ecarroll

TMers,

The following was brought to my attention recently. It seems that Trumpetmaster wasn't the only group of musicians having fun on April first and this one was good enough to hook the AP...

Best,
EC

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 6:53 pm
From the Associated Press
NEW YORK ---
American composer Elliott Carter, an exemplar of the atonalist style of
modernism and according to admirers the greatest living practitioner of his
craft, apologized to music lovers around the world today for what he called
"a half century of wasted time." "What was I thinking?" the venerable Mr.
Carter, 99, said at his home in Manhattan. "Nobody likes this stuff. Why
have I wasted my life?" Carter said he "went wrong" back in the 1940s and
spent the next 60 years pursuing the musical dead-end of atonality. In the
past seven decades, he has produced five string quartets, a half dozen song
cycles, works for orchestra, solo concertos and innumerable chamber works for various combinations of instruments --- all in an advanced, complex style he now dismisses as "noise." Despite consistent
encouragement of many mainstream musicians such as Boston Symphony Music Director James Levine, for Chicago Symphony conductor Daniel Barenboim, and the cellist Yo-Yo Ma,Carter said his many admirers were "delusional." "The critics who said they were just congratulating themselves for being smarter than everybody else were right all along," he said. "We should all go back and get our heads on straight." Carter said he blamed his late wife, Helen, for turning him into an unrepentant modernist. "She liked this stuff, and I could never say no to her," he said. Mrs. Carter died in 2003 at age 95. Since then, Carter said, he has been reevaluating his aesthetic. "I'd like to write something pretty for a change --- maybe something based on an Irish folk tune," he said. He was uncertain whether he would withdraw his substantial catalogue from the repertoire, though one alternative would be to revise his works, ending each with a tonic triad, he said. "I feel like an enormous weight has been lifted from my shoulders," Carter said. "From now on, I promise to be good."

mahaberio

. . .and then he prank called Milton Babbitt.

tpter1

Duped.... again.

Man...would someone please double check the dictinary to make sure "gullible" is still there?

Jimi Michiel

beat you to it, Ed.

http://www.trumpetmaster.com/vb/f136...ogy-34580.html (Elliot Carter Apology)

ecarroll

Jimi,

Sorry, amigo, I missed your thread. I'm running around like crazy these days and don't always check the other forums.

Mea culpa,
EC

Jimi Michiel

Ed-

If Carter can apoligize for his music, I think I can forgive you for this

-Jimi

ecarroll

Jimi,

I didn't mean it either...

Laughing,
EC

krossum

Ed-

Ha! You win today's award for the laugh out loud while reading TM and warming up on my mpc. congrats. (oh yeah, and I mean it!)

cool.
-Kelly