• Part 1 Surveying the compositional scene: the composer's viewpoint (1946)-- a further step (1958)-- the challenge of the new (1960-62/94)-- fallacy of the mechanistic approach (1946)-- "la musique serielle aujourd'hui" (1964/94)-- ISCM Festival, Rome (1959)-- "Rasputin's End" and "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" (1960)-- letter from Europe (1963)-- ISCM Festival, Amsterdam (1963/94).
• Part 2 American music: once again swing - also "American music (1939)-- American music in the New York scene (1940)-- the agony of modern music in America, 1955 (1955/94)-- the rhythmic basis of American music (1955)-- the European roots of American musical culture (1961/94)-- Expressionism and American music (1965/72)-- "the composer is a university commodity" (1970).
• Part 3 Charles Ives: the case of Mr Ives (1939)-- Ives today - his vision and challenge (1944)-- an American destiny (1946)-- Charles Ives remembered (1974)-- documents of a friendship with Ives (1975).
• Part 4 Some other composers: Gabriel Faure (1945)-- the three late sonatas of Debussy (1959/94)-- American figure, with landscape - Henry F. Gilbert (1943)-- Stravinsky in 1940-- Igor Stravinsky - two tributes (1971)-- on Edgard Varese (1975/79)-- Edward Steuermann (1966)-- Walter Piston (1946)-- Roger Sessions - violin concerto (1959)-- in memoriam - Roger Sessions, 1896-1985 (1985/95)-- in memoriam - Stefan Wolpe, 1902-1972 (1972)-- two essays on Goffredo Petrassi (1960, 1986)-- to think of Milton Babbitt (1976)-- for Pierre Boulez on his 60th (1985).
• Part 5 Life and work: to be a composer in America (1953/94)-- the composer's choices (circa 1960)-- shop talk by an American composer (1960)-- the time dimension in music (1965)-- two sonatas, 1948 and 1952 (1969)-- string quartets No 1, 1951, and No 2, 1959 (1970)-- the orchestral composer's point of view (1970)-- on Saint-John Perse and the concerto for orchestra (1974/94)-- brass quintet (1974)-- double concerto, 1961, and duo, 1974 (1975)-- music and the time screen (1976)-- "elle est la musique en personne" - a reminiscence of Nadia Boulanger (circa 1985/95)-- reminiscence of Italy (1988).
• Part 6 Philosophy, criticism and the other arts: more about Balanchine (1937)-- with the dancers (1938)-- remembering Balanchine (1991/95)-- theatre and films (1943)-- the genial sage - Paul Rosenfeld (1948)-- introduction to a poetry reading by W.H. Auden (1969)-- music as a liberal art (1944)-- time lecture (1965/94)-- the "Gesamtkunstwerk" (1966/94)-- Soviet music (1967/94)-- music criticism (1972). Appendices: notes on sources-- published writings by Carter not included in this collection.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This volume of essays and lectures by the American composer, Elliott Carter (born 1908), including many previously unpublished or uncollected, shows his thinking and writing on music and associated issues developing in parallel with his career as a composer. His reputation became internationally established in the 1950s, and the material in the book offers a commentary on the course of American and European music in the succeeding decades. The articles discuss not only Carter's own music and the state of new music in Europe and the United States, but the relations between music and the other arts. Other pieces range from a consideration of aspects of music generally, such as time and rhythm as a philosophical problem, to the work of many individual composers such as Debussy, Ives, Varese and Stravinsky.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)