Elliott Carter's ‘Late Music’?

Abstract

As we celebrate his centennial year, perhaps it is now reasonable to speak of Elliott Carter's ‘late music’, but I doubt it. The Double Concerto – written more than 45 years ago – was once described as the culmination of Carter's mature style. And who could have predicted that the Concerto for Orchestra – completed in 1969, when Carter was sixty – would eventually join his Depression-era ballet Pocahontas in the first quarter of his total output. Every piece that once seemed to be the capstone of Carter's illustrious career has turned out instead to be a milestone that marks the beginning of another new path. Since he completed his first opera What Next? ten years ago, Carter has composed more than three dozen new pieces, comprising nearly a third of his life's work to date, all of it composed since his 90th birthday!