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Libby Larsen Interview (2/99)
2. Being a Good Citizen for Music
RK: I'd like to move on to what we're calling "The Good Citizen" question. Among composers, you are considered to be a good citizen, and that's something that we're very interested in at The American Music Center. The Center was founded by six composers who were good citizens. In order to create a community for new American music, they formed the Center in 1939. You've also served on a number of Boards of musical organizations and co-founded the Minnesota Composers' Forum (now the American Composers' Forum). At this time, with some years to look back on (and certainly to look forward to), how do you see your role as a composer within a larger community?
LL: It hasn't changed very much since the early 1970s. I was puzzled then because I knew that the art form I was pursuing was monastic and was challenged by its own need for creative solitude. After all, notation as we know it developed in the monasteries. The academic university system is a natural evolution of the monasteries.
I was puzzled that a composer like myself was actually faced with a choice in the 1970s... a choice of language... musical language. In fact, a trained composer can chose any language she or he likes. It's not an instinctual thing. While instincts inform voice, you choose to write 12-tone, or aleatoric, or like Wagner, etc. What bothered me is that the choice of language also seemed to determine a choice of place in community and society. A rigorous academic language carries incredible and profound beauty in its mechanics. But choosing it also means a serious challenge in reaching a person who's naturally curious about music but has no technical training to understand the language. I said to myself, "Well, now, that is an investigation worth spending your life on." Composers who are so well trained and have such a deep desire to communicate through writing music ought to be able to communicate in many different venues. If they have a voice and a passion and a desire, they ought to be able to find venues ranging from the most sophisticated professional orchestra to the community choir in the smallest of communities. All those venues are available, and yet there seems to be a definite artificial choice that has been struck here.
I decided that part of the challenge was that we composers ourselves aren't very skilled in telling people how beautiful the art form is. The actual process of composing is a different way of thinking than many other professions. I felt that composers needed to articulate our art form in a way that we weren't addressing. It seemed to me that the way to do this was to just get out and walk around where people were producing music, to be on boards of directors of organizations that produce concerts. They seem to be having real trouble producing the music of living composers. The only way to solve the problem is to go to the root of the problem and learn what the thinking is so that we can articulate the value of the composer in the culture.
RK: Then you're not just making a comment from the outside, you're a part of it. This is a particularly interesting discussion to me because we're trying to position the Center as a place to facilitate and provoke discussion, a place that examines the perceptions and misconceptions of this art form. That's why we're heading towards an Internet magazine; that's what we hope to do with it. We even (in some ways) view it as a guerrilla action.
LL: Richard, I like your thinking.
RK: We'll see how it goes, we have a long way to go before we get there, but when I hear you speak about this, I can say I'm 100% with you. In part, this is what I hope to see the American Music Center become. It's really the promotion or advocacy part, and then there's a support part that's about grants and helping people with direct services and workshops.
LL: Right -- the tools create an advocacy structure and help composers to write their best music.
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Libby Larsen
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