Bibliography

Elliott Carter: Selected Bibliography

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Writings by Carter

  • The Writings of Elliott Carter. Ed. Else Stone and Kurt Stone. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1977.
  • Carter [in Italian]. Ed. Enzo Restagno. Torino: E.D.T. (Edizioni di Torino), 1989. Includes Italian translations of some of Carter’s essays.
  • Collected Essays and Lectures, 1937–1995. Ed. Jonathan W. Bernard. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1997.
  • La dimension du temps: Seize essais sur la musique. Geneva: Contrechamps editions, 1998. French translations of some of Carter’s essays.
  • Harmony Book. Ed. Nicholas Hopkins and John F. Link. New York: Carl Fischer, 2002.

Interviews with Carter

  • Anderson, Kurt. “Elliott Carter.” Studio 360, Feb 2009.
  • Baker, Alan. “An Interview with Elliott Carter.” American Mavericks, Jul 2002.
  • Bernard, Jonathan W. “An Interview with Elliott Carter.” Perspectives of New Music 28, no. 2 (Summer, 1990): 180–214.
  • Boretz, Benjamin. “Conversation with Elliott Carter.” Perspectives of New Music 8/2 (1970): 1–22.
  • Carvin, Andy. “American Gothic: An Interview with Elliott Carter.” Feb, 1994.
  • Dufallo, Richard. “Elliott Carter.” In Trackings, 269–85. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
  • Duffie, Bruce. “Composer Elliott Carter: A Conversation with Bruce Duffie.” Jun, 1986.
  • Edwards, Allen. Flawed Words and Stubborn Sounds: A Conversation with Elliott Carter. New York: Norton, 1971.
  • Edwards, Allen, Charles Rosen, and Heinz Holliger. Entretiens avec Elliott Carter. Geneva: Contrechamps Editions, 1992.
  • Gagne, Cole, and Tracy Caras. “Elliott Carter.” In Soundpieces: Interviews with American Composers, 87–99. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1982.
  • Lesh, Phil. “Interview with Elliott Carter.”
  • Messinis, Mario. “Elliott Carter: sulla musica moderna.” Musica/Realtà 5, no. 15 (December 1984): 24–27.
  • Meyer, Felix. “Elliott Carter in Conversation with Felix Meyer, New York, April 20, 2001.” In Heinz Holliger, Lauds and Lamentations: Music of Elliott Carter and Isang Yun. ECM New Series 1848/49, 2003: 26-31.
  • Oteri, Frank J. “The Career of a Century.” Feb 4, 2000 (pdf).
  • __________. “Elliott Carter Centenary: Video Interview Podcast.” 2008.
  • Pozzi, Raffaele. “Elliott Carter Talking to Raffaele Pozzi.” Tempo 167 (December 1988): 14–17. English translation by Louise Forster of a conversation first published in Italian as “Elliott Carter” in Piano Time 24 (March 1985): 31–33.
  • Restagno, Enzo. Elliott Carter: In Conversation with Enzo Restagno for Settembre Musica 1989. Trans. Katherine Silberblatt. ISAM Monographs, no. 32. Brooklyn, NY: Institute for Studies in American Music, 1991.

Books about Carter’s music

  • Capuzzo, Guy. Elliott Carter’s What Next?: Communication, Cooperation, and Separation. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2012.
  • Doering, William T. Elliott Carter: A Bio-Bibliography. Bio-bibliographies in Music, no. 51. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993.
  • Eisenlohr, Henning. Komponieren als Entscheidungsprozess: Studien zur Problematik von Form und Gestalt, dargestellt am Beispiel von Elliott Carters Trilogy for Oboe and Harp (1992). Kassel: Gustav Bosse, 1999.
  • Elliott Carter: A Centennial Celebration. Ed. Marc Ponthus and Susan Tang. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2008.
  • Elliott Carter Studies. Ed. Marguerite Boland and John Link. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
  • Emmery, Laura. Compositional Process in Elliott Carter’s String Quartets: A Study in Sketches. New York: Routledge, 2020.
  • Harvey, David I. H. The Later Music of Elliott Carter. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989.
  • Hommage à Elliott Carter. Ed. Max Noubel. Sampzon: Éditions Delatour France, 2013.
  • Link, John F. Elliott Carter: A Guide to Research. New York and London: Garland, 2000.
  • __________. Elliott Carter’s Late Music. Cambridge University Press, 2022.
  • Meyer, Felix and Anne C. Shreffler. Elliott Carter: A Centennial Portrait in Letters and Documents. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2008.
  • Noubel, Max. Elliott Carter ou le temps fertile. Geneva: Contrechamps editions, 2000.
  • Rosen, Charles. The Musical Languages of Elliott Carter. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1984.
  • Schiff, David. The Music of Elliott Carter. London: Eulenburg Books; New York: Da Capo Press. Revised second edn. London: Faber; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.
  • __________. Carter. Oxford University Press, 2018.
  • Wierzbicki, James. Elliott Carter. Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2011.

