Biography
Carpenter began his studies at Harvard University before spending a brief period under Elgar and then continuing lessons with Ziehn in Chicago. Alongside his compositional activities he maintained a parallel career in commerce, managing the family enterprise George B. Carpenter & Co., a firm founded by his father that supplied mills, railways, and shipping lines. Although many of his scores took the form of tone poems, his earliest orchestral success in that genre arrived with Adventures in a Preambulator (1914), a lighthearted suite whose music evokes the street-level impressions gathered by an infant and its nurse during their daily outings. Two years later came Krazy Kat (1921), a ballet drawn directly from the celebrated comic strip and centered on the irrepressible spirit of its feline protagonist. Between 1923 and 1924 he produced the more daring ballet Skyscrapers, an impressionistic portrait of contemporary urban existence. Carpenter’s reputation rests chiefly on his songs, which combine refined craftsmanship with impressionist color; one especially admired instance is the 1932 setting “When I Bring You Colored Toys,” drawn from a cycle of six Tagore texts.