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CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW
February 20, 2005
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By Jules Langert
The phenomenal Elliott Carter continues composing music at age
ninety-six. Hearing his five string quartets in a remarkable concert by the
Pacifica Quartet at the San Francisco Jewish Community Centeršs new Kanbar
Hall provided insights into a forty-five year span of his output, tracing
the development of methods and preoccupations that still influence his
musical thinking today.
It was in the First Quartet (1950-51) that Carter began composing for
an ensemble of highly distinct, individualized voices whose interaction is
constantly in flux. Adapting serial techniques used by Boulez and
Stockhausen, and combining them with the rhythmic and textural experiments
he admired in the music of Ives and Nancarrow, Carter created a
compositional hybrid bearing his own unique stamp.
 Describing his Fourth Quartet (1986) the composer says: "A preoccupation with giving each member of the performing group its own musical identity characterizes this piece, mirroring the democratic attitude in which each member of society maintains his or her own identity while cooperating in a common effort — a concept which has dominated all my recent work." But individualizing the members of an ensemble is an old idea of Carter's. One of the most elaborate structural schemes for giving each instrument its own identity surfaces in the 1959 Second Quartet. Here Carter has defined the first violin as mercurial/fantastical, the second violin as stolid and orderly, the viola as lyrical/expressive, and the cello as impetuous/dramatic. Each of the instruments in its own special character dominates one of the movements of the piece while the others form an accompanying trio. There are also cadenzas for three of the instruments, further reinforcing their musical roles and giving them an almost thematic quality (supported by certain intervals and textures specifically assigned to each instrument). This is a fascinating work whose theatrical approach creates an original way of hearing — and in this case watching — a piece of music unfold, because the players have developed body language influenced by the roles of their instruments.
In his Third Quartet (1971), Carter divides the ensemble into duos which play a series of different movements in different tempos and textures, overlapping each other ingeniously so that the outline of a four-movement, almost classical structure(including Introduction and Coda) emerges from the background in spite of the perpetual ebb and flow of the musical surface. One overriding principal in all of this music is Carteršs intention to achieve maximum continuity. There is almost never a full stop from beginning to end in any of the quartets. Different sections grow out of each other or interrupt one another, but they are always felt to be part of an ongoing process that has been programmed to run, and which can sometimes seem over-manipulated. Polyphony and multiplicity are the guiding mantras of Carter's Muse, and an evening of such music inevitably leads to super-saturation of the receptors. Even so, this was a rare and stimulating event, with the Pacifica Quartet given a well deserved standing ovation by an enthusiastic audience, in recognition of their artistry in bringing an important but difficult body of music to such a high standard of performance. The youthful ensemble, originally from the West Coast, has been playing together for the past ten years, and is currently in residence at the University of Chicago and at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. An active international concert schedule, teaching, and recording keep them busy. Over the years they have won important prizes, and their motto, drawn from a poetic allusion to the Pacific Ocean is "Distinct as the billows/yet one as the sea." No wonder they decided to tackle the Carter Quartets.
(Jules Langert is a composer and teacher who resides in the East Bay.)
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