Elliott Cook Carter Jr. was a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American
Western-classical-music composer who was born in and lived in New York
City. He studied with
Nadia Boulanger in
Paris in the 1930s and then returned to the United States. After a
neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex
music. His compositions, which were performed all over the world,
included orchestral, chamber, solo, and vocal works.
He was extremely productive in his latter years, during which he wrote
more than 40 works between the ages of 90 and 100, and even more since
he turned 100. He died at the remarkable age of 103 from natural causes.