Elliott Carter: Quotes about people

Elliott Carter was American composer. Explore interesting quotes on people.

Elliott Carter: 12 quotes0 likes

“People call my music complex because I will have instruments playing at their own paces, as if the other instruments weren't even there. It doesn't march along in the same way that most older music does. But to me, I honestly don't think that a work like Debussy's La Mer is any less complex than my work. It's full of all sorts of sounds and textures going on at once, yet we still look at is as beautiful, structured and fluid. That's all I'm trying to do; I'm not out to compose for complexity's sake.”

From American Gothic: An Interview with Elliott Carter http://edwebproject.org/carter.html (1993) by Andy Carvin.

“In the future (…) people will become more sensitive and aware than they are now. They will have to, because society will become more complicated, more full of people, with more different things happening. People will have to become much cleverer and much sharper. Then they will like my music.”

From the documentary A Labyrinth of Time (2004) by Frank Scheffer.

“When people listen to my music, I hope that they will notice that if you take a piece by a composer like Schubert, the major and the minor triad is an extermely important thing not merely as harmony, but in creating melodic lines. Schubert is always walking up and down with arpeggios on C, E, G and so forth. I am not doing anything different really, except using a different system of harmony.”

Carter interviewed by Joël Bons. Album notes for Elliot Carter: homages & dedications, p.17 [CD booklet]. Montaigne Records (2003), MO 782089.