Larsen talks about composer’s role at President’s Lecture

Larsen
talks about composer’s role at President’s Lecture
…………………………………………………………………

BY DANA BENSON
Rice News Staff

With her enthusiasm
for music and composing evident, Libby Larsen delivered
the first President’s Lecture of the 2001-2002 series
Nov. 12.

After being
introduced by Arthur Gottschalk, Rice professor of composition
and theory, who described her as “a composer committed
to the idea of writing modern music that is accessible to
a broad audience,” Larsen spoke on “Music in the
21st Century: A Composer Looks Ahead in the Rearview Mirror.”

Her talk was
the Dominique De Menil lecture of the President’s Lecture
Series. Larsen noted that she visited the Shepherd School
of Music at Rice and the Rothko Chapel, founded by John
and Dominique De Menil, in the early 1980s. The visit, she
continued, “shaped quite a bit of my thinking about
music.”

Her role as
a composer, Larsen explained, is to “live fully and
be aware of life, to listen to the air in my world …
to the spirit of my times to try to understand what music
will come out of me.” Composition, she said, is “the
arrangement of sound and time in space to communicate something
of what it is like to be alive.

“As a composer,
I am concerned with how I excite the air, physically, with
instruments, to communicate what it’s like to be alive,”
she said.

Composers have
long had the responsibility of reflecting culture through
their music, Larsen said.

“All musical
instruments and musical ensembles are invented by the cultures
in which they operate because of the natural need of culture
to reflect itself through music,” she said.

There are many
examples of this in American culture, Larsen noted, citing
the drum set, the synthesizer and the microphone as instruments
of American invention that reflect the culture. The microphone,
for example, was invented to carry sound throughout the
large music halls that became the norm.

The computer,
however, is one invention that has not benefited music,
Larsen said. There is a push at many universities for young
composers to learn music by listening to a computer and
by using notational programs in order to write down their
music. “It’s efficient, and it’s totally
unmusical,” Larsen said. “Every sound you hear
on a computer is a lie. It’s the sound a computer makes,
not the sound of an instrument.”

It is a mistake
to ask young composers to listen to a computer to get an
idea of the sound of a piece. Such a method ignores the
inner ear, which is connected to the heart and the emotion
where music resides, she said.

More and more
conductors and performers are requesting handwritten scores,
Larsen noted. “The personality of the composer comes
through in the notation. Computer notation is absolutely
devoid of personality, of the human spirit,” she added.

Larsen has created
an immense catalog of work that spans nearly every genre
and has established a permanent place in concert repertory.
Her music and ideas have refreshed the concert music tradition
and the composer’s role in it.

Larsen’s
awards and accolades are numerous, including a 1994 Grammy
for her recording of “The Art of Arleen Auger,”
featuring her “Sonnets from the Portuguese.” Called
“a mistress of orchestration” by the Times Union,
Larsen is a prolific composer who is actively sought out
by great artists of international fame. Her discography
of more than 48 works is a testament to her many friendships
and collaborations with world-renowned artists.

Larsen’s
compositions can be heard on several recording labels, including
Koch International, Nonesuch, EMI and Decca. Two of Larsen’s
newly released works on Koch International are “Love
After 1950,” sung by mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer
with Craig Retunberg on piano, and a new recording with
the Colorado Symphony, performing the world premiere of
Larsen’s fifth symphony, “Solo Symphony.”

Larsen’s
writings and speeches on music can be found in numerous
textbooks and in her upcoming book published by Graywolf
Press.

The lecture
was sponosred by the Office of the President with support
from the J. Newton Rayzor Lecture Fund.