Loss of a Legend

         103 and composing until the end, iconic 20^th Century composer, Elliott Carter, has died, a week after Hans Werner Henze.   (Carter's work has been studied and analyzed and argued in many books, dissertations, articles.   Even Wikipedia has a nice overview with some of the major works discussed.   Try some other place than here to understand more fully who he was and what he wrote.)  They could not be more different.    Henze was beloved.    Carter was studied.     Most music history books discuss / dissect Carter and his atonal, non-serialized, complex multiplicity, most of it incomprehensible to even seasoned audiences.    But that was part of the appeal.    He was asking listeners to use every ounce of concentration they possessed, and to move forward with myriad quick changes, even while the last notes have had time to resonate.    He wrote what he found interesting in a way he found interesting.    You either followed as best you could or didn’t.     You had to learn how to listen.     You had to want to understand it.    For two generations, he was the apex of difficulty and super brilliance, even while the larger audiences moved back to a simpler, (mostly) tonal ‘eclecticism’…but the adventurous stayed with him.

            As a student, still learning my way around tonality, I was puzzled and frustrated by my lack of comprehension.    Most people would have given up, I suppose, but I was stubborn and refused to let it rest.     I found some his less complex pieces and slid in the back door that way.      The piano solo, Night Fantasies, a piece I love, was one.   The song cycle, A Mirror On Which To Dwell, a treasured piece, was another.     They were anything but simple, but eventually, I could follow them.    And then I slowly added the String Quartets, the Piano Concerto (a bitch of a piece), and finally, the most difficult piece of music I have ever heard, the monstrous Double Concerto for Harpsichord, Piano, and Two Chamber Orchestras.    With this last work, I was impressed rather than enthralled, and have remained so.     Other pieces of his that I have not heard may be more complex, but I can’t see (hear?) how.     But no one bats 1000.

But there are rewards beyond ‘following’ what he is doing.   (Or perhaps a path among many through his difficult mazes.)    Once you can comprehend his style, you derive a sense of pleasure, as your mind becomes engaged.     It’s similar to a video game in a sense: you have myriad possibilities to follow, and once you do, you have myriad more choices, until the level is finished.    But the more straight forward pieces, and he has several, require less work to negotiate and appreciate.    Many of these were written in his later decades.    He became more direct, less stratified.    His Clarinet Concerto is quite accessible…to his initiates.    His solo piano pieces are quite engaging.     As the recordings roll out, a more complete picture of his skills comes into focus.    He wrote many great pieces, even past the age of 100!     His music has travelled the world, major musicians have learned and championed it.   Some pieces have become standards, (if you measure by repeat performances), at least for now.    Everyone who has a wide knowledge of the entire spectrum of important Classical music has kept his music in front of audiences.    Much of it is so rewarding, the trouble it causes shrinks as you ‘learn’ it.    It bears multiple listens.

But…and I have one.    And it is the reason I have found it difficult to appraise him and the tardiness of this post.   To me, a fan, nothing by him is emotionally powerful.    Moody perhaps, but not sad, happy, heartbroken, angry, passionate.   Melancholy, yes, sometimes.    Ruminative—as in A Mirror—certainly.     Emotionally conflicted, you could make an argument for it.   But nothing that hits me on an emotional level.   Perhaps it is my short coming, but I am more drawn to music that engages my heart as well as my mind.   I don’t believe he was attempting to do any such thing.    I’m not sure he thought music did that.   He has his own rewards and they are not superficial.     I do not listen to his recordings regularly.   I have never heard any of his music live.    Until three years ago, I had not listened to anything by him for more than a decade.    Then I embarked on a Carter festival, and listened to several.   I was taken by what I heard.   In his honor, I will hear most of the big works I have on CD.     Just not all at once, or even one per day.    I gorged on Henze when he died.    I love Henze with, you’ll forgive me, a ‘passion.’    I admire and sometimes enjoy Carter.     Henze should find immortality sooner or later—his music is too rich and emotional to disappear.   I fear Carter will probably be heard until this generation has gone.     And then he will go as well.    Hopefully, a few pieces might stick around.    Night Fantasies seems a probability.    But the time and money and skill required to perform something like the Piano Concerto will make it obsolete.    I will be long gone before the world will discard or re-embrace him.   Who knows what will happen in 50 years.   But I believe my prophesies seem all too probable.    An important stopping point for anyone studying the music of the last century, unquestionably.    But not one of the present.