4/4/20

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Carter Pann (1972- )

Carter Pann is a composer I found out about purely by chance. I believe the first work of his that I heard was the Triple Trombone Concerto, which I happened across on YouTube, catching my eye because I had never heard of such an instrumentation for a piece before. I thoroughly enjoyed that piece, and went on to listen to several other of his pieces (like The Cheese Grater, The Extension of My Eye, and the piece which I’ll be talking about here, Antares), in time realizing just how much I loved his style. Pann is only 48 years old, teaches composition at the University of Colorado in Boulder, has received two Grammy nominations, and was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2016. To me, his music is wonderfully fresh, familiar in many stylistic ways, and has a distinctly American sound.

I picked his piece, Antares, in particular, not just because it was about time I introduced some quality chamber music to this blog, but for how well Pann writes for all of the instruments. Throughout the entire piece there are moments for all four instruments, with huge arpeggios and technical patterns for the piano and soaring lines for the clarinet, violin, and cello. Writing like such is what can truly define a piece of chamber music - all of the parts work best together when they each have a challenge that they, individually, could only accomplish with their instruments’ uniqueness. This can be seen throughout the piece, but in particular consider the huge ascending and descending lines that the clarinet has in the opening going from the bottom of its range to the top, or perhaps the exposed violin parts at the beginning of II. Rebecca or IV. Vessko. Even with all their own parts, Carter Pann also strategically uses unison moments, where all four of the instruments come together on a single phrase before splitting off in each of their own elegant fashions.

The piece is structured with an introduction followed by four characters and then a final reiteration of part of the opening. I find the atmosphere of the introduction absolutely exquisite, with lush harmony throughout and a beautiful sense of direction. The piano textures backed up by the strings’ harmonies beneath the ethereal clarinet part seems to create this sense of floating before exploding with energy around two minutes. After that, he begins building back up, falling back down, repeating that and then finally landing four and a half minutes in on a heartfelt melody, and concluding by breaking off in one final flourish. Following the intro, each of the four characters (Eric, Rebecca, Garrick, and Vessko) have their own nuanced personality, be it warm, jagged, or dramatic. To me, this writing seems to harken back to how composers throughout the Classical and Romantic Eras would text-paint poems in their songs with clever uses of harmony to convey emotions or with melodies going up or down if that was reflected in the poem. In Antares, however, Pann’s contemporary toolbox for composing allows him a much wider range of sounds to convey aspects of a person’s character.

In listening to his works, I must admit that I aspire to compose music that compares to that of Carter Pann. Aesthetic styles aside, his music seems to breathe in a way that shows just how well he can capture a musical idea on paper. This freedom is what I and many other composers strive for - ideas come and go pretty regularly, but brilliance could be in part defined by how well someone can capture those ideas, put them together, know when to stop, and then finally communicate that in a score so that any given performer can realize all of it. The sky is the limit for composers in the 21st century, and writing a piece can mean as much or as little as you want it to, but believing in your own creative product is one of the most powerful tools for other people to notice and enjoy that final output. Ironically, Carter Pann may disagree with this all, but regardless his music captivates and inspires in a time where just about anything can be music.