From Left, Leonard Garrison, Shannon Scott, and Quentin DeWitt play Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux at the Elliot Carter Centenary Concert yesterday at the Lionel Hampton School of Music. Eric Petersen/Argonaut

During the mid-20th century, Elliot Carter hoped to bring something new to original composing. This week, as he approaches his 100th birthday, appreciative fans and scholars threw him a party.
The University of Idaho and Washington State University have collaborated to celebrate the decorated composer with the week-long Elliot Carter Centenary Festival.

“It’s remarkable when a major composer turns 100, and he’s still around to celebrate his birthday,” UI Professor Leonard Garrison said.
Garrison has devoted his career to Carter’s music and said Carter is arguably the best American composer of the 20th century.
Called “the dean of American composers,” Carter’s music has set new standards for contemporary musicians in the past century. His honors are numerous: he received two Pulitzer Prizes in music, became the first composer to receive the U.S. National Medal of Arts and is the only living composer elected to the Classical Music Hall of Fame. He has created a body of more than 130 works during a career that spans more than seven decades.

Carter started off composing pieces similar to Aaron Copland’s style, but in the 1940s he went off in his own direction.
“He wanted to write music the way he heard it without regard for popularity,” Garrison said.
Branching into unexplored musical territory, Carter pioneered many composing techniques, including metric manipulation.
“Carter’s music is the most original music ever written,” Garrison said. “In his music, he’s rethinking the nature of time.”
He said Carter composes pieces where each instrument is playing at a different tempo.

“This reflects the nature of life because each person experiences time differently,” he said.
Music education major Gretchen Strahl said Carter combines the four types of time — how time feels, mathematical time, philosophical time and musical time.
“Carter mixes all four. He’s expressing character through time,” she said.

UI and WSU have joined in a unique collaboration to celebrate Carter.
“Usually there’s little interaction between the two schools,” Garrison said. 
Tuesday, both UI and WSU hosted a lecture on Carter’s legacy, narrated by Jonathan Bernard, followed by a concert with UI and WSU musicians playing side-by-side to honor the composer.

“(Carter’s music) is very difficult music for performers and the audience,” Garrison said. “It has so much character, humanity and drama.”
Strahl said one can write stories to Carter’s music.
“It is important for students to push their music and open their ears to something they don’t like at first,” Garrison said.
Like scotch or wine, Carter’s music is not immediately appealing, he said.
“I think that a lot of music majors hadn’t heard about him before this festival,” Strahl said. “But now that they understand it a little, they do enjoy his music. It’s very interesting, definitely an acquired taste.”

Garrison said those who understand Carter’s music are enthusiastic about him.
Garrison has met the artist on three different occasions and regards him as a generous person who is appreciative of performers that play his pieces.
“Almost every piece he has written was dedicated to someone else,” Garrison said.
The festival ended with a recital performed by UI and WSU faculty, including Garrison, on the UI campus Thursday.

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