The name is absent

68

paintings span thirty-six years of O’Keeffe’s life, Larsen does not arrange them
chronologically. Five of the paintings are of the Pedemal Hills, and the sixth is a close up
of a black rock. In her preface to the score, Larsen writes:

Georgia O’Keeffe found the flow of time and color in music
inspiring to her work as a painter. Black Birds, Red Hills is inspired by six
O’Keeffe paintings, each exploring the flow of time and color on her
beloved red hills of New Mexico. In each painting O’Keeffe reveals
perspective, beauty, and meaning through the magnification of objects,
specifically the horizon line, the black rock, and the black bird. The first,
third, and fourth movements reflect the “V shape” of the hills just outside
O’Keeffe’s window. She describes this shape as the arms of two great hills
which reach out to the sky and hold it, suggesting to me an abstract cradle.
In the second movement, I liken the music to O’Keeffe’s image of the
black rocks that O’Keeffe found on her walks to the Glen Canyon dam.
She became fascinated with the effect of time on rocks, noting that time
has turned them into objects that are precious to look at and hold. Finally,
to paint the black birds that lived in the hills near her, O’Keeffe covered
the red hills with snow and focused on the bird as a metaphor for time,
always there and always moving away. ⁴⁰

In all six paintings there are three main color areas that might conceivably
correspond to particular instruments in the trio. Although Larsen states that this was not
part of her conception of the piece, nonetheless she often assigns a particular (non color
based) role to the various instruments. For instance, the movement of a bird, or the
concept of air are both roles assigned to the clarinet at various points throughout the
piece, and in several spots the piano’s role is to create grounding in the music.

Throughout Black Birds, Red Hills this dichotomy between Larsen’s compositional
process and the way she conceives of the music and the experience of the listener is
evident. On the one hand, she is adamant that her music is more suggestive than narrative
in nature; however, there are also many programmatic elements in the music. She uses
the extramusical material to create the work, yet wants it to be conceived more abstractly,

Libby Larsen, Black Birds, Red Hills, preface.

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