Elliott Carter remembered: 'Music seemed to erupt from his very being' - The Guardian

Harrison Birtwistle, composer

I judge a lot of music by asking: "Would I like to have written it?" And with my favourite Carter pieces, I certainly would. I love the Double Concerto for piano, harpsichord and two chamber orchestras. There's nothing like it in music: the concept, the way it makes time and rhythm move, the instrumentation – that bloody harpsichord! Whether it's playable or not, I'm not sure, because it's so difficult. Along with Pierre Boulez's Le Marteau Sans Maître, the Double Concerto is one of the unique signposts of the 20th century.

For me, Carter is a symbol of what it means to be a committed artist. He made no compromises, no concessions to public taste. Although he took on the accoutrements of European new music and of serialism, his was a true American voice, much like that of his contemporaries, John Cage and Morton Feldman. They were all uniquely American, rather like the abstract expressionist painters.

I last saw him at the Aldeburgh festival in 2009, when I wrote my music-theatre piece The Corridor. He had a new piece, too, and came to my concert. I remember we went to a restaurant with a lot of people, and everyone had to leave for a concert. He said, "Can't we just stay here?", which I thought was rather sweet. I said I would stay with him, but then, like a couple of reluctant schoolboys, we had to go to this concert. Neither of us had a piece in it, and I'd gladly have sat with him. I'm sorry about that moment.

John Tavener, composer

Carter transformed all notions of modernism by writing music that seemed to erupt from his very being. He was, for me, the greatest American composer that has ever lived. I have always held him in awe, but only recently, since I was seriously ill, have I come to understand his real stature. I think he did something no other modernist has ever achieved. He, in the last 10 years of his life, seemed to rid modernism of all its angst, creating sparkling edifices of joy and beauty, like the Flute Concerto and Dialogues for Piano and Chamber Orchestra. From a composer's point of view, he was an absolute master – and he did it better than any of us.

Daniel Barenboim, conductor

I have loved Elliott Carter's music for many years. Last month, I recorded his cello concerto, and I was speaking to him only last Saturday. For me, he was the most important American composer of his time. His music was not complicated, but it was complex. I think its outstanding quality was that it always seemed to be in good humour. If Haydn had lived in the 21st century, he would have probably have composed like this.

When you get to be 103, modernism is a very wide concept. In some aspects he was ahead of his times, but then some of his music doesn't sound like music of the future – but it is unmistakable and I simply love it. The problem with listening to music today is that there's so much of it everywhere. We've got used to hearing music without actually listening to it. Carter's is to be listened to.

He had the most extraordinary memory. He remembered what happened last week, last year, and 90 years ago. In fact, when he was in his 90s, I performed his music in Chicago. He told me about his first visit to Berlin when he was 14, in 1922. He said he'd heard the last concerts conducted by Arthur Nikisch at the Berlin Philharmonic before Furtwängler took over – and he told me what he'd heard! I must say, I was a little suspicious and had the concert programmes checked. He was absolutely right.

This is an edited transcript of an interview for Radio 3's In Tune.

Alisa Weilerstein, cellist

I met him on an incredibly hot day in New York last summer. He was affable and kind, and was using a giant magnifying glass to look at a score. When I asked if I could play a passage of his cello concerto, he said: "Of course, but I don't hear so well." He lasted about seven seconds before he stopped me with incredibly detailed observations about my playing. He told me things about the work I'd never heard before, saying he'd wanted to make use of the cello's incredible expressive possibilities. "I wanted it to sing," he said.

In the fourth movement, he wanted my playing to be more expressive, which is something I'm rarely told. Usually people tell me to calm down! He composed every day, too. Even on that day, when it was over 40 degrees, he'd got up that morning to write.

Oliver Knussen, composer

The journey from a first glimpse of Carter, then 60, at a rehearsal for an early performance of the Piano Concerto in Chicago (I was too shy to say hello), to the experience of conducting it in his presence at the Barbican nearly 40 years later encloses a multitude of memories. I hope I have at least partly paid back, by playing and recording his music, what I took from him in order to make my own. To have been in on the conception and the first complete performances of the Symphonia, one of the monuments of the fin-de-20th-siècle, was one of the great honours of my life.

