Elliott Carter American composer Date of Birth: 11.12.1908 Country: USA

Biography of Elliott Carter

Elliott Cook Carter Jr. was born in 1908 in New York City. He began studying piano at a young age but did not initially consider a career in music. However, his musical pursuits were encouraged by none other than Charles Ives himself when Carter was a teenager. Coming from a well-off family, Carter's father, Elliott Carter Sr., was a successful businessman.

After completing high school, Carter followed family tradition and enrolled in the philology department at Harvard. However, he later changed his specialization and decided to pursue music. He studied composition under renowned composer Walter Piston and had the opportunity to learn from Gustav Holst as well. Additionally, Carter sang in the Harvard Glee Club, a famous male choral ensemble.

In 1932, Carter earned a master's degree in music and traveled to Paris to further his studies, as was customary at the time. In the French capital, he studied under the guidance of the remarkable musician and educator Nadia Boulanger. It was under her mentorship that he wrote his first original compositions. His years in Paris were immensely fruitful, as he not only worked diligently but also interacted with renowned musicians and poets of the time.

Upon returning to the United States, Carter composed music for the Ballet Caravan. In the 1940s, he began teaching and worked at various educational institutions. During World War II, he served in the Office of War Information, a government agency responsible for disseminating information to the public. He taught at the Peabody Conservatory from 1946 to 1948 and at Columbia University and Queens College in New York in the mid-1950s. Carter was a faculty member at Yale University from 1960 to 1962 and at Cornell University from 1967. In 1972, he began teaching at the prestigious Juilliard School, and by then, he was already a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Throughout his career, Carter received numerous accolades, including the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize and the National Medal of Arts in 1985. He has been a resident of Greenwich Village since 1945. On July 6, 1939, he married Helen Frost-Jones, and they had a son named David Chambers Carter. Notably, Elliott Carter, who left a significant mark on American musical culture, is a centenarian. In 2008, events celebrating his 100th birthday were held in the United States and Europe. The BBC Symphony Orchestra performed a concert program featuring his compositions. His centennial was also commemorated at Carnegie Hall in New York, where the Boston Symphony Orchestra and pianist Daniel Barenboim performed his "Interventions for Piano and Orchestra." On February 7, 2009, Carter received the Trustees Award for lifetime achievement. Additionally, he was a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, receiving the award in 1960 and 1973.

Remarkably, between the ages of 90 and 100, Carter composed approximately 40 musical works. Some of his most famous compositions include the ballets "Pocahontas" and "The Minotaur." He also wrote numerous concertos, sonatas, choral works, ensembles, orchestral pieces, and solo instrument compositions. His notable orchestral works include "Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei," "Double Concerto" (1959), "Variations for Orchestra" (1954), "Symphony of Three Orchestras" (1976), "Concerto for Orchestra" (1969), and "Piano Concerto" (1964–65), among others.