Karl Miller:

>I once asked Copland what he thought about Carter's music.  Copland said
>something like, "well you know, we all thought Elliott was too
>intellectual to be a composer...however, he seems to have found an audience."

I was touring across Louisiana with a large chorus-cum-orchestra work
by composer and conductor Robert Kapilow.  We happened to be on the same
bus, and I was reading Pynchon's Mason and Dixon at the time.  He glanced
over at my book and said, "Thomas Pynchon!?  That's the Elliot Carter
string quartets of literature!"

Since I like Carter's string quartets, I didn't mind, but I didn't really
see the point of the remark, other than both Pynchon and Carter are hard
to know.

Steve Schwartz