in disguise: borrowings in elliott carter’s early string ... · i have just finished the second...

In Disguise: Borrowings in Elliott Carter’s Early String Quartets

By Laura Emmery Emory University

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…I consider all these pieces an adventure. Hence, I have to do something I haven’t. I already had one adventure, and now I want another one that’s different. As a result, I think up something that intrigues me. When I’m writing, it’s not like Haydn or Mozart who wrote a whole string of string quartets one after the other. They are all more or less in the same general pattern, although they are filled with variety and differences. My quartets are in very different patterns, very different conception.

-Elliott Carter

Figure 1: J. Peter Burkholder on Charles Ives: Procedures for Using Existing Music

1. Modeling a work or a sec2on on an exis2ng piece

2. Varia2ons on a given tune

3. Paraphrasing an exis2ng tune to form a new melody, theme, or mo2ve

4. SeCng an exis2ng tune with a new accompaniment

5. Cantus firmus

6. Medley, sta2ng two or more exis2ng tunes

7. Quodlibet, combining two or more exis2ng tunes or fragments in quick succession

8. Stylis2c allusion, alluding not to a specific work but to a general style or type of music

9. Transcribing a work for a new medium

10. Programma2c quota2on

11. Cumula2ve seCng, in which the theme is presented complete only near the end of a piece

12. Collage, in which a swirl of quoted and paraphrased tunes is added to a musical structure

13. Patchwork, in which fragments of two or more tunes are s2tched together

14. Extended paraphrase

Example 1: Elliott Carter, String Quartet No. 1, Fantasia, mm. 22-32

Theme 1

Theme 2

Theme 3

Theme 7

Theme 4

Example 2: Elliott Carter, String Quartet No.1, Theme 4 (a) Charles Ives, Violin Sonata No. 1 (b) Elliott Carter, String Quartet No. 1 Piano, m. 1 Cello, mm. 27-30

in fuori

Example 1: Elliott Carter, String Quartet No. 1, Fantasia, mm. 22-32

Theme 1

Theme 2

Theme 3

Theme 7

Theme 4

Example 3: Elliott Carter, String Quartet No.1, Sketch of the thematic layout (transcription)

String Quartet #1 Quoted from Ives’ 2nd Violin Sonata – m. 27-29 cello alone It is heard near the beginning Theme A Ives – m. 48

B – 25 C – 70 violin D – 2nd violin m.41

22 m. cello at 120 then 48 Ives VII 96 VI 36 Vla 180

at climax VI = 100 VII = 135 – Theme A Vla = 48 Theme B cello = 180

70 – 77 Viola alone – then all Ives theme – 27 – 30 – developed by me

then 35 – A cello alone then

all from 20-32 B lyric than viola m. 70 – 77

all from A Ives theme combined with lyric theme

m. 108 – 130 lyric theme with other theme

up beat to 182 – 188 end Ives – viola – 280 – 310 – then 311 – 358

Example 4: Conlon Nancarrow, Rhythm Study No. 1, mm. 50-51

Example 4: Conlon Nancarrow, Rhythm Study No. 1, mm. 50-51

3:2

5:2

5:8

8:3

5:3

Example 5: Elliott Carter, String Quartet No. 1: Carter’s reworking of the rhythmic ratios based on Nancarrow’s Rhythm Study No. 1 (sketch 0069v, the Library of Congress)

Example 6: Elliott Carter, String Quartet No.1, Variations, mm. 1-4

So that contrasts of tempi and polyrhythmic textures will stand out clearly, all indications of tempi and relationships of note-values must be observed quite strictly in this work….Within this fairly strict observance of tempi, each instrument must for the most part maintain a slightly different character of playing from the others….To bring these differences clearly to the listener’s attention, the performers may be more widely spaced than usual on the stage to that each is definitely separated from the others in space as well as in character, although this is not necessary.

