performing. She has created a career that allows her both to match her musical and
extramusical ideas with the instruments and performers who will premiere a new work,
and to be mindful of who her audience will be. She explains:
I try to actually visualize what the piece will look like to the audience
member. In other words, you come in and you sit down and you are facing
forward in a proscenium hall. With each one of my pieces I imagine, ‘and
what will you see? And when will you see? And what will that mean to
how you perceive the piece?’7
What changes throughout her career is not her mindful approach to composition, or the
diverse range of extramusical material, but how she uses and incorporates this
extramusical material into the instrumental works she writes. This progression or
evolution will be the subject of this study.
7 Janet Robbins, “The Mysteries of Creation: A Conversation with Libby Larsen,” Orff
Echo 27.4: 14.