Carter - Pastoral for Eb Alto Saxophone and Piano
Born in 1908, Elliott Carter has been composing music for the last eighty years and carving out his own unique voice through the various trends of past decades. Boulez described his career as “a résumé of the century”, an accolade which affirms Carter’s status as one of the United States’ most venerable composers. Few Americans have received such recognition from the European cutural elite, but in fact Carter’s music is more widely played in Europe than in America. As a young man, he primarily studied English, but earned his music doctorate under the tutelage of Nadia Boulanger, the famous French composition teacher. He held teaching posts at several American universtities, inititally teaching physics and mathematics in addition to composition. In the 1950s Carter radically changed his approach to music, adopting a far more atonal language. Considering his prior work, Carter said, “it dawned on me that these pieces which were intended to be accessible and easy to understand for a more general public, were still considered modern music and the public didn’t like them. That allowed me to go back and write anything I wanted, because if the public didn’t like the music write specifically for them, I might as well write the music that I’d like.” Carter is still composing today and last year celebrated his centenary with various premieres of new works.
The Pastoral was written in 1945 and can be located in Carter’s neo-classical period. The thorough training he received under the auspices of Boulanger, is evident in his intricate and sophisticated use of counterpoint, harmony and rhythm, also informed by his enculturation into the musics of Stravinsky, Varèse, Stravinsky, Hindemith and Copland. The piece can be performed on cor anglais, viola or clarinet in A, but is very effective as a saxophone work, particularly in regard to its range and melodic line. The initial Allegretto gradually increases in tempo over the first third of the piece before a quirky Giocoso section interrupts this expansive soundscape. The opening material returns, this time in a slightly more grandiose manner, developing into short cadenza-like passages. A lively coda ends the piece, summing up the thematic ideas and bringing them to a satisfying conclusion. Despite his own slightly negative comments about music from this period of his life, his musical intellect and creative authority are no less evident in these earlier works.
The Pastoral was written in 1945 and can be located in Carter’s neo-classical period. The thorough training he received under the auspices of Boulanger, is evident in his intricate and sophisticated use of counterpoint, harmony and rhythm, also informed by his enculturation into the musics of Stravinsky, Varèse, Stravinsky, Hindemith and Copland. The piece can be performed on cor anglais, viola or clarinet in A, but is very effective as a saxophone work, particularly in regard to its range and melodic line. The initial Allegretto gradually increases in tempo over the first third of the piece before a quirky Giocoso section interrupts this expansive soundscape. The opening material returns, this time in a slightly more grandiose manner, developing into short cadenza-like passages. A lively coda ends the piece, summing up the thematic ideas and bringing them to a satisfying conclusion. Despite his own slightly negative comments about music from this period of his life, his musical intellect and creative authority are no less evident in these earlier works.