On today’s date in 2003, a new orchestral work by American composer Elliott Carter had its premiere in Boston. Carter was then 94 — he would live to be a month shy of 104, and, even more remarkable, he was composing new works almost to the end of his days.
When you live that long, you experience a lot of changes. Carter had studied English and Greek at Harvard, and recalled a time when at Boston Symphony concerts conservative members of the audience would joke that the emergency exits signs should read “Exit — in case of Brahms.” Apparently, even in the 1920s, for some Boston Brahmins, Brahms was still “difficult music.”
For his part, Carter felt the complexity of his own music reflected the complex world into which he was born — the world of Proust, Picasso and Stravinsky. His music was technically very, very difficult, but Carter always insisted it was all in service of the greater freedom and fantasy of his imagination, not difficult for difficulty’s sake.
Carter’s Boston Concerto was dedicated to the memory of his wife, Helen, who died shortly before its premiere. He prefaced his score with the opening lines from the poem “Rain” by William Carlos Williams:
“As the rain falls
So does
your love
bathe every
open
Object of the world—“
Elliott Carter (1908-2012): Boston Concerto; BBC Symphony; Oliver Knussen, conductor; Bridge 9184