The American Elliott Carter's music has often been appreciated in Europe more than in the USA, and has been championed by conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez and Oliver Knussen. Although Carter was 75 when the first edition of this book was published in 1983, he was then beginning a significant new phase of his composing career which became a long and productive late period. The size and significance of his later work, and the ways in which his style has developed, have resulted in a major expansion of the first edition of this study of Carter's music, and extensive revisions. The author, who studied with Carter at the Juillard School, has written a new introduction and has altered the structure of the book, arranging the discussion of the music by genre rather than chronologically.