I decided to write what was most important for me

One thing I can’t understand is why people have such trouble with modern music. It seems to me to be perfectly intelligible. When I hear one of my pieces again, or listen to the record, I don’t see why people could find this perplexing in any way. Yet audiences can’t make head or tail of it... I finally said the hell with that whole point of view and decided to write what I really always hoped to write, and what I thought was most important for me. I’ve taken that point of view ever since.
That quote comes from Elliott Carter who has died aged 103. I used it in a discussion preceding a concert of his music by the Britten Sinfonia in 2009. The text of my introduction, titled A Radical Traditionalist is here, and the discussion of Carter’s music with the concert's soloists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich can be heard here.

Also on Facebook and Twitter. Photo shows Elliott Carter, centre, with Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland above.Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

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