Creativity and Aging

http://www.newsweek.com/id/173346 ^ | Dec 10, 2008 | Anna Kuchment

[Borges]

Could you compose classical music when you're 100? Elliott Carter can.

For Elliott Carter, turning 100 amounts to little more than a distraction from writing music. "The trouble with having a centennial is that you're here," he jokes to a visiting reporter. Over the last year, hundreds of events around the world have anticipated Carter's Dec. 11 birthday, and they've brought tides of visitors—musicians, composers, the dreaded journalists—to his Greenwich Village apartment, where he has lived since 1945. Those interruptions, combined with the more mundane chores of old age (regular hearing-aid checks, daily naps, mandatory strolls), add up to time away from the work he loves.

Carter hasn't let any of that noise slow his progress. In fact, over the last few years, Carter has been composing some of the best music of his career at a pace that would challenge a writer half, or even one-third his age. "There are so many fascinating sounds that he invents, unusual combinations," says pianist Daniel Barenboim, a former director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. On Dec. 11, Barenboim will debut one of Carter's newest compositions, "Interventions," at Carnegie Hall, accompanied by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and led by conductor James Levine. The event will be the first time a major orchestra has premiered a piece written by a composer in honor of his own 100th birthday.

[Borges]

Great interview with Carter here...

http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2008/12/05/the_composer_in_cambridge_carter_looks_back/

[cripplecreek]

I’m far more creative at 44 than I was at 24. I guess I just found my medium.

[Borges]

Classical Music Ping

[toomuchcoffee]

Compose music? No, but I’ll betcha I could bake a cherry pie, Billy Boy...

[Emperor Palpatine]

Often composers write their greatest works when they're older. Verdi's masterpiece "Falstaff" was written when he was 79. Copland wrote "Proclamation" at 82. Rachmaninoff's final work, the "Symphonic Dances was written when he was nearly 70.

While I respect E. Carter....I've never cared much for his music. But I'm a Romantic at heart.

[MinuteGal]

Bless his heart. Hope he keeps going.....and going......

I probably wouldn't care much for his "mathmatical" creations except to hear some out of curiosity and for analysis. But that is neither here nor there. His long career of contributing to world culture is to be admired and emulated.

Leni

[Chickensoup]

Thank you

[EveningStar]

I understand that Leoš Janáček is another composer who didn't really find his voice until he was around 50.

[Borges]

Last night at Carnegie Hall.

[MinuteGal]

Thanks for the photo of a delightful moment during a happy evening.

I LUV that molto bello cake. I hope they saved an end piece for me.

Oh.....wait, there IS no end piece on that cake. Oh, well.....

Interesting, fun thread. Thanks, Borges.

Leni