Films and Video Recordings

  • Benson, Alan. Elliott Carter. The South Bank Show, London Weekend Television, 1986. Edited and presented by Melvyn Bragg.
  • Hegedus, Chris and D. A. Pennebaker. Elliott Carter. Produced by Programs in the Arts of SUNY and Pennebaker Inc. Center of Creative and Performing Arts at the State University of New York at Buffalo, 1980.
  • Scheffer, Frank. Time Is Music: Elliott Carter and John Cage. Produced by Henk Pauwels. Sine Film/Video, 1988.
  • Scheffer, Frank. A Labyrinth of Time. Alegri Film BV DVD, 2004.

Special issues of journals

  • “Dossier Elliott Carter.” In Entretemps 4 (June 1987): 49-114.
  • Carter 85th. Sonus 14, no. 2 (Spring 1994).
  • Elliott Carter: “America’s Great Musical Poet.” Sonus 19, no. 1 (Fall 1998).
  • Elliott Carter: Settings. Special issue of Chicago Review 58, nos. 3-4 (Summer 2014).

Articles and other sources

  • Albright, Daniel. “Elliott Carter and Poetry: Listening to, Listening Through.” In Music Speaks: On the Language of Opera, Dance, and Song. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 105-21.
  • Barenboim, Daniel. “Elliott Carter.” In Journal, www.danielbarenboim.com/elliott-carter.
  • Bernard, Jonathan W. “Elliott Carter and the Modern Meaning of Time.” Musical Quarterly 79 (1995): 644–682.
  • __________. “The Evolution of Elliott Carter’s Rhythmic Practice.” Perspectives of New Music 26/2 (1988): 164-203.
  • __________. “Poem as non-verbal text: Elliott Carter’s Concerto for Orchestra and Saint-John Perse’s Winds.” In C. Ayrey and M. Everist (eds.), Analytical Strategies and Musical Interpretation. Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 169-206.
  • __________. “The String Quartets of Elliott Carter.” In Jones, Evan (ed.), Intimate Voices: Aspects of Construction and Character in the Twentieth-Century String Quartet. Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press, 2009, vol. 2, pp. 238-75.
  • Boland, Marguerite. “‘Linking’ and ‘Morphing’: Harmonic Flow in Elliott Carter’s Con Leggerezza Pensosa.” Tempo 60/237 (2006): 33-43.
  • Boykan, Martin. “Elliott Carter and the Postwar Composers.” Perspectives of New Music 2, no. 2 (Spring–Summer, 1964): 125–28. Reprinted in Perspectives on American Composers, ed. Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone, 213–16. (New York: Norton, 1971.)
  • Brody, Martin. “Cold War Genius: Music and Cultural Diplomacy at the American Academy in Rome.” In Felix Meyer, Carol J. Oja, Wolfgang Rathert, and Anne C. Shreffler (eds.), Crosscurrents: American and European Music in Interaction, 1900-2000. Suffolk and Rochester: The Boydell Press, 2014), pp. 375-387.
  • Capuzzo, Guy. “The Complement Union Property in the Music of Elliott Carter.” Journal of Music Theory 48/1 (2004): 1–24.
  • Carey, Christian. “Elliott Carter: ‘Fountain of Youth’.” Signal to Noise: The Journal of Improvised and Experimental Music 41 (2006): 16–19.
  • __________. “Narratology In the Practice Session Model of Elliott Carter’s String Quartet No. 5. Tempo 77 (2023): 17–25.
  • Coulembier, Klaas. “Multi-temporality: Analyzing Simultaneous Time Layers in Selected Compositions by Elliott Carter and Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf.” D.M. dissertation, University of Leuven, 2013.
  • __________. “Static Structure, Dynamic Form: An Analysis of Elliott Carter’s Concerto for Orchestra.” Perspectives of New Music 54, no. 1 (Winter 2016): 97-136.
  • Danuser, Hermann. “Spätwerk als Lyrik: Über Elliott Carters Gesänge nach Dichtungen von Elizabeth Bishop, John Ashbery und Robert Lowell.” In Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller (ed.), Bericht über das internationale Symposion “Charles Ives un die amerikanische Musiktradition bis zur Gegenwart,” Köln, 1988. Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1990, pp. 195–222. Reprinted as “Elliott Carter, Late Work as Lyric Poetry,” trans. Matthias Truniger, Sonus 19, no. 1 (Fall 1998): 53–66.
