The name is absent

93

During this phase of her career, it is clear that Larsen has become more interested in
representing her feelings about her source material than musically transcribing
extramusical material into her scores. Thus, the abstract or figurative connections such as
the V shaped bass-line of the clarinet in the third movement, or the idea that by using
repeated thirds, the composer is suggesting the passage of time wearing a small rock
smooth will remain indiscernible to an audience. However, some aspects of the piece,
like the clarinet trills at the opening of the fourth movement, literally evoke a bird song.
Larsen addresses her intentions in an article discussing the influence of the natural world
in her music, written two years into her Minnesota Orchestra residency, and two years
before BlackBirds, Red Hills:

The response to nature matters more in music than the thing in
nature.. .That place is not to reproduce nature in musical form, to imitate
bird calls or rain drops like a kind of musical taxidermist, but to convey in
my own voice the feelings that certain natural phenomena [or other source
material] evoke for me.”⁷³

Indeed, in Black Birds, Red Hills Larsen does capture or suggest the feelings of
O’Keeffe, her artwork, and New Mexico, and in doing so occasionally is more explicit
than perhaps she intends. What is quite clear is that both artists have conveyed in their
own voices and separate media their feelings and impressions of the Southwest. In doing
so have they have left their audience with an insight into how they perceive the balance
of nature and art.

Larsen, “The Nature of Music,” 3.

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