-Elliott Carter

Example 7: Elliott Carter, String Quartet No.2: Allegro fantastico, “Provocation”

Example 8: Béla Bartók, String Quartets Nos. 3 and 4: Motivic characteristics (a) String Quartet No. 3, Prima Parte, mm. 87-89

Violin II

Viola

P4 m3 M2 P4 m3

(b) String Quartet No, 4, I. Allegro, mm. 1-2

[Eb, E, F, F#]

[D#, E, F, F#]

Example 9: Elliott Carter, String Quartet No. 2: “For Bartók,” transcription (Elliott Carter Sammlung, Paul Sacher Stiftung)

for Bartók

[C, C#, D, Eb, E, F]

M3

M2

m3

Example 10: Elliott Carter, String Quartet No. 2, IV-Allegro, m. 610


m3 m3

M3 M3

m2

P4 P4


(0146) (0146)


(0146) (0146)

(0137)

Example 11: Borrowings from Webern (a) Carter’s transcription of Webern’s Bagatelle No. 9, transcription (Elliott Carter Sammlung, Paul Sacher Stiftung)

I have just finished the Second String Quartet, which has caused me much work, much perplexity. I had certain ideas for my piece, which my musical technique did not allow me to develop, nor help me find other things that would work with the ideas with which I began. Even serialization did not help me, even though I tried it several times. [J’ai presque fini un deuxième quatuor à cordes qui m’a coûté beaucoup de travail, de perplexité. Toujours j’ai des idées pour des moments ou des endroits dans une composition et ma technique musicale ne m’aide pas à les développer ou même à trouver d’autres choses qui vont avec les idées avec lesquelles j’ai commencé. Même la sérialisation ne m’aide pas—quoique je l’ai essayée plusieurs fois.]

-Elliott Carter

(Letter to Goffredo Petrassi, May 11, 1959)

(b) Anton Webern, Bagatelles for String Quartet, No. 6, Op.9

(0137)

Example 12: Elliott Carter, String Quartet No. 2, Introduction

Selected Bibliography

Bernard, Jonathan. “The String Quartets of Elliott Carter.” In Intimate Voices: The Twentieth-Century String Quartet, Vol. 2, ed. Evan Jones, 238-275. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2009. -----. “The true significance of Carter’s early music.” In Elliott Carter Studies, eds. Marguerite Boland and John Link, 3-32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Broyles, Michael. “Charles Ives and the American Democratic Tradition.” In Charles Ives and His World, ed. J. Peter Burkholder, 118-60. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Burkholder, J. Peter. All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. -----. “The Uses of Existing Music: Musical Borrowings as a Field.” Notes 50/3 (Mar. 1994): 851-870. Carter, Elliott. “Shop Talk by an American Composer (1960).” In Collected Essays and Lectures, 1937-1995, ed. Jonathan W. Bernard, 214-24. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1997. Chrisman, Richard. “Anton Webern’s ‘Six Bagatelles for String Quartet,’ Op. 9: The Unfolding of Intervallic Successions.” Journal of Music Theory 23/1 (Spring 1979): 81-122. Davies, Benjamin K. “The Structuring of Tonal Space in Webern’s Six Bagatelles for String Quartet Op. 9.” Music Analysis 26/i-ii (2007): 25-58. Edwards, Allen. Flawed Words and Stubborn Sounds: A Conversation with Elliott Carter. New York: Norton, 1971. Emmery, Laura. “An American Modernist: Teatime with Elliott Carter.” Tempo 67/264 (Apr. 2013): 22-29. Gann, Kyle. The Music of Conlon Nancarrow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Gay, Peter. Modernism: The Lure of Heresy: From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond. New York: Norton, 2008. Harley, Maria Anna. “From Point to Sphere: Spatial Organization of Sound in Contemporary Music (after 1950).” Canadian University Music Review 13 (1993): 123-144. Metzer, David. Quotation and Cultural Meaning in Twentieth-Century Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Meyer, Felix and Anne C. Shreffler. Elliott Carter: A Centennial Portrait in Letters and Documents. Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2008. Sallmen, Mark. “Motives and Motivic Paths in Anton Webern’s Six Bagatelles for String Quartet, Op.9.” Theory and Practice 28 (2003): 29-52. Schiff, David. The Music of Elliott Carter, 2nd ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. Straus, Joseph N. “The Pitch Language of the Bartók Quartets.” In Intimate Voices: The Twentieth-Century String Quartet, Vol. 1, ed. Evan Jones, 70-111. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2009.