The name is absent

103

Fire, which uses Johnny Cash’s song I Fell into a BurningRing of Fire as an image, and

the early work Jazz Variations for Solo Bassoon (1977).

Throughout her life, Larsen has struggled with the divide between popular and
classical music.

Part of my personal journey has been to understand how much I value all
that repertoire (Broadway musicals, stride boogie, jazz, and rock ^,n^, roll)
and to get over the enormous hurt of having it shunted aside.. .It is
important to me to understand this music since it is a predominant part of
American culture. It is our culture. The experience is to understand what
you value and then to make a choice.”²⁸

Larsen’s Viola Sonata bridges this divide in its own way. It is clearly a concert work with
a title firmly planting it in the classical music world, yet much of the rhythmic and
melodic material, especially in the outer movements, is heavily influenced by twentieth

century American popular music.

Larsen as an Instrumental Composer

Three years after the completion of Viola Sonata, Larsen offered the following reflection:

I am into my fifties now, and I feel that for the first time in my musical life
I am beginning to understand how the instruments work. Oh, I had made
them sound, and I had understood technique, and the physics of them and
what have you. But I am now beginning to understand metaphysically,
why the instruments work. For the voice, it is possible to write piece after
piece, which sounds well, and is successful....The instruments must be
taken beyond the traditional idiom in a way that makes evolutionary

29
sense.

28

Boyer, 17-18.

29                                                                                                                          j

Kathy Romey, “Interview with Libby Larsen,” International Choral Bulletin 23.4 (3
Quarter 2004): 49.

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