Pocahontas, Suite from the Ballet

Year
1939 (rev. 1961)
Duration
20'
Category
Orchestra

Instrumentation

3(III=picc).2.2.2-4.3.3.1-4timp.perc(4):xyl/tgl/cyms/susp.cym/tam-t/2 Indian drums/SD/TD/BD/sleigh bells/gourd rattle/tin rattle/slapstick-harp-pft-strings

Dedication

Lincoln Kirstein

Awards

Juilliard Publication Award, 1940

Buy Score

Associated Music Publishers

Manuscripts

Paul Sacher Stiftung
Library of Congress (Holograph score)

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Pocahontas clip

While I was a student in Paris the choreographer George Balanchine had two weeks of Balanchine ballets in the Champs Élysée. A man I’d known in college, Lincoln Kirstein, was very much impressed by this and it was he that got George Balanchine to come over to the United States and start the New York City Ballet. In the early days, I was a musical advisor to that for a while. I was commissioned actually to write one ballet for them, which was done in 1939 on the subject of Pocahontas.

– Elliott Carter

Recordings (3)

American Masters: Elliott Carter
CRI CD 610 (1991)
American Composers Orchestra, Paul Dunkel | Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano | Thomas Paul | Speculum Musicae | The Group for Contemporary Music
Elliott Carter: The Early Music
CRI SD 475; ACS 6003 (1982)
American Composers Orchestra, Paul Dunkel
Pocahontas (suite from the ballet); Piano Sonata
Epic LC 3850 (mono); BC 1250 (stereo) (1962)
Zürich Radio Orchestra | Jacques Monod, conductor | Charles Rosen, piano