarantella (1936), originally composed for the Harvard Classical Club for a performance of Plautus's Mostellaria with a Latin text by Ovid, and To Music (1937), with a text by Robert Herrick, are probably more fun to sing than to listen to, but I find Heart Not So Heavy as Mine (1938), to a text by Emily Dickinson, to be entrancing.

The opening chords of Carter's ballet score Pocahontas (1939) (only a suite from the ballet has been recorded) are pleasantly Stravinskian, and Carter handles a full orchestra with no problem. Carter wrote Pocahontas for Lincoln Kirstein's Ballet Caravan, which later (through some merging) evolved into the New York City Ballet. In its final form, Pocahontas premiered on the same evening as Aaron Copland's Billy the Kid, which has remained an enduringly popular work along with Copland's Rodeo (1942) and Appalachian Spring (1944) while Pocahontas is virtually unknown. It's easy to understand why: Billy the Kid is tuneful and gleeful while Pocahontas is ponderous and austere. During some slow sections one can almost hear Carter making melodic choices that avoid turning the music into something pretty and hummable.

Pocahontas ends with a mournful Pavane, more interesting that the short Elegy (1939) originally written for cello and piano but most commonly recorded in an arrangement for string quartet. The simplicity of the Pastoral (1940) for clarinet (or viola or English horn) and piano is interesting only in contrast with the chamber music Carter will compose later in the decade.

If there's one "musical instrument" I simply can't tolerate, it is the spoken voice, so perhaps I am not the best person to discuss The Defense of Corinth (1941), written for the Harvard Glee Club based on a text of Rabelais in an old English translation. The work uses a speaker, male chorus, and piano. I'm sure it was quite fun at the time.

As I was playing a CD of Carter's Symphony No. 1 (1942) the other day, Deirdre said "Sounds like Copland," but that's not the only problem with this work. It certainly isn't good Copland, and it's oddly unbalanced: The first movement is mostly slow and plodding, and the second is even slower and more solemn, which makes the festive last movement (labeled Vivaciously) seem phony, which then casts suspicions on anything you may have felt during the second movement.

Although Carter would later compose works with the titles A Symphony of Three Orchestras (1976) and Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretiam Spei (1997), there was never a Symphony No. 2.

After the symphony, Carter returned to smaller forms with several wonderful songs for voice and piano: Three Poems by Robert Frost (1942), Warble for Lilac Time (1943) to a text by Walt Whitman, and Voyage (1943) to a text by Hart Crane. Carter later adapted the Robert Frost settings for voice and chamber orchestra, and the other two songs for choruses, but I much prefer the earlier versions with just a sole soprano and piano. (All these songs were recorded that way by Phyllis Bryn-Julson.)

The Harmony of Morning (1944) to a text by Mark van Doren, for women's chorus and chamber orchestra, creates a fascinating balance between the two ensembles. Sometimes the woman sing a cappella or with almost no accompaniment, and sometimes the chamber orchestra plays by itself. It's more like a — I'm not sure what to call it — Concerto for Chorus and Orchestra? Musicians Wrestle Everywhere (1945), for mixed chorus, is Carter's second Emily Dickinson setting and takes unusual harmonic paths through the verses.

Carter wrote the Holiday Overture (1944) to celebrate the liberation of Paris. It begins with a short fanfare, and you expect a longer melody to follow, but the second melody in the strings winds onward without ever quite coming to a resolution, almost as if Carter were experimenting with something here that doesn't quite fit.

The Piano Sonata (1946) is one of Carter's most popular works, but it is also regarded as the first of his "break-through" or "transition" works that move away from the earlier neoclassicism. The two movements are marked as Maestoso and Andante but this is a piece of many moods and dramatic contrasts. The opening chords are reminiscent of a Debussy Prelude, but it breaks away into exquisite syncopated patterns, and goes off into other directions as well. The second movement begins almost like a hymn — something out of Ives' Concord Sonata perhaps — until it picks up speed and energy and propels itself along more like early Stravinsky. Towards the end the music becomes very slow, quiet, and ends without a flourish or fuss.

Carter would not write another work for solo piano for over 30 years, but recently he's written several more. It's amusing to see CDs of Elliott Carter's piano music entitled The Complete Music for Piano (three works played by Charles Rosen, released 1997), Complete Piano Works (five works played by Winston Choi, 2003), and Elliott Carter at 100: The Complete Piano Music (seven works played by Ursula Oppens, 2008). I suspect Miss Oppens herself regards the CD title as a little premature.

The Minotaur (1947) is Carter's second and final ballet score. It was written for the Ballet Society, another predecessor to the New York City Ballet. It contains some wonderfully energetic passages, including an off-kilter dance for Ariadne and Theseus, and the use of a chamber orchestra gives many individual instruments much solo face time.

Carter wrote Emblems (1947) for the Harvard Glee Club, but apparently due to its difficulty it was not performed in its entirety until 1952. Several minutes into the work, a piano enters sounding somewhat reminiscent of the Piano Sonata and assuming a much larger role than a typical choral accompaniment. Emblems was Carter's last work for the chorus. Like The Minotaur it seems awkward, as if Carter were trying to adjust familiar forms to a new vocabulary.

In the delightful Woodwind Quintet (1948) the flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon only rarely play in unison, and the rhythms are often quirky. It's easy pleasurable listening without being simplistic.

