Elliott Carter 's innovative, bold compositions tower over 20th-century American music. Born Elliott Cook Carter, Jr., in New York on , he spent his childhood in an atmosphere of progressive cultural awareness, and at age 17 befriended the older and influential Charles Ives . After graduating from Harvard, Carter travelled to Paris, and from 1932 to 1935 completed his music studies with Nadia Boulanger . When he returned to the U.S., Carter began a lasting...