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Flawed Words and Stubborn Sounds: A Conversation With Elliott Carter
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 24, 2026
FLAWED WORDS IN A FRAUDULENT WORLD....
Have you ever been so politely FURIOUS - and not without good reason - that you thought you’d IMPLODE? Listen to this man’s MUSIC, then. He wrote, in the late years up to, and beyond, his 100th year, of the awful truths he saw.
It’s the HUMANISATION of our Absurdly Inhuman, Desolately Postmodern Woke Inner Landscape.
If you open this (now rare) book wanting to hear the great Elliott Carter discussing the INSPIRATION for - or MEANING of - his music, you’re gonna be disappointed.
He never says much at the best of times.
What he DOES say, as in this interview, is hermetic and veiled. Cause, after all, his primary interest was always music - not words. No-nonsense type music.
But he gives the odd jab, here and there - like when he talks about the revisionist culture of the 70’s and 80’s “whitewashing” the history books (though NOW we’ve seen that with the internet, even)!
In the book, though, his words are very much like the sounds his music makes: coming at you Willy-nilly, head lowered stubbornly like Conrad’s Lord Jim - as if to keep alert at all costs - and so unlike his personable public persona.
But it is totally lacking in malice!
For Carter had only perfected his will, sharpened his wit, and tempered all of his ingenuous knee-jerk reactions and treasonable traits with the wisdom that comes through the “forethought and afterthought” of a long life.
And his words, like his music, exist totally in the present tense. I have a sneaking suspicion he was an Aspie, like me! He was both ingenuous and ingenious though, unlike me.
And in this we see the hard-won guidance of the incredibly direct and alertly alive writings of his Hero - and, I admit, one of mine - William Carlos Williams.
To Carter, as to Williams, living entirely in the present meant never falling back upon the easy support of a creative crutch - though, as you may see on the YouTube interviews he does fall back on an easy-going affability to ease the friction of any possible interpersonal conflict.
But the sense of Agon - conflict, eulogized immortally in the work of another early mentor, Stravinsky - never really left his music. For good reason!
So -
You may not get a clue about what he’s saying in his music from this review, so why don’t we try an EXPERIMENT?
First off, toggle over to YouTube and call up something relatively straightforward like “Elliott Carter - Elegy” and press play.
https://youtu.be/V6rsncl0SjE
Now, while you’re listening to the music, read this apparently unrelated passage by Father Murray Bodo...
“Often... he too would be in a cloud that had settled over the mountain. It made him think that perhaps prayer itself was a cloud that kept him and the brothers from seeing into the mystery so that they would have to wait patiently for the cloud to disperse and reveal what was as near as the cloud...though every once in a while something would break the cloud cover, and they’d see that the cloud was the very God they were expecting...”
Or like the Zen Master Dogen says, a finger pointing at the moon is Nothing more than a solitary finger - FORGET about that fickle dame, the Moon!
Now...
Doesn’t that tell you something about the Mystery of Presence in this music?
For it is music in the unforgiving present tense, its jarring sounds always pointing directly into the untamed flux of life.
Doesn’t that say to you that something like music can be very, VERY near to you - yet NOT reveal itself?
Yes, like this music.
And yes, I know too - his MUSIC speaks of mangled human rights.
His MUSIC speaks of so many folks’ unspeakable alienation in a phoney world.
And his MUSIC despises the disposable plastic nature in which our culture finds its “god.”
BUT HIS MUSIC SPEAKS OF THE EVERYDAY CONCRETE MYSTERY OF AWAKENESS - because it is too complex to be grasped as a whole - and has a Totalizing meaning that is not obvious.
It’s as if all his music is created as a lapidary Ode to the Ordinary in constant change - though all the while constantly insisting on Moral Permanence.
Taking a firm stand - in an Absurd World.
And THIS MUSIC, Elliott, speaks of yourself, bless you - trying, failing, and trying again to speak out in outrage and perfect, wide-awake clarity against a totalitarian 'virtual' culture that threatens to strangle and stifle this sacred mystery, Reality, into submission.
That culture which wants to tell us all about hidden meanings, about thinking ‘outside of the box’ - while hypocritically denying there’s a Way past the glitz and glam.
But this music is nothing more and nothing less than this Concrete Mystery OF WHAT IS:
Ni vu
Ni connu
Only HEARD.
Heard - in a moral response to the way all of us, under incessant media bombardment, are so quickly SHOCKED INTO SUDDEN, TRUCULENT SILENCE these days.
But now we know we can SPEAK again, Elliott, because of guys like you!
THANK YOU for your music, Elliott Carter.
You make us perceive that impenetrable cloud so CLEARLY!
And the way through and beyond it to peace.
Have you ever been so politely FURIOUS - and not without good reason - that you thought you’d IMPLODE? Listen to this man’s MUSIC, then. He wrote, in the late years up to, and beyond, his 100th year, of the awful truths he saw.
It’s the HUMANISATION of our Absurdly Inhuman, Desolately Postmodern Woke Inner Landscape.
If you open this (now rare) book wanting to hear the great Elliott Carter discussing the INSPIRATION for - or MEANING of - his music, you’re gonna be disappointed.
