Carter, Ernest, 1866-1953

American composer.

Ernest Trow Carter was born in Orange, New Jersey, on September 3, 1866. He graduated from Princeton University cum laude in 1888. Carter earned an M.A. in law from Columbia University in 1899, and would later receive an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Princeton in 1932.

While at Princeton, Carter led the Glee Club and Chapel Choir, and composed and arranged music for these groups. In 1892 he became musical director of the Thacher School in Ojai, California. Two years later he moved to Berlin to study composition and organ. Upon returning to the United States, Carter resumed his organ studies. He also served as lecturer in music, organist, and choirmaster at Princeton from 1899 to 1901. His interest in composition led him to resign from this position, and during the next year he sang in the Metropolitan Opera Chorus in order to study opera technique.

Carter composed works for orchestra, band, chorus, and keyboard, as well as songs, chamber and instrumental music, and stage works. The three major stage works include two operas, The Blonde Donna and The White Bird, and a ballet-pantomime, Namba . Carter himself wrote the libretto for The Blonde Donna . It premiered in concert form in New York in February 1912. The first full performance was by the New York Opera Comique at the Brooklyn Little Theater on December 8, 1931. The White Bird, composed to a libretto by Brian Hooker, placed second among eighteen entries in the Hinshaw Contest of 1916-1917. Its first performance, also in concert form, was at Carnegie Chamber Music Hall on May 23, 1922, with Carter conducting. The first full performance of The White Bird was at the Studebaker Theater, in Chicago, on March 6, 1924. The Opera in Our Language Foundation sponsored the performance, and awarded Carter the first David Bispham Memorial Medal. On November 15, 1927, The White Bird became the first American opera to be performed at the Municipal Theater of Osnabrück, Germany. Namba was first presented at the Columbus School for Girls in May, 1924, and later performed by the Charlotte Lund Opera Company and the Aleta Doré Ballet at the Shakespeare Theater of New York, on April 22, 1933.

Ernest Trow Carter died in Stamford, Connecticut, on June 21, 1953.