Pocahontas (1939) | Compositions | Elliott Carter, composer

Instrumentation

3.2.2.2-4.3.3.1-4timp.perc-harp-pft-strings

Dedication

Lincoln Kirstein

Notes

The ballet with an unpublished piano version of the score was performed on 8/17/1936 at Keene State College, Keene, NH. Choreography was by Lew Christensen; the cast was: Ruthanna Boris, Charles Laskey, Harold Christensen, and Erick Hawkins.

Buy Score

Associated Music Publishers

Manuscripts

Paul Sacher Stiftung
Library of Congress (Holograph score)

Premiere: May 24, 1939/ Ballet Caravan, Fritz Kitzinger (cond), Karl Free (scenery and costumes), Leda Anchutina, Erick Hawkins, Eugene Loring, and Harold Christensen (cast)/ American Lyric Theatre, Martin Beck Theater, New York, NY

News

New Ballet Recordings on BMOP/sound

March 17, 2021

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Pocahontas clip

While I was a student in Paris the choreographer George Balanchine had two weeks of Balanchine ballets in the Champs Élysée. A man I’d known in college, Lincoln Kirstein, was very much impressed by this and it was he that got George Balanchine to come over to the United States and start the New York City Ballet. In the early days, I was a musical advisor to that for a while. I was commissioned actually to write one ballet for them, which was done in 1939 on the subject of Pocahontas.

– Elliott Carter

Recordings (2)

Elliott Carter: Ballets
BMOP/sound 1077 (2021)
Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor
Elliott Carter: Pocahontas
BMOP/sound (2020)
Gil Rose, conductor | Boston Modern Orchestra Project