He never says much at the best of times.
What he DOES say, as in this interview, is hermetic and veiled. Cause, after all, his primary interest was always music - not words. No-nonsense type music.
But he gives the odd jab, here and there - like when he talks about the revisionist culture of the 70’s and 80’s “whitewashing” the history books (though NOW we’ve seen that with the internet, even)!
In the book, though, his words are very much like the sounds his music makes: coming at you Willy-nilly, head lowered stubbornly like Conrad’s Lord Jim - as if to keep alert at all costs - and so unlike his personable public persona.
But it is totally lacking in malice!
For Carter had only perfected his will, sharpened his wit, and tempered all of his ingenuous knee-jerk reactions and treasonable traits with the wisdom that comes through the “forethought and afterthought” of a long life.
And his words, like his music, exist totally in the present tense. I have a sneaking suspicion he was an Aspie, like me! He was both ingenuous and ingenious though, unlike me.
And in this we see the hard-won guidance of the incredibly direct and alertly alive writings of his Hero - and, I admit, one of mine - William Carlos Williams.
To Carter, as to Williams, living entirely in the present meant never falling back upon the easy support of a creative crutch - though, as you may see on the YouTube interviews he does fall back on an easy-going affability to ease the friction of any possible interpersonal conflict.
But the sense of Agon - conflict, eulogized immortally in the work of another early mentor, Stravinsky - never really left his music. For good reason!
So -
You may not get a clue about what he’s saying in his music from this review, so why don’t we try an EXPERIMENT?
First off, toggle over to YouTube and call up something relatively straightforward like “Elliott Carter - Elegy” and press play.
https://youtu.be/V6rsncl0SjE
Now, while you’re listening to the music, read this apparently unrelated passage by Father Murray Bodo...
“Often... he too would be in a cloud that had settled over the mountain. It made him think that perhaps prayer itself was a cloud that kept him and the brothers from seeing into the mystery so that they would have to wait patiently for the cloud to disperse and reveal what was as near as the cloud...though every once in a while something would break the cloud cover, and they’d see that the cloud was the very God they were expecting...”
Or like the Zen Master Dogen says, a finger pointing at the moon is Nothing more than a solitary finger - FORGET about that fickle dame, the Moon!
Now...
Doesn’t that tell you something about the Mystery of Presence in this music?
For it is music in the unforgiving present tense, its jarring sounds always pointing directly into the untamed flux of life.
Doesn’t that say to you that something like music can be very, VERY near to you - yet NOT reveal itself?
Yes, like this music.
And yes, I know too - his MUSIC speaks of mangled human rights.
His MUSIC speaks of so many folks’ unspeakable alienation in a phoney world.
And his MUSIC despises the disposable plastic nature in which our culture finds its “god.”
BUT HIS MUSIC SPEAKS OF THE EVERYDAY CONCRETE MYSTERY OF AWAKENESS - because it is too complex to be grasped as a whole - and has a Totalizing meaning that is not obvious.
It’s as if all his music is created as a lapidary Ode to the Ordinary in constant change - though all the while constantly insisting on Moral Permanence.
Taking a firm stand - in an Absurd World.
And THIS MUSIC, Elliott, speaks of yourself, bless you - trying, failing, and trying again to speak out in outrage and perfect, wide-awake clarity against a totalitarian 'virtual' culture that threatens to strangle and stifle this sacred mystery, Reality, into submission.
That culture which wants to tell us all about hidden meanings, about thinking ‘outside of the box’ - while hypocritically denying there’s a Way past the glitz and glam.
But this music is nothing more and nothing less than this Concrete Mystery OF WHAT IS:
Ni vu
Ni connu
Only HEARD.
Heard - in a moral response to the way all of us, under incessant media bombardment, are so quickly SHOCKED INTO SUDDEN, TRUCULENT SILENCE these days.
But now we know we can SPEAK again, Elliott, because of guys like you!
THANK YOU for your music, Elliott Carter.
You make us perceive that impenetrable cloud so CLEARLY!
And the way through and beyond it to peace.
June 9, 2009
Flawed Words and Stubborn Sounds is a rigorous and opinionated interview with America's greatest composer, Elliott Carter, ca. 1970. (Obviously, the date of publication precludes any discussion of the next four-plus decades.) As the title would suggest, Carter's music escapes mere description, but I was very happy to find the level of discourse in this book -- flawed as words may be -- very articulate (if verbose) with regard to the complexity of his driving aesthetic. Highly recommended for the fans.
"It seems to me that. . . the feeling of experience is always the synthesis of our awareness of half-a-dozen simultaneous different feelings and perceptions all interreacting together, with now one and now another coming into the main focus while the others continue, more or less in the background, to influence it and give it the intellectual and affective meaning it has." -- Elliott Carter, Flawed Words and Stubborn Sounds, 1970
"It seems to me that. . . the feeling of experience is always the synthesis of our awareness of half-a-dozen simultaneous different feelings and perceptions all interreacting together, with now one and now another coming into the main focus while the others continue, more or less in the background, to influence it and give it the intellectual and affective meaning it has." -- Elliott Carter, Flawed Words and Stubborn Sounds, 1970
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews