Book Review
Feb. 4th, 2024 03:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariLibby Larsen: Composing an American Life
by Denise Von Glahn
This biography of Minnesotan composer Libby Larsen was really informative and interesting. Von Glahn organizes the book not chronologically, but by major themes and influences in Larsen's life that allow for a coherent story but also for deeper investigations of Larsen's music and the inspirations and meanings behind it. I especially liked Von Glahn's approach to discussing Larsen's works. Each chapter only looked at a few representative works and did not give tedious play-by-play descriptions. Instead, Von Glahn focused on the overall qualities of each piece, examining particularly salient moments to illustrate what is going on in and how the music works as a whole. I also liked the approach to gender and its effect on Larsen. The author brings the issue to the foreground several times, but treats it more universally: not as a series of personal hurdles a trailblazer had to heroically overcome but as a set of common conditions and issues that Larsen grapples with alongside all women in the last half of the 20th century.
by Denise Von Glahn
This biography of Minnesotan composer Libby Larsen was really informative and interesting. Von Glahn organizes the book not chronologically, but by major themes and influences in Larsen's life that allow for a coherent story but also for deeper investigations of Larsen's music and the inspirations and meanings behind it. I especially liked Von Glahn's approach to discussing Larsen's works. Each chapter only looked at a few representative works and did not give tedious play-by-play descriptions. Instead, Von Glahn focused on the overall qualities of each piece, examining particularly salient moments to illustrate what is going on in and how the music works as a whole. I also liked the approach to gender and its effect on Larsen. The author brings the issue to the foreground several times, but treats it more universally: not as a series of personal hurdles a trailblazer had to heroically overcome but as a set of common conditions and issues that Larsen grapples with alongside all women in the last half of the 20th century.
