The name is absent

95

In contrast, beginning around 2000, Larsen’s instrumental catalogue has grown to
include many “absolute” works, including the Viola Sonata (2001). In the preface to its
score Larsen states that this piece is “about the viola and piano, nothing more, nothing
less.”³ There is no story or specific extramusical material attached to this work, and by
choosing to title the work “sonata,” she has eliminated any initial ties to outside
references.

This piece is just one example of Larsen’s relatively recent interest in composing
abstract instrumental works. As she approaches her 60th year, she seems to be entering a
new compositional phase, and her ideas about music and the concert tradition in
American society are solidifying. She now accepts and embraces the infinite possibilities
for individual interpretation and abstract qualities that are inherent in the musical
endeavor. Earlier in her career she did not comprehend how a listener could clear his
mind and listen to music absolutely. This seems to have changed for Larsen around the
turn of the millennium.

Larsen attributes some of her early anxiety about the abstract nature of absolute
music to a more general childhood apprehension of “infinity.” She traces this fear directly
to her Catholic upbringing, clearly remembering lying awake at night as a small child,
and worrying about the concept of infinity and “being damned forever to hell.”⁴ To
Larsen, absolute music is infinite in subject and scope, and by using tangible subjects or
concepts, she was able to impose order and reason on her music.

The questions about the abstract nature of infinity lingered with her throughout her
early career, but by the time she wrote her opera Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus

3

Libby Larsen, Viola Sonata (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 2.

4

Thomas Erdmann, “Libby Larsen,” Women of Note Quarterly 8.1 (February 2000), 7.

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