The name is absent

139

symbols with which to communicate her intentions to musicians.⁸⁵ One of the challenges
for the violist in this movement is bringing out the accents in the fast passages and getting
the right tone colors for the contrasting lyrical lines. Here Larsen’s directions should be
taken to extremes. For instance, when playing the opening of the third movement, Larsen
asks that the glissando sound more like an air-raid siren, and the staccatos more secco.⁸⁶

Structurally, much of the third movement alternates between sixteenth note
passages built around the minor third and lyrical sections with the narrow melodic range
of American English. Like the earlier movements, it is sectional, as shown in Figure 10,
yet unlike the first movement, it lacks any traditional formal structure.

Figure 10: Formal Structure of Viola Sonata, Third mvt.

⁸⁵ Larsen muses: “Let me ask you this: What is the purpose of articulation? In
speech we use articulation to create emphasis and infer meaning. One would
assume that in music, articulation is used for the same purposes; however, beyond
emphasis and inferred meaning, articulation is used to delineate rhythm as well as
to convey a particular dramatic persona in any given piece. I dearly hope that
performers bring their own dramatic persona and sense of rhythm to bear on the
written page [as well as] their own sense of language. This is what makes the
music live.” (Harg, 59).

⁸⁶ Larsen, interview, 8/2008.

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