ELLIOTT CARTER (1908–2012)Of Challenge and of Love (1994)

This chapter considers Elliott Carter’s Of Challenge and of Love. This substantial and impressive cycle shows stylistic consistency in its uncompromising atonality and rhythmic complexity, but it is an immensely satisfying vehicle for a singer and pianist of exceptional skill, stamina, and musicianship. Vocal writing is, by turn, gritty and muscular, exuberant and lyrical. Piano parts are dramatic and often texturally intricate, but there are plenty of ‘windows’ to allow the voice to come through. Carter is fond of the device of ‘metric modulation’ and there are several examples here. He obviously relishes the mathematical and proportional aspects of rhythm, and frequently ties notes across beats, promoting elasticity and freedom. The music is also enlivened by pungent, accented passages.

The Solo Percussionist—Center Stage

The virtuoso percussionist, though not unique to the twentieth century, began to appear on both professional and student recitals during the latter decades of the century. This chapter examines the solo literature written for the principal percussion instruments—timpani, xylophone, marimba, vibraphone—and multiple percussion, the latter term describing an array of dissimilar instruments that is novel to the twentieth century. The chapter portrays the evolution of composer Elliott Carter’s timpani solos and his use of metric modulation. Virtuoso artists, such as Vida Chenoweth, Keiko Abe, and others, composed and commissioned new works for keyboard percussion. Their collective efforts brought keyboard percussion to the forefront of the solo percussion literature. The eminent solo artist Evelyn Glennie commissioned over 200 solo works, many of them categorized as multiple percussion. The percussionist, once banished to the back of the orchestra, often appeared center stage by century’s end.

“Modulate, Daddy, Modulate!”

Chapter 4 examines Ellison’s use of rhythm—specifically his incorporation of polyrhythms and his application of an advanced rhythmic concept called metric modulation—to express his beliefs about virtual temporalities and social change. The chapter illustrates how Ellison often places temporal constructs, including the static time of official history and the dynamic time of duration, into polyrhythmic relation in order to challenge an entrenched ideology of historical determinism. This process, and the critique that emerges from it, depend upon a related rhythmic concept, metric modulation, which creates metronomic instability within a musical composition and, in so doing, produces nodes of temporal bifurcation. Ellison’s use of polyrhythms and metric modulation are, like his ekphrastic references to the visual media examined in Chapters 2 and 3, expressions of his commitment to dynamic time and to the promotion of social changes that the actualization of hitherto virtual temporalities makes possible.