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"Obama has four of his concertos on his Ipod"

famous orchestrator (and our 2nd president) John Adams “celebrates” the “130th” birthday of Elliot Carter:

The composer, long a New York resident, was born in that city in 1908. According to Wikipedia, Mr. Carter’s family was “well to do.” He recalls how, as a young boy, he witnessed his irate father throw out an itinerant salesman who came to the door of the family’s brownstone pedaling life insurance policies. That salesman turned out to be a part-time composer, Mr. Charles Ives, of the firm Ives & Myrick.

[snip]

Elliott Carter only sets poetry by WASPS: John Ashbury, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. (He is suspicious of Williams’ middle name and suspects it’s just a fancy addition by the poet to sound left wing.)

[snip]

From the start Carter’s music has been rapidly absorbed into the cultural mainstream of the USA. President Barack Obama claims to have no fewer than four Carter concertos on his iPod. The President is quoted as saying “I’ve been a big Carter fan since my days as a community organizer in Chicago. I only wish I understood Italian better.”

check out the rest of the fun at john adam’s appropriately titled blog, hell mouth

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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 24th, 2010 at 5:43 am. It is filed under Uncategorized and tagged with composing, elliot carter, humor, john adams. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.