The name is absent

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instrument (C4, G4, D5, and A5). In many instances there are specific indications that the
violist use the unstopped string for selected notes that a performer would typically play in
position in order to use vibrato. In addition to the open strings, resonant tones (stopped
pitches with the same pitch class as the open strings) are emphasized throughout the piece
with the use of harmonics, articulation markings, agogic accents and repetition.⁵⁹ These
compositional decisions help to make the work idiomatic for the viola and its particular
color.

First Movement: Flow

The two most interesting aspects of the first movement of Larsen’s Viola Sonata
are its seemingly improvisatory sounding passages and its formal structure. The
improvisatory elements are all drawn directly from the composer’s interest in a variety of
American popular musics. The formal structure, despite the composer’s own perception
of this piece, follows the expectations of a sonata form movement quite closely. Although
the phrases and larger sections are often “irregular, not symmetrical, recognizable, [and]
in places very abstract,”⁶⁰ the manner in which melodic ideas are presented and
reintroduced creates an identifiable formal structure.

Figure 7 illustrates the division of motivic ideas into three large sections and a coda
(ABA¹Coda), remarkably similar in length and order of appearance to a standard sonata
form movement. The first section (A), is itself a small ternary form, suggesting an

⁵⁹ The viola part in second movement is comprised of more than fifty percent resonant
tones.

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Larsen, interview 8/2008.

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