Editing Elliott Carter (section)

==Biography==
Elliott Cook Carter Jr. was born in Manhattan on December 11, 1908, the son of a wealthy lace importer, Elliott Carter Sr., and the former Florence Chambers. Much of his childhood was spent in [[Europe]]; he spoke [[French language|French]] before learning [[English language|English]]. As a teenager he developed an interest in music, although his parents did not encourage his interests other than providing for early piano lessons.<ref name="Oxford Grove Online - Carter, Elliot"/> However, he was encouraged by [[Charles Ives]], who sold insurance to Carter's family. While a student at the [[Horace Mann School]] in 1922, he wrote an admiring letter to Ives, who responded and urged him to pursue his interest in music. He began to be interested in modern music as part of his broader exploration of [[modernism]] in various other art forms.<ref name="Oxford Grove Online - Carter, Elliot"/>

In 1924, the 15-year-old Carter was in the audience and "galvanized" when [[Pierre Monteux]] conducted the [[Boston Symphony Orchestra]] (BSO) in the New York première of ''[[The Rite of Spring]]''.<ref name=ATnyt>[https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/arts/music/13levi.html "Celebrating a Birthday as Well as a Score"] by [[Anthony Tommasini]], ''The New York Times'' December 12, 2008 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170305004912/http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/arts/music/13levi.html |date=March 5, 2017}}</ref> Carter later came to appreciate the American ultra-modernists: [[Henry Cowell]], [[Edgard Varèse]], [[Ruth Crawford]] and, later, [[Conlon Nancarrow]]. Ives often accompanied Carter to BSO concerts conducted by [[Serge Koussevitzky]], who programmed contemporary works frequently, and then returned to Ives' home to critique and parody the so-called tricks of [[Claude Debussy|Debussy]], [[Igor Stravinsky|Stravinsky]] or [[Sergei Prokofiev|Prokofiev]], who were composing European new music that Ives considered only 'superficially modern'.<ref name="Oxford Grove Online - Carter, Elliot" />

Starting in 1926, Carter attended [[Harvard University]],{{sfn|Wierzbicki|2011|p=11}} where he majored in English but also studied music, both at Harvard (whose music course did not satisfy him) and at the nearby [[Longy School of Music]], and also sang with the [[Harvard Glee Club]]. His Harvard professors included [[Walter Piston]] and [[Gustav Holst]]. Carter earned a master's degree in music from Harvard in 1932, but the course did not help make much progress in his compositional skills. Hence, Carter then moved to Paris to study with [[Nadia Boulanger]], both privately and at the [[École Normale de Musique de Paris]]. He worked with Boulanger from 1932 to 1935 (though he did not compose much music with her that he believed was worth preserving)<ref name="Oxford Grove Online - Carter, Elliot" /> and in the latter year received a doctorate in music (Mus.D.).

Later in 1935, he returned to the US to write music for the [[Ballet Caravan]]. The founder of the Ballet Caravan [[Lincoln Kirstein]] commissioned Carter to compose two ballets, ''Pocahontas'' and ''The Minotaur'', which would be among his longest works he composed during his [[Neoclassicism#Music|Neo-classicist]] phase, though neither of them was greatly successful.<ref name="Oxford Grove Online - Carter, Elliot" />

On July 6, 1939, Carter married Helen Frost-Jones. They had one child, a son, David Chambers Carter. He lived with his wife in the same apartment in [[Greenwich Village]] from the time they bought it in 1945 to her death in 2003.<ref name="nytimes-100" />

From 1940 to 1944, he taught at [[St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe)|St. John's College]] in Annapolis, Maryland. He worked for the [[Office of War Information]] during [[World War II]]. After the war, he held teaching posts at the [[Peabody Conservatory]] (1946–1948), [[Columbia University]], [[Queens College, New York]] (1955–56), [[Yale University]] (1960–62), [[Cornell University]] (from 1967) and the [[Juilliard School]] (from 1972).<ref name="nytimes-100" /> Meanwhile, in the 1950s, Carter, having edited Ives' music, turned back to his interest in the experimentalists. In response to his experience in the war, he decided to achieve an emancipated musical discourse through re-examination of all parameters of music. Notable works during this time were the ''Cello Sonata'', the rhythmically complex [[String Quartet No. 1 (Carter)|first string quartet]] and [[Variations for Orchestra (Carter)|Variations for Orchestra]]. The latter two marked Carter's turning point in his career.<ref name="Oxford Grove Online - Carter, Elliot" />

Carter wrote music every morning until his death,<ref name="lime">"What Next for Elliott Carter?", ''[[Limelight (magazine)|Limelight]]'', August 2012, p. 28</ref> of natural causes, on November 5, 2012, at his home in [[New York City]], at age 103.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Eichler|first1=Jeremy|title=Composer Elliott Carter dies at 103|url=http://www.boston.com/culturedesk/2012/11/05/composer-elliott-carter-dies/U93EP6MuGUHnqHFHPQHrHN/story.html|access-date=May 2, 2015|work=[[The Boston Globe]]|date=November 5, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150501220433/http://www.boston.com/culturedesk/2012/11/05/composer-elliott-carter-dies/U93EP6MuGUHnqHFHPQHrHN/story.html|archive-date=May 1, 2015|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="NYT_obit" />