Curating difference

Abstract

Abstract The composer Elliott Carter was unusually explicit about the parallels between his complex, multi-layered compositions and the ideals of democratic pluralism. Central to the analogy was the way in which the disputatious relationship between textural elements resembled a spirit of debate between strong-minded individuals. Yet Carter also showed himself highly ambivalent about the consequences of American democracy for cultural and intellectual life. These contradictory motifs are illuminated by examining the twentieth-century reception of themes within Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, which supported a conception of pluralism that presupposed a certain model of the liberal individual and so limited the ‘infinite play of differences’ that pluralism ostensibly sought to protect. In Carter’s music, this finds reflection in models of democracy that project robust exchanges between individuals who are substantially similar to each other.