Argento, who was her doctoral advisor, helped to instill in her “confidence in
orchestration, the longevity of lyricism, and the knowledge that lyricism is a concept and
not an act.”5
With the help of the musicians who performed her earliest works, she polished her
technical knowledge of various instruments and began to understand the difference
between the way composers and performers approach music. She credits artists like
Zuckerman and clarinetist Caroline Hartig as instrumental in helping her to develop her
style by “being challenging and engaging [not with her, but] with the music itself.”6
Larsen explains that when working with Zuckerman on Ulloa ,s Ring1 for flute and
piano, Zuckerman’s questioning of the relationship between rhythm and flow in the piece
enabled her to search for her own answer to the larger question “where does rhythm come
from?” Larsen recalls:
[Zuckerman] looked at the sketches and she said: ‘you have two things
going here. You have this flowing thing, and then you have this rhythmic
thing. What’s the relationship of the two?’.. .And I thought, they’re
opposed, they could be opposed, that would be traditional contrapuntal, or
they could be unified and I began to be very frustrated with bar lines at
that point, but not particularly interested in mathematical workings of
rhythm in the Carter Style. I wasn’t interested in Carter or Babbitt, in the
mathematical approach to rhythmic complexity.. .1 was very frustrated
compositionally, because Γd come through pitch-based theoretical
training, which really culminated in the late ‘70s. Pitch-based theoretical
training began to wane at that point; it [had] waxed to its maximum right
at that point. But if not harmonic exploration, then what?8
These questions, which Larsen began to tackle head on during the first phase of her
5Ibid., 19.
6
Libby Larsen, interview by the author, audio recording, Minneapolis, MN, 14 July
2009.
Ulloa ,s Ring was premiered in 1981, the same year as the works discussed in this
chapter.
8
Larsen, interview, 7/2009.