Judging strictly by the number of recordings, the Sonata for Violoncello and Piano (1948) is Elliott Carter's most popular work. (The work will be performed on May 11, 2009, with Daniel Barenboim at the piano in an all-Carter concert at Zankel Hall.) In an interview, Carter has said that in the opening movement he tried to combine the two dominent trends of progressive music in the early 20^th century by juxtaposing the rhythmic music of Stravinsky in the pulses of the piano with the long conversational melodies of Schoenberg in the cello. But the music really sounds nothing like Stravinsky or Schoenberg. Unlike the Piano Sonata where other composers make periodic appearances, the Sonata for Violoncello and Piano is all Carter. This work represents a great expansion of Carter's rhythmic and harmonic vocabulary, but it is still extremely accessible, with a rollicking second movement, a dramatic third movement, and a vibrant finale that surprisingly slows down towards the end, gets softer and sparser, and then twinkles into nothingness.

The score of the Sonata for Violoncello and Piano is dated December 11, 1948 — Carter's 40^th birthday. During his forties, Carter will publish only four works — and in his fifties only three more — and all of those will also have soft undramatic endings — but perhaps not-so-soft beginnings and middles.

(More detailed descriptions of Carter's music can be found in David Schiff's The Music of Elliott Carter, second edition, Cornell University Press, 1998. Recordings of many of the compositions I've mentioned can be purchased from the Elliott Carter page at ArkivMusic.com. Not available there but orderable through New World Records is an album of Elliott Carter's orchestral songs and choral music from 1936 through 1947.)

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:57:36 GMT The Idiots at HIP 2008/12/020343.html Comments (22) December 2, 2008
New York, N.Y.

Because I'm self-employed, I pay for my own health insurance and I get it through an HMO called HIP, also known as HIP Health Plan of New York, an EmblemHealth company. My current monthly premium is $568.55, which I understand from my self-employed friends is not too bad.

But yesterday evening I opened a letter from Charles Mellia, Managing Director of Customer Service, informing me that my new monthly rate effective January 1, 2009 will be (deep breath) $1,453.04, representing an increase of over 150%.

Naturally this threw me into a state of total anguish. I quickly calculated that next year I would have to come up with more than $10,000 of additional income to pay for this rate increase. No, no! More than that! Because I'm not an incorporated business, I can't deduct my health insurance from my federal, state, and city income tax calculations, so the additional income I'll need is actually closer to $15,000.

And with this anguish came more anguish: Anguish over my plummetting income, anguish over book sales that plateau at 4,000 copies, anguish over my inability to get a decent book contract, anguish over my inability to get other work, etc, etc. Everything just piled up on top of everything else.

It wasn't a pleasant evening. Deirdre was at a class, and I couldn't talk to anybody at HIP because it was after hours and nobody was there.

Eventually I calmed down. I knew from past experience that the people at HIP are not too good with numbers, and they've done idiotic things in the past. A few years ago I changed my premium billing from semi-annually to monthly, and of course they screwed that up, and I had to spend some time on the phone walking them through the calculation.

Moreover, my years working at New York Life Insurance Company, mostly in Individual Health Insurance product development, resulted in my becoming very familiar with the New York State Insurance Department. I even took a business trip to the department in Albany one year. I knew they would never approve a rate increase of 150%.

I also did some Google searches for people expressing outrage that HIP had increased their premiums 150%, and I couldn't find anything. I became more convinced than ever this letter was just some typical stupid idiotic mistake.

This morning I called HIP again, and I was promptly connected to a "representative," and when I expressed my surprise at getting a rate increase of 150% I was assured that it was indeed correct and the increase was necessary because "we're in a recession." (Interesting that the letters were sent out before the official pronouncement of the recession.)

By this time, however, I was so convinced the letter was wrong, I wondered if my "representative" really understood what 150% meant. Lots of people — not just HIP employees — don't understand percentages, so I started quoting the actual numbers: $568.55 this year and up to $1,453.04 next year. "That's almost $900 more per month," I said, and finally he excused himself and I was on hold for ten minutes.

When he returned, he acknowledged that "those letters had gone out by mistake." My actual monthly premium next year would be $653.83, an increase of only 15%.

The idiots at HIP are supposed to be in the health care business, but how is receiving a notice of a premium increase of 150% good for my health? I lost several hours of my life in anguish over this thing, more time this morning on the telephone, and more time writing this blog entry to get the whole thing out of my system.

I emerged comparatively unscathed but I can easily imagine people reading such a letter from Charles Mellia, Managing Director of Customer Service, and keeling over on the spot.

Their death certificates would probably indicate "heart attack" but that wouldn't be the real cause of death, would it?

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:43:11 GMT Celebrating the Elliott Carter Centennial 2008/12/Celebrating-the-Elliott-Carter-Centennial.html Comments (1) December 1, 2008
New York, N.Y.

In 10 days, American composer Elliott Carter will celebrate his 100^th birthday, and he won't be the only one celebrating: Many orchestras and ensembles in the United States and around the world will be playing Carter works this season, and several new recordings have been released in commemoration.

The best thing about this particular centennial is that Elliott Carter is still actively composing. At the end of next week, three concerts in New York City will feature a total of two world premieres and two New York premieres.

Elliott Carter was born in 1908 in New York City to a family whose