NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Composer Elliott Carter, looking back on his early ballet Pocahontas, wrote that it was full of suggestions of things that were to remain important to me, as well as others which were later rejected or completely transformed.
Rejected is putting it lightly. The approachable Pocahontas one of Carters first scores, from the late 1930s bears almost no resemblance to the thorny and unpredictable works that would come to define his long career, which continued until shortly before his death in 2012, at 103.
Carter, a composer who always seemed more interested in the future than the past, was no champion of Pocahontas, which despite its likability quickly fell into obscurity never a repertory staple and never recorded. That is, until now, with the release of a new album by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project that also includes The Minotaur (1947), Carters only other ballet.
The recording offers an opportunity to reconsider what on the surface were early failures. Pocahontas, written for Lincoln Kirsteins touring Ballet Caravan, was panned by New York Times dance critic John Martin for a score that was so thick it is hard to see the stage through it.
The Minotaur was meant to be choreographed by George Balanchine for the company that would become New York City Ballet. But instead the job fell to John Taras, and as David Schiff, composer and former Carter student, observes in the albums liner notes the mythological work was overshadowed by Balanchines similarly minded collaborations with Igor Stravinsky, which became classics.
After The Minotaur, Carter was on the cusp of both a crisis and a breakthrough with his First String Quartet (1950-51).
I had felt that it was my professional and social responsibility to write interesting, direct, easily understood music, he wrote. With this quartet, however, I decided to focus on what had always been one of my musical interests, that of advanced music, and to follow out, with a minimal concern for their reception, my own musical thoughts along these lines.
Carter didnt care to dwell on his early period, but if theres an ensemble up to the task of making a fresh case for Pocahontas and The Minotaur, its the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, which in the past decade has released nearly 100 recordings of both premieres including Andrew Normans Play and overlooked gems. (Its something like classical musics equivalent of New York Review Books.)
In both of these ballets, the sophisticated use of harmony and rhythm foreshadows the stuff to come, Gil Rose, the groups artistic director and conductor, said in a recent interview. Hes obviously a brilliant composer.
Rose took a break from editing an album of John Adams two chamber symphonies to discuss the ballets their importance within Carters output and what they share with his later masterworks. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Q: What are the hallmarks of Carters early sound?
A: His music had not become as stark. The Minotaur isnt so much padded with a sonic cushion, but Pocahontas is. He could really write a lush orchestration, and with a big string section. In that way its inspiration is more a romantic ballet than a 20th-century ballet. So its more like Prokofiev than anything else nothing like the neoclassical stuff that does take him by storm down the road. The Minotaur is more like that. Theres a big pas de deux in it that could have come out of any middle-period Stravinsky ballet.
Q: What does looking at these ballets together reveal about Carters progression as a composer?
A: His sound gets more angular. Thats probably also because a lot of Stravinskys middle-period works start to get known in the United States. Rhythmically, it gets less flexible more repeated patterns and spiky rhythms. And harmonically, its more dissonant. The orchestration has this brashness, and a lot of clashes and disjunct that shows itself already in Pocahontas.
It is interesting, though: If you play Pocahontas for someone and say, Name that composer, it would take a lot of people who know a lot about music to get through a lot of composers to get to Carter.
Q: I would say the time is easy to place, but definitely not the composer.
A: If you hear the Piano Sonata (1945) and the Holiday Overture (1944), theyre of the same ilk. He sort of didnt advocate for his early music very much. But I think its important to know where he came from. If you pair this with his late music, its a hell of a journey. And this is how it started.
Q: Can you point to anything that survives the turn Carter takes after the First String Quartet?
A: Its a little hard to compare Pocahontas with a piece like the String Quartet. But I would look at the Pavane at the end, the way he starts to lay harmonies on top of each other. Its clear at this moment hes not writing Billy the Kid, or any other kind of Copland Americana, even though it has an Americana subject. He doesnt stick a folk tune in, or nod to Native American music. He writes in a sense like Prokofiev: He writes the music that he wants to write.
At the same time, its not at all juvenilia. You know its a piece that was done by a gifted and skilled composer. The writing is quite sophisticated. Even talented orchestrators make mistakes in their early pieces, but you get into a movement like Princess Pocahontas and Her Ladies thats really subtle writing. Most young composers on their first orchestra piece couldnt pull that off. When we think of Carter, we dont think of orchestration as one of his main strengths. But with this piece it clearly is.
Q: It reminds me of early Joyce, straightforward yet showing a total mastery of prose.
A: Thats a great example. Because nobody understands any of James Joyce at the end. You have to read every sentence like 16 times, but its still worth it. The early things that have a more direct communication line to the accepted musical syntax of the time can still be interesting. The quality of his mind and music is apparent even in a form thats digestible by the normal concertgoing audience.
And just because its digestible doesnt mean its not musical, or not interesting. In fact, its sometimes harder to write music that functions on both planes. Those are the pieces that I really love.
© 2021 The New York Times Company