Elliott Carter served a long apprenticeship as a composer for whom the neo-classical Stravinsky was the acme of progressive modernism. Things began to change with the Cello Sonata, completed in 1948, when Carter was 40: since then, he has not looked back, and it comes as no surprise to read in his note with this CD that he was sceptical about the quality of these early choral pieces.
It’s likely that most of this music would not engage our attention for long, if at all, were it not the work of the composer Carter has since become. Having said that, however, there is clear evidence of the expert contrapuntal technique and cogent harmonic thinking on which the later, more original musical style is based. Many of the chosen texts also reveal predilections confirmed in Carter’s more recent vocal works – the verbal conceits of Robert Herrick, the elaborate syntax of Allan Tate and the quirky imagery of Emily Dickinson, for example.
Of the two larger pieces, The Defense of Corinth (1941) and Emblems (1947), the latter is, not surprisingly, the more individual, the piano writing close to the grandly sonorous gestures of the Piano Sonata, written a year or so before. The Defense of Corinth relishes the repetitions of a rambling text taken from Rabelais, but the most striking thing about it today is the Britten-like style of its mock-martial idiom, perhaps reflecting Carter’s memory of a 1940 performance of Britten’s Violin Concerto in New York which he had reviewed. Even more remarkable, where stylistic associations are concerned, is the Tippett-like radiance of The Harmony of Morning (1944), but the anticipations of The Midsummer Marriage to be heard here can only be evidence of great minds thinking alike!
All the items are competently performed, although the resonant church acoustic (some of the recordings were made in 1992, the rest in 1997) is not kind to verbal clarity, and the backward placement of the narrator in The Defense of Corinth is another miscalculation. Nevertheless, the disc offers a fascinating glimpse of the traditionalist path which, in the end, Carter did not take.'