¹ I would like to thank the late Elliott Carter for taking the time from his busy schedule to meet with me, for welcoming me into his home, and sharing so many insightful, wonderful and candid stories; Virgil Blackwell for arranging the meeting; Music Department of University of California, Santa Barbara, for their support. Finally, I would like to thank Joel Hunt for contributing to the transcription and editing of the conversation.

² There are two versions of the Third String Quartet available in print: the 1973 version (String Quartet No. 3. New York: Associated Music Publishers, Inc., 1973Google Scholar), and the hardbound study-score volume of complete quartets to which Carter refers in this conversation (The String Quartets. New York: Associated Music Publishers, Inc., and Hendon Music, Inc., a Boosey & Hawkes Company, 1998Google Scholar). The 1973 version is a print of the ‘revised’ or ‘new version’ of the Quartet, in which Carter made changes to accommodate for the triple- and quadruple-stops Claus Adam could not play. The 1998 print uses the ‘old version’ of the score, containing the triple-stops Carter notated in the original version of the score, which Joel Krosnick could play (see bars 444–468).

³ In the Elliott Carter Sammlung text manuscripts, housed at the Paul Sacher Stiftung, Basel, Carter writes that after he had written the First Quartet, he had sent the score to a number of performers, and had also submitted it to the Concours Internationale de Quatour given by the city of Liège, Belgium. Six months later, the Walden Quartet announced that they were going to play it at Columbia University. After almost a year of not hearing from Liège, Carter allowed the Walden Quartet to give its première on February 26, 1953 at Columbia University. Shortly after the New York première, the Liège competition announced that Carter was awarded the first prize. Carter had to renounce the prize since the première by the Walden Quartet had disqualified him from accepting the award.

⁴ Elliott Carter's First String Quartet (1951) marks a turning point in his development of musical language and expression. It is characterized by textural conflict with many layers of contrasting speeds and characters, yielding what Carter has referred to in his text manuscripts as his ‘most extreme adventure into “metric modulation.”’ Each of the following Quartets explored in different ways possibilities opened up by the First, developing harmonic vocabulary, a polyrhythmic texture and in individualization of the instrumental parts. In the Second Quartet (1959), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (1960), The NY Music Critics Circle Award (1960), and UNESCO First Prize (1961), the four instruments are individualized, each being given its own character, harmonic intervals and rhythms. The Third Quartet (1971), awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1973, is characterized by contrast and conflict of the opposing duos, while team-work, with each player maintaining his identity, characterizes the Fourth (1986). The Fifth Quartet (1995) uses the process of rehearsal to embody cooperation of four players. The five quartets are concerned with motion, change, and progression with very little literal repetitions.

⁵ Deborah Borda is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. She is responsible for the artistic, administrative, and technical operations of the L.A. Philharmonic, as well as the presentation of all concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. Before assuming her L.A. Philharmonic duties in January 2000, Borda was Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic for nearly a decade.

⁶ Oliver Daniel was a music critic for The Saturday Review from 1957 until 1982.

⁷ Tom Brodhead, of Brodhead Music Typography, is the engraver of Elliott Carter's more recent works.

⁸ Here, Carter is referring to Walt Disney's 1940 animated feature, Fantasia, which features the Rite of Spring in the segment depicting the formation of the Earth and its prehistory leading to the extinction of the dinosaurs.