The name is absent

132

visualizing, “the tiny scatter squalls and cat’s paws created by puffs on still water just
before a front moves in.”⁷⁵ Larsen does not provide any such insight for the Viola Sonata,
yet considering the title of the movement, Drift, and Larsen’s preoccupation with water
imagery, the connection can certainly be implied.

In m. 30, a more animated section develops the flourishes from m. 23 with fast
arpeggios of mostly thirds, fourths, and tritones. These quintuple and sextuple sixteenth-
note figures have similar outlines to the sustained chords shown in Example 3.18. For the
first time in the movement the chords are absent and the piano and viola are intertwined.
The music builds in harmonic and dynamic intensity, but an unexpected diminuendo to
an E harmonic in m. 35 prevents the musical line from climaxing naturally.

The lack of arrival resets the momentum of the movement and an increasingly
intense and rich texture of overlapping melodic gestures follows (mm. 36-44). Both the
rising octave motive and the alternating thirds are repeated in different registers, building
to the true climax of the movement where the thirds are notated with separated
articulation in the upper register of the viola (see Example 3.22). Throughout this section
the pitches A and C are emphasized, another example of Larsen’s study of the natural
resonance of the viola and the interval of a third.

⁷⁵ Libby Larsen, “Symphony: Water Music”

http://libbylarsen.com/index.php?contentID=236&profileID=1196&startRange=
(accessed 8 February 2010).

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