Messiaen and Carter on their Birthdays

Extract

Are they suddenly both seventy? If time flies while art stands still, never was the paradox more positive. Though fruitful years may still attend them, their catalogues are history now, open to flows of reinterpretation—as opposed to mere misinterpretation. I love the music of each, with a need met by quite separate responses. Thus on this anniversary how can I compare them so much as contrast them: they have little in common beyond a grandeur joined to the special madness that forms greatness, which is always incomparable. (By greatness I mean unique, extreme, persuasive and permanent daring—the risk that counts.)