Carter's ‘Classic’ Modernism

In a recent interview Elliott Carter reaffirmed his commitment to ‘modernism’, a concept which he went on to define – with respect to music – as ‘the concern with an expanded vocabulary which Stravinsky, Varése and Schoenberg introduced before the first world war – and after’. This ‘expanded vocabul...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Tempo (London) 1994-06, Vol.189 (189), p.2-5
Main Author: Bye, Antony
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Art music
Classicism
Composers
Modernism
Modernist music
Musical dissonance
Musical rhythm
Orchestras
String quartets
Wind instruments
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Summary:In a recent interview Elliott Carter reaffirmed his commitment to ‘modernism’, a concept which he went on to define – with respect to music – as ‘the concern with an expanded vocabulary which Stravinsky, Varése and Schoenberg introduced before the first world war – and after’. This ‘expanded vocabulary’ involved ‘Not only the whole field of dissonance, but also new points of view about rhythm and new sonorities’. Carter's musical modernism was also bound up with an awareness ‘that we were living in a world… completely changed by the writings of Freud’ and that ‘the whole sense of the subconscious and the conscious were much more intricately involved that we had thought’.
ISSN:0040-2982
1478-2286
DOI:10.1017/S0040298200003417