Larsen's symphonies

Synopsis

In 1985, the musical world was celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of Georg Frideric Handel. On today’s date that year, a Minnesota-based composer named Libby Larsen, then in her mid-thirties, was celebrating the premiere performance of her Symphony No. 1.

Larsen titled her symphony “Water Music,” and says its first movement was a deliberate homage to Handel’s famous “Water Music.” As a resident composer of a state with over 10,000 lakes, Larsen admits her own love of sailing also had something to do with the symphony’s descriptive title.

Since 1985, Larsen has gone on to write a few more symphonies, each with its own particular title. And Larsen frequently gives individual movements of each symphony their own descriptive tags. For example, one movement from her “Solo” Symphony No. 5, from 1999, is entitled “The Cocktail Party Effect.”

Rather than the wallop of a stiff drink, Larsen says she means the ability of human hearing to pick out a single voice among the extraneous noise one encounters at a crowded cocktail party. “It’s a kind of musical ‘Where’s Waldo?’” says Larsen. “In this case, Waldo is a melody, introduced at the beginning … then hidden amidst the other music.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Libby Larsen (b. 1950) Symphony: Water Music Minnesota Orchestra; Sir Neville Marriner, cond. Nonesuch 79147

Libby Larsen (b. 1950) Solo Symphony Colorado Symphony; Marin Alsop, cond. Koch 7520

On This Day

Births

• 1697 - German composer and flutist Johann Joachim Quantz, in Oberscheden, Hannover;

• 1861 - French-born American composer Charles Martin Loeffler, in Alsace;

• 1862 - German-born American composer and conductor, Walter Damrosch, in Breslau;

Deaths

• 1963 - French composer Francis Poulenc, age 64, in Paris;

Premieres

• 1724 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 81 ("Jesus schläft, was soll ich hoffen?") performed on the 4th Sunday after Epiphany as part of Bach's first annual Sacred Cantata cycle in Leipzig (1723/24);

• 1735 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 14 ("Wär Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit") performed in Leipzig on the 4th Sunday after Epiphany;

• 1892 - Rachmaninoff: “Trio élégiaque” No. 1 in G minor (Gregorian date: Feb. 11);

• 1893 - Brahms: Fantasies for piano Nos. 1-3, from Op. 117 and Intermezzo No. 2, from Op. 117, in Vienna;

• 1917 - Zemlinsky: opera "A Floretine Tragedy," in Stuttgart at the Hoftheater;

• 1920 - Frederick Converse: Symphony in c, by the Boston Symphony, Pierre Monteux conducting;

• 1942 - Copland: Orchestral Suite from "Billy the Kid" ballet, by the Boston Symphony;

• 1948 - Harold Shapero: "Symphony for Classical Orchestra," by the Boston Symphony conducted by Leonard Bernstein;

• 1958 - Walton: "Partita" for orchestra, in Cleveland;

• 1959 - Hindemith: "Pittsburgh Symphony," by the Pittsburgh Symphony, conducted by the composer;

• 1970 - William Schuman: "In Praise of Shahn," in New York;

• 1985 - Libby Larsen: Symphony ("Water Music"), by the Minnesota Orchestra, Sir Neville Marriner conducting.