  • DeLio, Thomas. “Spatial Design in Elliott Carter’s Canon for 3.” Indiana Theory Review 4, no. 1 (Fall, 1980), pp. 1–12.
  • __________. “A Web of Words: Elliott Carter’s ‘End of a Chapter’.” College Music Symposium 56 (2016).
  • Derby, Richard. “Carter’s Duo for Violin and Piano.” Perspectives of New Music 20, nos. 1–2 (Fall–Winter 1981/Spring–Summer 1982): 149–68.
  • Emmery, Laura. “Rhythmic Process in Elliott Carter’s Fourth String Quartet.” Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung 26 (April 2013): 34-38.
  • Glock, William. “A Note on Elliott Carter.” The Score and I.M.A. Magazine 12 (June 1955): 47–52.
  • Goldman, Richard Franko. “Curent Chronicle.” The Musical Quarterly 37/1 (Jan. 1951): 83-84. Reprinted in Richard Franko Goldman, Selected Essays and Reviews 1948–1968. Ed. Dorothy Klotzman. Brooklyn: Institute for Studies in American Music, 1980, pp. 69–74.
  • __________. “The Music of Elliott Carter.” Musical Quarterly 43, no. 2 (April 1957): 151–70. Reprinted in Richard Franko Goldman, Selected Essays and Reviews 1948–1968, ed. Dorothy Klotzman, 33–47 (Brooklyn: Institute for Studies in American Music, 1980).
  • Gottlieb, Jane. “Elliott Carter’s Piano Concerto and the Ford Foundation’s Support of American Composers and Performers.” In Bruce Brubaker and Jane Gottlieb (eds.), Pianist, Scholar, Connoisseur: Essays in Honor of Jacob Lateiner. Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 2000, pp. 175-186.
  • Gratzer, Wolfgang. “Wahlverwandter des Expressionismus: Über Elliott Carters Traditionsverständnis” (A relative of expressionism: Elliott Carter’s understanding of tradition). In Die neue Musik in Amerika: Über Traditionslosigkeit und Traditionslastigkeit, ed. Otto Kolleritsch, 113–32. Studien zur Wertungsforschung 27 (1994): Vienna and Graz: Universal, 1994.
  • Griffiths, Paul. “What Next? — A Journal.” In Elliott Carter: What Next?/Asko Concerto. ECM New Series 1817, 2003, pp. 24–33.
  • Guberman, Daniel. “Elliott Carter’s Cold War Abandonment of the Chorus.” In Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung 25 (April 2012), pp. 36-40.
  • Jenkins, J. Daniel. “After the Harvest: Carter’s Fifth String Quartet and the Late Late Style.” Music Theory Online 16, no. 3 (August 2010): n.p.
  • Kerman, Joseph. “American Music: The Columbia Series,” The Hudson Review 11, no. 3 (Autumn 1958): 420–30.
  • Koivisto, Tiina. “Aspects of Motion in Elliott Carter’s Second String Quartet.” Intégral 10 (1996): 19-52.
  • __________. “Syntactical Space and Registral Spacing in Elliott Carter’s Remembrance.” Perspectives of New Music 42, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 158-89.
  • Kostelanetz, Richard. “The Astounding Success of Elliott Carter.” High Fidelity 18, no. 5 (May 1968): 41–45. Revised version reprinted as “Elliott Carter: Effort and Excellence,” in Richard Kostelanetz, Master Minds: Portraits of Contemporary American Artists and Intellectuals, 289–303 (Toronto: Macmillan Company, 1969).
  • Kramer, Lawrence. “Song As Insight—John Ashbery, Elliott Carter, and Orpheus.” In Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984, pp. 203–21.
  • Link, John F. “Long-Range Polyrhythms in Elliott Carter’s Recent Music.” Ph.D. dissertation, City University of New York, 1994. www.johnlinkmusic.com/JohnLinkDiss.pdf.
  • Lochhead, Judy. “On the ‘Framing’ Music of Elliott Carter’s First String Quartet.” In Raphael Atlas and Michael Cherlin (eds.), Musical Transformation and Musical Intuition: Essays in Honor of David Lewin. Roxbury, Massachusetts: Ovenbird Press, 1994, pp. 179-98.
  • Mailman, Joshua B. “An Imagined Drama of Competitive Opposition in Carter’s Scrivo in Vento, with Notes on Narrative, Symmetry, Quantitative Flux, and Heraclitus.” Music Analysis 28, nos. 2-3 (2009), 373-422.
