Libby Larsen

Libby Larsen (b. 24 December 1950, Wilmington, Delaware) is one of America's most prolific and most performed living composers. She has created a catalogue of over 200 works spanning virtually every genre from intimate vocal and chamber music to massive orchestral and choral scores.

Her music has been praised for its dynamic, deeply inspired, and vigorous contemporary American spirit. Constantly sought after for commissions and premieres by major artists, ensembles and orchestras around the world, Libby Larsen has established a permanent place for her works in the concert repertory.

Larsen has been hailed as

"the only English-speaking composer since Benjamin Britten who matches great verse with fine music so intelligently and expressively" (USA Today);

as

"a composer who has made the art of symphonic writing very much her own." (Gramophone);

as

a mistress of orchestration" (Times Union);

and for

"assembling one of the most impressive bodies of music of our time" (Hartford Courant).

Her music has been praised for its

"clear textures, easily absorbed rhythms and appealing melodic contours that make singing seem the most natural expression imaginable. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

"Libby Larsen has come up with a way to make contemporary opera both musically current and accessible to the average audience." (The Wall Street Journal)

"Her ability to write memorable new music completely within the confines of traditional harmonic language is most impressive." (Fanfare)

Ms. Larsen has received numerous awards and accolades, including a 1994 Grammy as producer of the CD: The Art of Arlene Augér, an acclaimed recording that features Larsen's Sonnets from the Portuguese. Her opera Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus was selected as one of the eight best classical music events of 1990 by USA Today.

The first woman to serve as a resident composer with a major orchestra, she has held residencies with the California Institute of the Arts, the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, the Philadelphia School of the Arts, the Cincinnati Conservatory, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Charlotte Symphony, and the Colorado Symphony.

Larsen's many commissions and recordings are a testament to her fruitful collaborations with a long list of world-renowned artists, including The King's Singers, Benita Valente, and Frederica von Stade, among others. Her works are widely recorded on such labels as Angel/EMI, Nonesuch, Decca, and Koch International.

Libby Larsen is a vigorous, articulate champion of the music and musicians of our time. In 1973, she co-founded (with Stephen Paulus) the Minnesota Composers Forum, now the American Composers Forum, which has been an invaluable advocate for composers in a difficult, transitional time for American arts.

Consistently sought-after as a leader in the generation of millennium thinkers, Libby Larsen's music and ideas have refreshed the concert music tradition and the composer's role in it. (from www.libbylarsen.com)

Missa Gaia: Mass for the Earth (1992) combines texts from the Bible and poetry in the 5-movement form of the liturgical Mass. The texts are drawn from the Bible and poems by Wendell Berry and Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Chinook Psalter and Native American poets Joy Harjo and Maurice Kenny, and finally the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart. 

Permeating the entire Mass is the themes of cycles, and our relationship to the Earth. The composer even used techniques related to circles/cycles, such as the “Circle of Fifths,” in melodies and the selection of the oboe, one of the few instruments that can be played while breathing circularly. There are several excellent recordings of this work that are available commercially.

The following website provided additional information about Ms. Larsen: www.libbylarsen.com.