55
the emotional and referential aspects of composing for an abstract audience instead of
storytelling.6
Larsen’s residency with the Minnesota Orchestra also helped her to mature as a
composer and gain confidence in her abilities. She recalls:
During that residency, I felt responsible—rightly or wrongly—for making
sure that having a composer with the orchestra would be remembered as a
pleasant experience and one that would be valued and repeated. [Prior to
the residency], I was not feeling responsible for my own creative voice,
and my [newer] music was colored by this feeling of responsibility.7
Larsen wrote several other works for the Minnesota Orchestra in addition to Water
Music? In looking back on this period of her career, she acknowledges that not only did
the residency give her more confidence as a composer, but it also in some fashion led her
to discover a new musical language based on the rhythms, scales, and textures found in
vernacular American music.9 Departing from the "Pscudo-Stravinsky and post-graduate
school music”10 she had been writing, her new style incorporated the sounds of various
types of American music more freely than in earlier works such as Cajun Set, which was
based on an adaptation of original songs. By the mid 1980’s Larsen had begun exploring
the rhythm of American English, first in her song cycles and later in her instrumental
works. BlackBirds, RedHills represents a transition of sorts, as it was originally
conceived and composed as a song cycle, yet published as a trio for clarinet, viola, and
piano. Composed at the end of her Minnesota Orchestra residency, it has programmatic
6 Ibid.
7
Ibid.
8 Other works written for the Minnesota Orchestra during Larsen’s residency include
Deep Summer Music, Piano Concerto, Overture Fanfare to the Star Spangled Banner,
and Coriolis.
9 El-Hai, 127.
io , . ,