George Benjamin, composer

His angle on the world was original, bold and compelling. In his works, opposites combine and collide; the multiplicity of human experience is represented in music that's volatile, and full of ambiguity and contradiction. But it also abounds in a teeming sense of invention, bubbling with fantasy, while his sense of narrative structure – influenced as much by contemporary literature and cinema as music – was extraordinarily audacious and potent.

These attributes are typified in his Concerto for Orchestra, premiered by the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein in 1970; one of the great orchestral works of recent decades, its exuberance and dramatic energy are uniquely thrilling. An extraordinary performance of this work, given by the London Sinfonietta under Oliver Knussen over 20 years ago, remains emblazoned on my memory.

His individual style – which took an arduous and lonely struggle to come into focus – owed as much to the European postwar avant garde as it did to the American modernist tradition, though it is utterly and fundamentally the vision of an American. I first met him as a teenager, in the late 1970s, and remained in contact till recently. Courteous and warm, his exceptional intellect was balanced by an endearing, even impish, sense of humour. He shared an exceptionally happy married life, living for more than six decades with his wife, Helen, who seemed – on the surface – a somewhat waspish presence, though below was a heart of gold. Carter was a visionary and powerfully independent figure on the international music scene figure, and he will be deeply missed.

Colin Currie, percussionist

A few years ago, I asked Carter to write a work for solo piano, solo percussion and chamber orchestra. I'd noticed he'd always written inventively for percussion and had really been pushing the envelope. I thought that having those two sonorities – piano and percussion – in conversation would appeal to him.

We had a meeting at his New York apartment, and he was brimming with curiosity about the idea. At first, I'd receive emails with, say, marimba phrases to check. Then he realised everything he was doing was working and he stopped checking in. His imagination was utterly undimmed, even in these last few years.

The work was premiered as Conversations for Piano, Percussion and Chamber Ensemble at Aldeburgh in 2011. Having heard how good it sounded, Carter added two further movements, and it became the Double Concerto for percussion and piano. It was one of his very last large-scale works. We were lucky enough to premiere it to him in person in June in New York last year, with the New York Philharmonic. Afterwards, he wrote to me – a typically generous gesture – to say how much he'd enjoyed it, and that the piece worked better than he could have imagined.

Paul Griffiths, librettist

The boy who went to concerts with Charles Ives and heard the works of Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Debussy when they were new, has gone. A huge slab of musical time slides into the past. This was a composer whose music, through nine decades, exuded his personal qualities of respect for the past, allied with zest for the present. He was courteous and humorous, with an intelligent, well-stocked mind and a democratic spirit. His music may challenge by its complexity, but it will also charm with its beautifully turned lines, its conversations, its fine colours, its wit.

Carter made history more than 60 years ago with a string quartet that treats the four instruments as individuals with their own states of mind, their own ways of moving, their own purposes – as characters in a drama. Half a century later, he decided he wanted to make his characters speak – or, rather, sing. He wanted to make an opera. It was my privilege to work with him on What Next?, and to discover a little of what made him tick creatively (most often at several different speeds simultaneously). At heart, perhaps, it was one simple notion: "I want to have fun!" That way he could be sure his listeners, in storms of brilliant detail, would, too.

Nick Daniel, oboist

It's a shock to the solar plexus to lose him. I played his Oboe Concerto many times, and he once remarked to me: "I used to ask for it to be more controlled, more grey-coloured, but now I want it to just sing." This singing quality came out as he got older. His music isn't melodic in a conventional way, though, but in a way that uniquely fits the instruments or voice he's writing for.

His is the kind of music that, at first, you think: "How on earth am I going to do this?" Some pieces remain difficult, but they become part of your blood, your DNA. He was absolutely delightful to work with – I don't know anyone who had a bad experience. Although he was tough, he was incredibly clear, always wanting his music to flow. He didn't want it to get stuck or feel sentimental.

My fondest memory was playing his Oboe Quartet at Aldeburgh. He'd flown over, aged 101. The first half of the concert was before lunch, then there was a break to eat, and he decided to have oysters. So we had an extra long interval while we waited for him to finish his lunch. At the end, he stood up, and walked – unaided – from the back to the front of the church to thank us. I'll never forget it. He was glowing.