Themes of ‘humanism’ in Elliott Carter’s compositional aesthetic. MSA National Conference “Music and Social Justice” September 2005 Marguerite Boland Abstract Themes of humanism and human communication run through Carter’s musical output from his early compositions up to possibly their most explicit manifestation in his 1999 opera What Next?, which centres around the confusion and failure of communication between six characters after an automobile accident. Carter’s interests in the human condition and the relationship of the individual to society have been integral to the development of his compositional aesthetic and the techniques that transform such ideas into musical expression. Rhythmic practices that Carter began to experiment with in the late 1940s, beginning with the Sonata for Cello and Piano (1948), and later, developments in his harmonic language in the landmark First String Quartet (1951) gave voice to his musical exploration of ‘difference’. Of the Cello Sonata Carter has said: “ (…) there were two different kinds of characters, the cello and the piano — imaginary characters, so to speak— that maintained different roles and had different ways of looking at the musical field”. And of his Concerto for Orchestra: “In this piece I was trying to individualise all the parts as if they formed a large crowd of different people”. His pieces become a dramaturgy of interactions between distinct musical characters, which are often in conflict. Nonetheless the characters of a piece coexist on the same musical stage, occupying the same musical space, in dialogue, in opposition and even at times with a sense of resolution, and to that end their musical materials converge and diverge to varying degrees. By selecting examples from significant earlier pieces as well as from his recent output, this paper will discuss how important aspects of Carter’s compositional approach engage with his concern for “the matter of human co-operation with its many aspects of feeling and thought.” INTRODUCTION There are many themes that run through Elliott Carter’s compositional aesthetic, but in today’s paper, I want to explore what I have called themes of humanism – Carter’s intense interest in expressing in his music aspects of the human condition and realms of human experience. I will discuss, in the light of Carter’s biography and a definition of humanism, what I think are significant events that shaped Carter’s compositional aesthetic in line with a humanist attitude. I will then discuss two manifestations of Carter’s humanist interests: 1) The dramaturgy of interactions between musical ‘characters’ in his composition. 2) The literary influences on Carter’s works Firstly, the ‘dramaturgy’ of much of Carter’s music is shaped by metaphors of social confrontation and conflict between individuals. I will examine how this manifests itself in broad musical terms in two landmark pieces written during a period in which Carter was developing these ideas – the Sonata for Cello and Piano from 1948, and the Second String Quartet from 1959.