New Books In Music

There are few living American classical composers for whom an academic biography has been published, but Libby Larsen deserves this type of study. At the opening of her book, Libby Larsen: Composing an American Life (University of Illinois Press, 2017), Denise Von Glahn describes her subject’s life as a “polyphony”—made up of multiple strands of music, career, and family. In order to make sense of Larsen’s long and accomplished career (and her hundreds of pieces of music), Von Glahn divides the biography into a close examination of the factors that most influenced Larsen’s life and music: family, religion, nature, the academy, gender, technology, and her collaborations. In each chapter, Von Glahn weaves a consideration of Larsen’s life with analyses of some of her major compositions. Larsen grew up and still lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has always considered herself something of an outsider in the world of classical music. She does not live in New York City (the epicenter of American classical music);