Re: rather obvious archetypes. This is not in and of itself a criticism. What you're describing is a musical equivalent of commedia dell'arte. That is an art form in which the challenge is to "nail" the archetypes as perfectly as possible while showing them interacting with one another. It all depends what, as you would say, is "valorized." The art is not in what one says, but how one says it. You've "understood" the characters, but I don't think you or I understand all the ways they might interact and what those interactions might mean for the development of the characters themselves. It seems that this type of investigation is what continues to fascinate Carter, even if perhaps he's the only one to understand it very richly.

Regardless of how you valorize, this is an approach to music like no other.

Well, depending on what you mean by processes... the systematic way of setting up encounters between the archetypal characters is quite transparent both in the pre-composition and in the result. However, the way these interactions themselves play out is what is (supposed to be) interesting. As the archetypes and the strategies of interaction are as lucid as possible, then the quality of the interactions themselves is the only realm still open for what you call "a genuine infusion of unique human personality." The fact that you don't hear this in his work (and, to be fair, I think I do only in the best works under the best circumstances) would be a great source of sadness and disappointment in the heart of ol' EC.

I think that's spot on, CD, and in a way what interests me most (despite what I find superficially offputting in the way harmony and character seem to be defined very simplistically by intervallic content etc.) is the sense that this music is so clear to itself (or to its composer) and yet can remain quite mysterious to others.

That, also, is why I find the fact of Carter's age and increased productivity more than merely anecdotal - it's as if he's suddenly learned to speak very fluently the language he spent years creating [NB I didn't say 'creating from scratch': I wouldn't claim that!]. I heard the other day from a friend of a friend that since finishing his Horn Concerto (just 2 or 3 months ago, I think?) Carter has written ... wait for it ... a 15-minute piano concerto for Daniel Barenboim, three part-songs to texts by John Ashbery, a 70-bar solo oboe piece for Heinz Holliger's birthday, a clarinet quintet, a piece for solo flute, and something else (solo vocal I think).

I can't think of another composer whose working methods have changed so much over the course of part of his career (not in the sense of using fundamentally different techniques, but in speed of working, the relation of time spent composing to time spent sketching, working out techniques, etc.). Any thoughts on this from composers (or those with insight into/knowledge of other composers' working practices)?

There's Xenakis of course, who worked quite slowly up until the mid to late 1960s and then, once he had presumably internalised the results of his early work with computer-generated distributions, the floodgates were opened and an unbroken string of works followed rapidly until the early 1990s. Or Cage, embarking on his "number pieces" having gone in the opposite direction by starting to use a computer as an automated tosser (of dice I mean), which also led to a massive increase in productivity. Or Feldman for that matter.

To be precise, Cage didn't rely on the computer, so much as on reams of computer printouts of yarrow-stick tossings. The computer tossed some virtual yarrow sticks, spit out some results, and Cage carried the results around in a briefcase. Just so no one thinks Cage loaded some computer program and typed "Run" everytime he needed some yarrow-stick data. That wouldn't be quaint enough.

That's a really good point. I think that the music world in general is more inclined to consider Carter's "re-thinking of musical language" (one that mirrors, in many ways, more general trends in new music in the 20th century) a development than Cage's, which seems to be written off as a sort of mutation toward a dead end sometimes.  Could Cage have written 13 before the Sonatas and Interludes (assuming he'd had the requisite hardware, software, and tech support)? Hard to say–all we know is that he didn't. Of course, Cage took advantage of "fundamentally different techniques" throughout his life, so he may not qualify for the distinction we seem to be discussing.

If I were someone who falls for neatly reductive dualisms (tantalizing but ultimately deceptive), I'd propose that it's a west coast-east coast thing. Maybe Member Dish, our resident Germafornian, can debunk.

Yes, Max is an example. Though not necessarily a successful one...

I agree 110%–but John Cage, for better or worse, has never been "the acceptable face of modernism."