Elliott Cook Carter Jr Quotes

• 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.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Importance, Music

• 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.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in College

  Tags in Person, Recommendation

• I mean the public likes it more in Europe than they do here because the state supported organizations have felt that playing contemporary music was part of the education of the public.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Education

  Tags in Contemporary, Music, Public

• Aaron Copland was a man that had a very specific point of view about what music should be which was that, he felt that new music should have the composer should show a personality in his music.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Person, Personality, Composer, Music

• Almost every one of my various zero numbered birthdays has had a big concert in London and often in Paris.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Birthday

  Tags in Self, Concert

• An auditory scenario for the players to act out with their instruments.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Auditory, Players

• In any case, Ives encouraged me to go into music even though he himself had such a hard time being a composer.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Encouraged, Myself, Music

• 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.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Self, Wrote

• That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Studying, Music, Harvard

• Talking about a materialistic thing, I get about 13 times more royalties from Europe than I do from America.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in America

  Tags in Materialistic, Thing

• It was only later on that I became more interested in older music.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Interested, Older, Music

• Since I’m allergic to various things, the army wouldn’t accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Various, Things, Europe, Music

• Silences between movements are employed only in order to bring the opposing duo to the fore.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Silence, Movements

• Then, when the Depression came, all of this changed completely. Since that time, the entire public is of a very different sort and there was not so much support for contemporary music in a direct way.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Public, Depression, Contemporary, Music

• 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.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Quartet, Instruments, Different, Things

• The Quartets have been a major part of my work.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Work

  Tags in Quartets, Self

• 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.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Self, Young, Music, Article

• These wealthy people were very interested in contemporary music. They wanted to help diffuse it and get it to be known to other people.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Wealthy, Interested, Contemporary, Music

• Well I tried to, but I could never write anything that I liked or was worthwhile. I threw it all out and realized that I had to make a serious study- that my tastes were far more advanced than my abilities.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Self, Serious, Study

• When I was in Paris, all of the German refugees began to flow in and it was a very sad time.

  Elliott Cook Carter Jr

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Refugees, German

Elliott Cook Carter Jr (22)

Birth:	11th December, 1908
Death:	5th November, 2012
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Composer

About

Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. was born in Manhattan, USA. He was an American composer who was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize. His compositions are known and performed throughout the world; they include orchestral, chamber music, solo instrumental, and vocal works. His first compositions, written upon his return to the United States, were a neoclassic ballet, Pocahontas, and Holiday Overture. He composed his only opera What Next? He completed his last work, Epigrams for piano trio, on August 13, 2012.

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