- Classical Music Dictionary

Carter studied at Harvard (1926-32), at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris (1932-35) and privately with Boulanger.

Back in the USA he worked as musical director of Ballet Caravan (until 1940) and as a teacher.

From boyhood he had been acquainted with the music of Schoenberg, Varèse, Ives and others, but for the moment his works leaned much more towards Stravinsky and Hindemith.

They included the ballets Pocahontas (1939) and The Minotaur (1947), the Symphony n. 1 (1942) and Holiday Overture (1944).

However, in his Piano Sonata (1946) he began to work from the interval content of particular chords, and inevitably to loosen the hold of tonality.

A period of withdrawal led to the First Quartet (1951), a work of complex rhythmic interplay, long-ranging atonal melody and unusual form.

He returned to vocal composition for a triptych of works for soloist and ensemble.

He has also continued the output of large instrumental movements with A Symphony of Three Orchestras (1976), the piano solo Night Fantasies (1980), the Triple Duo (1983) and Penthode for small orchestra (1985).

His String Quartet n. 4 (1986) is in a simpler style.

Ives' layered music and Conlon Nancarrow's experiments with complex polyrhythms are among the backgrounds to his techniques, which his resourceful imagination has deployed to enact dramatic scenarios of conflict, contrast and interplay.

Composers Biography - Languages -