This definitive volume of essays and lectures by the eminent composer -- many previously unpublished or uncollected -- presents Elliott Carter's thinking and writing on music and associated issues developing in parallel with his career as a composer. His reputation solidifying in the 1950s, Carter's writings offer an important and knowledgeable commentary on the course of American and European music in the succeeding decades. His articles on his own music have become classic texts for students of his oeuvre; he also writes on the state of new music in Europe and the United States and the relations between music and the other arts. Other pieces range from a consideration of aspects of music to the work of individual composers. As a whole, the collection is the expression of Carter's musical philosophy, and a valuable record for historians of modern music.