The Third Quartet I made the instruments in pairs - Two different pairs - Violin and viola, and violin and cello. They played very different things from each other all through the whole piece.
From Elliott Carter
Silences between movements are employed only in order to bring the opposing duo to the fore.
Right at the end of the war I wrote a piano sonata, which was written at a time when Sam Barber used to come down here and we used to have lunch together in a very nice old hotel that's now not there.
My entire life has really revolved around music that was written about the time that I was born, 1908, to just before the First World War and shortly after it. This music I've always known, and it is that music that's most important to me.
An auditory scenario for the players to act out with their instruments.
Well when I was young, when I was very young, when I was a little boy I don't remember the music I heard, but there was an article in the Brooklyn Daily written by my Aunt about how I could choose phonograph records.
I've known those pieces ever since I was about 16 or 17; I also at that time was taken to meet Charles Ives whom I got to know fairly well. He was the one who wrote a recommendation for me to get into college.
In any case, Ives encouraged me to go into music even though he himself had such a hard time being a composer.
It was only later on that I became more interested in older music.
These wealthy people were very interested in contemporary music. They wanted to help diffuse it and get it to be known to other people.
3 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives