The name is absent

89

Larsen titles this movement Looking..., an open-ended title to correspond with
O’Keeffe’s abstract image of the black bird painting, BlackBird Series (In the Patio IX)
(1950). Larsen noted that, outside the context of the previous work, the painting is much
harder to comprehend due to its abstractness, yet it does suggest many “v-shaped”
•            68

images.

The music is also abstract, due to the lack of new melodic material, the absence of
the viola, the confusing transition from the previous movement, and its short length. Even
the notion that this is a separate movement is questionable from the listener’s perspective,
since it continues attacca from the previous movement and contains similar motivic
material. Larsen’s intention was to capture the same sense of wonder and questioning in
the music that she had for the painting. According to her, if the viola was there it would
complete whatever narrative the audience member had going on in his or her mind. Even
by its title, Larsen keeps it more abstract...just ‘looking.’ Not ‘looking at’ or ‘looking
for’ anything in particular.

Larsen sees the birds in the two paintings as the same being,⁶⁹ and unites the
movements through the piano ostinato. Comparing the musical qualities of the two
paintings, Larsen remarked:

[In the first painting the] music has a conjunct line, melismatic flow, and
multi-linearly melismatic flow to it. The other has [a] much more angular
line, which suggests a certain kind of—something a little heavier, a little
weightier, and yet light at the same time. And in both paintings, the line of

⁶⁸ Without the context of A Black Bird with Snow-Covered Red Hills Larsen
remarks: “I would look and look at [BlackBird Series (In the Patio IX)] to try to
understand. I would spend hours with it sorting through it. Γm not sure I would
ever assign any figure to it. There are so many other things it could be. It could be
staring up at a comer of a room [or] an envelope with a blue flap. I Couldjust look
and look and look. How do you look at a painting?” (Larsen, interview, 8/2008).
69

Larsen, interview, 8/2008.

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