Libby Larsen - Musical Philosopher

Musical Philosopher

“Music exists in an infinity of sound. I think of all music as existing in the substance of the air itself. It is the composer’s task to order and make sense of sound, in time and space, to communicate something about being alive through music.” --Libby Larsen

Throughout Larsen’s life, she has become known more and more as a musical philosopher as well as a composer. This quotation is one such example. When asked about her philosophy of music, she responded:

“My own philosophy stems from my belief that certain ratios and vibrations naturally exist in infinity. I believe that a culture will evolve the sonic forms and instruments that it needs in order to represent life through sound and music. It is my feeling that the Romantic era of music history has only recently ended. So I think that composers working today are in a strange bridging area; we are redefining ourselves. We are philosophizing about the nature of sound in our world today. We are struggling to figure out, in our noise-polluted world, what is sound, what is music, and what is silence.

And since I believe that music exists in an infinity of sound, my job as a composer is to make choices about how to organize that sound; in our culture; this means the organization of scales, chord progressions, and the placement of scales within certain other hierarchies, but also choices about to whom we communicate and what results from that communication.”

Larsen has been chosen as a guest lecturer at many events and the lectures and speeches she gives are usually philosophical in nature. Such titles include “The Role of the Musician in the 21st century: Rethinking the Core,” and “The Concert Hall that Fell Asleep and Woke Up as a Car Radio.”

Larsen also believes in the future generation. Since the early 1980s she has believed in mentoring young people and young composers. Her office is always full of young adults working with her on various projects. She sees this set up as a way for everyone to mentor each other—she mentors the young adults and, likewise, they mentor her. She sees her office as “a place where young creative minds can work with me and with each other while we all figure out what the next step is.”