  • Mead, Andrew. “Fuzzy Edges: Notes on Musical Interaction in the Music of Elliott Carter.” Elliott Carter Studies Online 1 (2016), n.p. French translation as « Abords indistincts: quelques considérations sur l’interaction musicale chez Elliott Carter » in Hommage à Elliott Carter, trans. and ed. Max Noubel (Sampzon: Éditions Delatour France, 2013), pp. 117-146.
  • __________. “Pitch Structure in Elliott Carter’s String Quartet No. 3.” Perspectives of New Music 22 (1984): 31-60.
  • Meyer, Felix. “‘… keine Geduld mehr für längere Sachen’: Ein Blick auf szei späte Miniaturen von Elliott Carter.” In Ereignis und Exegese: Musikalische Interpretation, Interpretation der Musik. Schliengen: Edition Argus, 2011, pp. 769-82.
  • __________. “Klassizistische Tendenzen in der amerikanischen Musik der zwanziger bis vierziger Jahre” (Classicizing tendencies in American music from the 1920s to the 1940s). In Die klassizistische Moderne in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Hermann Danuser, 187–200. Publications of the Paul Sacher Foundation, vol. 5. Winterthur: Amadeus, 1997.
  • Neidich, Charles. “Returning to the Winds, Carter Pens New Piece for the N.Y.W.Q. [New York Woodwind Quintet],” The Juilliard Journal Online 25, no. 5 (February 2010): n.p.
  • Nichols, Jeff. “Mistaken Identities in Carter’s Variations for Orchestra.” Elliott Carter Studies Online 1 (2016), n.p.
  • Noubel, Max. “Expressivité et structure chez Carter. Les caractères musicaux et les formes de la composition.” Dissonance 58 (1998): 11-17.
  • __________. “Le Quatuor pour hautbois et cordes d’Elliott Carter ou la complexité de l’évidence.” In Musicorum. Tours, Presses Universitaires François-Rabelais, 2003. Reprinted February 2006, Site Musique du Centre de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage, Textes en ligne.
  • __________. “‘What do I say? How do I say? Who am I to say?’: Quelques considérations sur la dramaturgie musicale dans What Next? d’Elliot Carter.” In Giordano Ferrari (ed.), L’écriture musicale et son expression scénique au XXe siècle. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007.
  • Oteri, Frank J. “The Carter Century.” Symphony 59, no. 6 (Nov-Dec 2008): 60–66.
  • __________. “Elliott Carter: The Simultaneity of Disparate Voices.” Chamber Music 25, no. 3 (May-June 2008): 24–31.
  • Piencikowski, Robert. “Fonction relative du timbre dans la musique contempraine: Messiaen, Carter, Boulez, Stockhausen” (The relative function of timbre in contemporary music). Analyse musicale 3 (April 1986): 51–53.
  • Pollack, Howard. Harvard Composers: Walter Piston and His Students, from Elliott Carter to Frederic Rzewski. Metuchen, NJ, and London: Scarecrow Press, 1992.
  • Porter, Andrew. Music of Three Seasons: 1974–1977. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1978.
  • __________. Music of Three More Seasons: 1977–1980. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981
  • Poudrier, Ève. “Local Polymetric Structures in Elliott Carter’s 90+ for Piano (1994).” In The Legacy of Modernism, ed. Björn Heile. London: Ashgate, 2008.
  • __________. “Toward a General Theory of Polymeter: Polymetric Potential and Realization in Elliott Carter’s Solo and Chamber Instrumental Works After 1980.” Ph.D. dissertation, City University of New York, 2008.
  • Rao, Nancy Yunhwa. “Allegro scorrevole in Carter’s First String Quartet: Crawford and the Ultramoden Inheritance. Music Theory Spectrum 36, no. 2 (2014): 181-202.
  • Ravenscroft, Brenda. “Setting the Pace: The Role of Speeds in Elliott Carter’s A Mirror on Which to Dwell.” Music Analysis 22 (2003): 253–82.
  • Reis, Claire C. “Elliott C. Carter.” In Composers in America: Biographical Sketches of Living Composers with a Record of Their Works, 1912-1937. New York: Macmillan, 1938. Rev. and enlarged edn., New York: Macmillan, 1947.
