The name is absent

50

Besides the aleatoric shouting which accompanies the climax of Black Roller,
Larsen uses stomping and shouting in just one other piece, the choral work ⁱⁱThe Settling
Years” (1988). Although composed in the year following her residency with the
Minnesota Orchestra, this piece shares many characteristics with Cajun Set. The third
movement, A Hoopla, has words taken from the 1907 Song Primer, a collection of
American songs like the Whitfield collection. Instead of assimilating the sound of Cajun
music and dance, this movement captures the energy of American folk music by
depicting “a bam dance [where] vocalists circle ‘round the instruments, stomp, clap, and
generally perform with abandon, vigor and boisterousness.”⁸⁶ Between the verses the
nonsense syllables “Zzoon,” “Zah,” and “D,g,dah,” punctuate the piece, and throughout
the choir is instructed to stomp and shout “with abandon, boisterously.”⁸⁷

Her sense of humor and willingness to experiment with unconventional ideas and
gestures in her music, inherited from her teacher Eric Stokes, is taken a step further in the
choral work, “Cheap Thrill” from A Creely Collection. Composed in 1984, the score
contains the following instruction:

A solo voice steps forward and says: “Cheap thrill.” (pause) “Write in the
air with flourishes.”

The soloist should stand still. The chorus members, conductor, and
instrumentalists, on cue, should each make one dramatically wild flourish
with hands and arms, all at the same time. Stop. The soloist should step
back into the ranks of the chorus.⁸⁸

⁸⁶ Libby Larsen, “The Settling Years”

http://libbylarsen.com/index.php?contentID=240&profileID=1120&startRange=
(accessed 2 February 2010).

⁸⁷ Alicia Cook, “The Evolving Style of Libby Larsen” (Master Thesis, Butler University),

42.

⁸⁸ Libby Larsen, A Creeley Collection (Boston: E.C. Shirmer, 1989), 6.

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