"Obama has four of his concertos on his Ipod"
famous orchestrator (and our 2nd vice 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.)
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
minimalist jukebox part IV, minimalism is dead!
minimalism is dead! long live minimalism! i couldn’t help thinking this during the final minimalist jukebox festival concert featuring the music of john adams and philip glass. the evening started off on a high note with a very convincing concert reduction of glass’s opera akhnaten. the piece represented high minimalism at its best scored for [...]
