Elliott Carter's Cello Sonata, composed in 1948, marked a breakthrough for the composer. In it, he moved decisively away from his former populist style, which had been influenced by Copland, towards a style that was both more academic and more personal. The Cello Sonata utilizes devices that would recur often in later Carter compositions: metric modulation, complex relationships of tempo deployed to achieve continuity, subtle thematic and harmonic transformations, and most notably the assignment of a certain character to each instrument. In the Cello Sonata, a passionate cello opposes a coldly logical piano; though the two instruments occasionally come together, they never really resolve their differences.

This opposition is most prominent in the first movement, which Carter actually composed after the other three. Here the piano begins with regular, barely changing chords that sound more like the tick of a metronome than anything else. These form contrasts with broad, out-of-time lyrical outbursts from the cello. As the cello moans and sighs, the piano obliviously counts off; the feeling of alienation is palpable. At times the two instruments come together, but their meetings feel purely accidental. The second movement on its surface is a jazzy scherzo, with the piano and cello working on more intimate terms. However, even with all the syncopation, the cello still can be heard straying from the piano's tempo. The less explicit tension in this movement is brought to a sort of climax with a weirdly casual statement of the Dies irae just before the cello's quiet pizzicato coda. A restless quintuplet figure from the second movement provides the deceptive opening for the slower third. Here, Carter moves his themes through different, related rhythms to aid in their development. Cello and piano come closest together in this movement; they trade phrases, and support each other harmonically, but they are still two different characters having a dialogue, not two instruments speaking with one voice. The finale begins with music from the third movement, much as the third reused music from the second. In the finale, however, Carter borrows the lyricism of the third movement and whips it up into a propulsive frenzy that ultimately still fails to bring the two instruments together. As the work ends, the cello plays a few sad notes, while the piano remains unable to help.

One need not understand this work's forbiddingly complex methods of composition to appreciate their result; this is both an academically rigorous and a keenly communicative work.

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