UDC: 78.082.2
78.071.1 Картер Е.
COBISS.SR-ID 283393292
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Received: Dec 15, 2019
Reviewed: Jan 04, 2020
Accepted: Jan 09, 2020
#2
The Musical Style of Elliott Carter:
The analysis of the Piano Sonata (1945-46)
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Citation: Wang, Yingying. 2020. "The Musical Style of Elliott Carter The analysis of the Piano Sonata (1945-46)." Accelerando: Belgrade Journal of Music and Dance 5:2.
Acknowledgments: This paper was the part of Doctoral Treatise at the Florida State University, College Of Music. The Treatise was defended on April 2, 2019. The author expresses her gratitude to the professors and supervisory committee David Kalhous (professor directing treatise), Alice Ann Darrow (University Representative), Diana Dumlavwalla (Committee Member) and Heidi Williams. |
Abstract
The purpose of this paper focuses on American composer Elliott Carter and his Piano Sonata (1945-46). Elliot Carter’s Piano Sonata is a representative example of his distinctive modernist style. After his early works written largely in Neoclassical idiom, Carter embarked on a new musical path in this work. His innovative approach to form, harmony, thematic design, metric elements, sound, and timing according to the common sonata structures differ significantly from the traditional approaches to this form. The compositional aesthetic of this work has become one of the hallmarks of American musical modernism, foreshadowing the compositional direction of piano sonatas in the latter half of the twentieth century. Carter’s music has known for his metrical complexity, in which metric modulation and polyrhythmic application largely emerged after 1948. The trademark is specifically launched in his Cello Sonata (1948). The 1945 Piano Sonata is the piece a few years earlier in which rhythmical complexity began to expose. Author demonstrates the layer of rhythmical pulse through the method of thematic analysis, rather than merely focusing on metric modulation technique. In contrast to most scholarships that have a rigorous study for Carter’s eclectic deed on the fusion of European neoclassicism and American avant-garde, the author discusses the composer’s new compositional approach in the Sonata. Finally, author’s analysis concentrates on specific innovative aspects that make the work unconventional, showing why Carter is one of the most important voices of American modernism.
Keywords: Elliott Carter, piano sonata, polyrhythm, pandiatonicism. musical analysis, American modernism |
Introduction
Carter’s new approach to sonata form
Carter began composing his Piano Sonata during the summer of 1945 with the support of a Guggenheim fellowship and finished it in January of 1946. He dedicated the work to John Kirkpatrick, a prominent music scholar and pianist. The pianist Webster Aitken premiered the work at the Frick Museum in New York City in February of 1948, a performance that Carter complimented highly. That summer, Edgard Varèse requested Carter’s permission to use his Sonata as one demonstration of twentieth-century American composers’ music for his lecture series at Columbia University. Carter quickly accepted Varèse’s invitation and provided his full analysis for this piano sonata per the request of Varèse, along with a brief account of his artistic credo, quoted above. There are two versions of the published score. The second revised publication by Mercury Music Corporation in 1982 removed all the metrical markings in the first movement, which in the first edition appeared at each measure. Since the irregular groups of beats result in frequent metric changes, time signature markings are difficult to specify. Therefore, the purpose of this later decision to remove all time signatures was meant to simplify the appearance of the score, thus facilitating performance. Rather than thinking about the measure as a unit, the pianist simply groups the beats into units of two or three. In the Piano Sonata, Carter uses the basic framework of sonata plan but deviates from certain formal, thematic, and tonal expectations. Technically, the score labels two movements, however, Carter declares that the whole sonata is in three movements, the second movement is interrupted by the fugal third movement, that embeds into the second movements without pause. My analysis is based on the score indication, where marked in two movement. This sonata is the first of many of Carter’s works to exhibit a formal design in which sections are interrupted and resumed. The second movement features two contrasting sections: the first is a slow, lyrical section in ABA’ form; the second is a fast fugue marked Allegro giusto. The first section returns after the fugue, and a meditative epilogue closes the piece. Before the entrance of the fugue subject, there is an introduction based on the fragments of the subject. As Felix Meyer and Anne Shreffler have observed, "this large-scale Beethovenian fugal last movement consolidates Carter’s deep interest in traditional counterpoints." ( Meyer and Shreffler 2008, 73). Carter described the work’s design as follows: "It contains no true development in the classical sense... all the ideas are in a constant state of change, expansion, contraction, intensification. Yet at the same time the Sonata displays a conspicuously sophisticated approach to the classical forms of sonata-allegro and fugue." (Schiff 1998, 208). David Schiff insightfully comments on the innovative aspects of sonata structure and form the work exhibits: "The merger of an improvisatory style with classical structures does not feel strained or artificial. If Carter’s aim was to achieve the poetic complexity of Ives’ Concord Sonata through abstract means rather than programmatically as Ives had done, he succeeded." (Ibid. 209). The first movement follows the basic framework of sonata-allegro form, as shown in Table 1.1. The sections are distinguished by thematic ideas, but instead of using traditional key relationships. Carter uses pandiatonicism. A pandiatonic musical language essentially lies between tonality and atonality and has no strong tonic foundation. The seven-note diatonic scale can be stated beginning on any of the twelve pitches without the limitations of functional tonality. The term was coined by Nicolas Slonimsky in his book Music since 1900. According to Slonimsky,
Table 1.1. Formal Structure of Carter's Piano Sonata. 
