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Elliott Carter (b. 1908)
Holiday Overture
Elliott Carter is one
of the greatest American composers of the late 20th century,
but his music is not played much in Europe, and even less
in America. There are probably two main reasons for this
- with a few exceptions, his music is extremely difficult
to play, and is equally challenging for audiences to listen
to. (But don't worry - the Holiday Overture is one of
the exceptions.)
Born in New York in 1908, Carter was much influenced by
Henry James and read English Literature at Harvard University
before switching to music. Like many American composers,
he spent three years studying composition with Nadia Boulanger
in Paris. He is one of the few composers to have been
significantly influenced by the experiments of Charles
Ives, in which Ives assembles apparently unrelated musical
lines into a collage of sound, which can seem both fascinating
and bizarre. This and his internationalism, together with
his obvious intelligence and a slightly ironic outlook
have made him rather suspect to American critics.
However the Holiday Overture is altogether more simple,
bright and breezy. He wrote it in 1944 to celebrate the
liberation of Paris (of which he had many fond memories)
at the end of the Second World War. Aaron Copland was
staying with him at the time, writing Appalachian Spring,
and there are some echoes of that work in the Overture
- so it was rather unfair of Copland to describe the Overture
as "another complicated Carter composition".
Lasting only ten minutes, the overture starts energetically
in C major, with a jazzy tune in the Copland / Bernstein
mould. Although it stays in 4 in a bar throughout, the
music gradually gets more complex, playing different themes
in different keys and speeds against each other. Intricate
sections alternate with simpler ones, but always in the
same driving jazzy tempo, and the density builds up to
a great crunchy climax. The exuberant final bars restore
C major, combining 5 different versions of the main tune
in their tumbling dash to the end. |
