The composer produced half his lifetime's output after the age
of 90. It was easy to believe he would go on forever. Corbis
Elliott Carter, the American composer who legitimized high
complexity in music, has died at the age of 103 in New York's
Greenwich Village, in an apartment he had purchased in 1934. The
cheerful, feisty figure with trademark tousled hair and bright
blue eyes had become increasingly productive with each passing
year; it was easy to believe he would go on forever.  Of the two
schools of American composition that predominated in the second
half of the 20th century—the "uptown" one, atonal and densely
intricate, and the more accessible "downtown" approach—Carter
became a standard-bearer of the former. As a result, he often
lacked a large audience. But he gained the esteem of his
colleagues, received two Pulitzer Prizes and the U.S. National
Medal of Arts, was named a French Commander of the Order of Arts
and Letters, and was inducted into the Classical Music Hall of
Fame.  He hadn't started