  • Roeder, John. “Autonomy and Dialogue in Elliott Carter’s Enchanted Preludes.” In Michael Tenzer (ed.), Analytical Studies in World Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 377-414.
  • __________. “A Transformational Space for Elliott Carter’s Recent Complement-Union Music.” In Timour Klouche and Thomas Noll (eds.), Mathematics and Computation in Music: First International Conference, MCM 2007. Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 2009, pp. 303-10.
  • Rosenfeld, Paul. “The Newest American Composers.” Modern Music 15, no. 3 (March–April 1938): 153–59.
  • Rothstein, Edward. “The Twilight Fantasies of Elliott Carter.” The New Republic (Dec 26, 1988): 23–28.
  • Schmidt, Dörte. “Emanzipation des musikalischen Diskurses: Die Skizzen zu Elliott Carters zweitem Streichquartett und seine theoretischen Arbeiten in den späten 50er Jahren” (Emancipation of musical discourse: The sketches for Elliott Carter’s String Quartet No. 2 and his theoretical works in the late 1950s). In Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, ed. Günther Wagner, 209–48. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1995.
  • __________. “Formbildende Tendenzen der Musikalischen Zeit. Elliott Carters Konzept der Tempo-Modulation im zweiten Quartett als Folgerung aus dem Denken Schönbergs.” In Günther Wagner (ed.), Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz 1999, Stuttgart: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2000, pp. 118-36.
  • __________. “‘The practical problems of the composer’: Der schwierige Weg vom Auftrag zur Urauffuhrung von Elliott Carters zweitem Streichquartett” (The difficult road from commission to premiere of Elliott Carter’s String Quartet No. 2). Die Musikforschung 48, no. 4 (October–December 1995): 400–403.
  • __________. “What Next? oder: Ein Portrait des Künstlers als grand old man.” In Schönberg: Von heute auf morgen; Carter: What Next?, Zwei Einakter. Ed. Staatsoper Unter den Linden. Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig: Insel, 1999.
  • Shreffler, Anne C. “‘Give the Music Room’: Elliott Carters ‘View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress’ aus A Mirror on Which to Dwell” (in German). In Felix Meyer (ed.), Quellenstudien II. Winterthur: Amadeus Verlag, 1993, pp. 255–83.
  • __________. “Instrumental Dramaturgy as Humane Comedy: What Next? by Elliott Carter and Paul Griffiths.” In Hermann Danuser with Matthias Kassel (eds.), Musiktheater heute. Mainz: Schott, 2003, pp. 147-71.
  • Skulsky, Abraham. “Elliott Carter.” American Composers Alliance Bulletin (Summer 1953): 2-16.
  • Taruskin, Richard. “Standoff (II): Music in History: Carter.” In The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, vol. 6, pp. 261-306.
  • Vermaelen, Denis. “Aspects de la pensée musicale d’Elliott Carter dans Syringa: Invention formelle et réflexion sur le temps.” Revue de musicologie 85/1 (1999): 97-118.
  • __________. “Elliott Carter’s Sketches: Spiritual Exercises and Craftsmanship.” In A Handbook to Twentieth Century Musical Sketches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 161-175.
  • Weston, Craig A. “Inversion, Subversion, and Metaphor: Music and Text in Elliott Carter’s A Mirror on Which to Dwell.” D.M.A. dissertation, University of Washington, 1992.
  • Whittall, Arnold. “Modernist Aesthetics, Modernist Music: Some Analytical Perspectives. In Music Theory in Concept and Practice, ed. James M. Baker, David W. Beach, Jonathan W. Bernard, 157–80. Rochester and Suffolk: University of Rochester Press, 1997.
  • __________. “‘A Play of Pure Forces’? Elliott Carter’s Opera in Context.” The Musical Times 149 (Winter, 2008): 3–13.Albright, Daniel. “Elliott Carter and Poetry: Listening to, Listening Through.” In Music Speaks: On the Language of Opera, Dance, and Song. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 105-21.