In pandiatonicism the key signature does not refer directly to a specific key in the traditional system; rather, it suggests the tonal center of that key and other closely-related keys. The diatonic notes combine with other pitches with added accidentals to create dissonances without resolution, and there are no standard chord progressions. The music has temporary tonal centers but they are presented in a state of constant change.
Richard Kostelanetz has explained that pandiatonicism "possesses both tonal and modal aspects, with a distinct preference for major keys." (Kostelanetz 2013, 465). Sometimes pandiatonicism is referred to as "white-note" music. The added accidentals are usually integrated with diatonic triads or extended chords. Composers such as Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, Maurice Ravel and Aaron Copland have applied this technique. A quintessential example of pandiatonic structure is found in the opening of the first movement of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3, where the music shifts abruptly between C major and E-flat minor. In addition, accidentals are frequently added within the diatonic material, which interferes with a sense of tonal center (Example. 1.1). 
Example 1.1. Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 3, First movement, mm. 15-20.
The overall tonal spectrum of the Piano Sonata explores an intensification of the overtone series, which causes resonance of the half-step relationship of B and B-flat. (Ibid., 205). All twelve pitches are covered by the overtone series, as the sequence of fifths can generate the entire twelve-note spectrum (Fig. 1.1).
Figure 1.1. Overtone series of pandiatonicism used in Carter’s Piano Sonata, as presented by David Schiff. (op. cit., . 206).
The pitches B and A-sharp disturb the seemingly congenial relationship between keys of B and B-flat, on which the overall tonal organization is based. The effect is one of constant, unpredictable modulation and the interaction of different tonal centers simultaneously.
In a letter to Edgard Varèse, Carter noted the grand sonority he intended to deliver in this work, juxtaposing a diversity of characters and employing a wide range of tone colors and expressive qualities. As he pointed out, this sonata shows a stylistic similarity with Copland, Ives, and Stravinsky. (Carter 1989, 37). The piece’s tone colors, in particular, attest to substantial engagement with the music of Charles Ives. Carter’s work highlights the piano’s dual nature as a percussive instrument and a lyrical and harmonic instrument. In order to present mercurial shifts in mood and character, as well as bewildering sonorities and expressions, the piece makes an ample use of harmonics, resonance tones, different kinds of attacks, a variety of pedal techniques, and chords of different densities and spacings. (Meyer and Shreffler op. cit., 73). Carter provides his own detailed analytical insight for the first movement. His focus, he claims, is on emphasizing small thematic cells, their relationship to each other through diverse interactions, and their infinite capacity for transformation. In his "credo" he declares that "music is essentially a kinetic projection of ideas, using perspectives in time." (Ibid., 76). He also tells Varèse how the structures of thematic materials are organized. Rather than developing "blocks" of material in sequential order, the form of this piece is fluid. Short motivic ideas are combined, recalled, foreshadowed and transformed. (Ibid., 77). Carter also said:
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Belgrade Center for Music and Dance is the publisher of Accelerando: BJMD
Belgrade Center for Music and Dance is the publisher of Accelerando: BJMD
