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KARL GEHRKE: On first hearing, Elliott Carter's music sounds chaotic. It doesn't fit into preconceived notions of what classical music should sound like.

[PIANO NOTE PLAYS]

There's no single, steady rhythmic pulse or recurring melodic themes to grab onto. Pianist Ursula Oppens suggests listeners think of a lively dinner party.

URSULA OPPENS: First, everyone is in one conversation, then they split off into two conversations, and you hear a little bit of the other conversation through your own. And then it gets quieter for a minute, and once somehow one becomes attuned to that, then it's really very exciting music, as well, as being beautiful.

KARL GEHRKE: Ursula Oppens has been playing Carter's music for 40 years, and she'll be performing several of Carter's chamber works and solo piano pieces over the six-day Elliott Carter festival. Carter was born in 1908. His early mentor was the iconoclastic American composer, Charles Ives, who was known for mixing up themes and conflicting keys and meters.

Although exposed to experimental music early in his career, Carter first wrote in a style not too different from the neoclassical sounds created by Aaron Copland and other American Composers. It wasn't until Carter was in his 40s that he fully broke free with his own unique approach to music.

[MUSICAL INSTRUMENT PLAYS]

JULIA BOGORAD-KOGAN: This is really cutting-edge music. It's very difficult. You have to live with it.

KARL GEHRKE: Julia Bogorad-Kogan is the principal flute of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. On Saturday afternoon, she joins SPCO clarinetist Timothy Paradise for a 1985 Elliott Carter flute and clarinet duet. She says she's been working on her part for nearly 10 months.

JULIA BOGORAD-KOGAN: I think I figured out that Elliott Carter was trying to write a piece where the two parts never really fit together. When I have a downbeat, Tim has a gesture going over the downbeat. When I have groups of seven, he has groups of eight, or when I have fives, he has sevens at a very fast tempo, and that's something that's very hard to actually hear.

[MUSICAL INSTRUMENT PLAYS]

KARL GEHRKE: The difficulty of Elliott Carter's music has led to criticism that it can be appreciated and understood only by academics and intellectuals. Michael Cherlin disagrees. He's the curator of the Carter Festival and teaches music theory at the University of Minnesota. As he was becoming one of those academics, he worked as an undergraduate, trying to understand Carter's music through analysis.

At the same time, his wife, who has no musical training, was listening along with him.

MICHAEL CHERLIN: And she came to love it almost at the same pace that I did and still loves it to this day, adores Carter's music, loves to hear it in concert. So that disproves the theory that it's only for intellectual music theorists who want to sit down and number crunch or something like that. It's for anybody who can hang in there for the ride and let the music speak to them.

[ORCHESTRA PLAYS]

KARL GEHRKE: SPCO principal clarinet, Timothy Paradise, also loves Carter's music, yet he believes its time may be passing.

TIMOTHY PARADISE: The generation that came up with this kind of music was unique. I think people will look back at it as a style of music like impressionism or romanticism. I think this is probably the end of it. I don't know of anybody that is really writing like this.

KARL GEHRKE: Paradise says listeners don't need to understand the technical aspects of Carter's music to enjoy it. University of Minnesota student, [? Nora ?] [? Rogoff, ?] advises them to have patience and take from it what they can. [? Rogoff ?] is playing a pair of Carter compositions for solo cello during the festival. He suggests that there may come a time when Carter's music will sound as familiar as that of Bach's.

SPEAKER 2: If we'd been listening to Bach in 1725 or 1750, we might very well have not enjoyed it one little bit. It's different coming to it now in the 21st century, when we've had these centuries of appreciation lavished upon the music. And hopefully, maybe Carter will be in that position one day.

[CELLO PLAYS]

KARL GEHRKE: Carter himself argues much the same thing in a film that began the festival last night. He says that as society becomes more complicated, people will have to become much cleverer and much sharper, then, he adds with a chuckle, they will like his music.

Carter is scheduled to arrive in the Twin Cities tomorrow. The University of Minnesota will present him with an honorary degree during an evening performance at the Ted Mann Concert Hall. The festival celebrating his music runs through Sunday. I'm Karl Gehrke, Minnesota Public Radio news.

[SLOW MUSIC]