Libby Larsen's Black Birds, Red Hills IV: A Black Bird with Snow-Covered Hills


 

This March, the Daily Classical Music Post will introduce you to some of the most wonderful music ever composed—and, yes, it will all be by women composers!


https://youtu.be/XyfqpeHX3z0


The American composer Libby Larsen (born 1950) was inspired by a painting by Georgia O'Keeffe (who also is particularly notable for her contribution to a field dominated by men), A Black Bird with Snow-Covered Hills (1946), and the resulting composition was "Movement IV: A Black Bird with Snow-Covered Hills," from Black Birds, Red Hills. From the composer's notes: "Georgia O'Keeffe found the flow of time and color in music inspiring to her work as a painter. Black Birds, Red Hills is inspired by six paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe. Each painting explores the flow of time and color on her beloved red hills of New Mexico. In each painting O'Keeffe reveals perspective, beauty and meaning through the magnification of objects, specifically the horizon line, the black rock and the black bird. Movement one three and four reflect the "V shape" of the hills just outside O’Keeffe’s window. She describes this shape as the arms of two great hills, which reach out to the sky and hold it, suggesting to me an abstract cradle. In movement II, I liken the music to O’Keeffe’s image of the black rocks. O'Keeffe found these rocks on her walks to the Glen Canyon dam. She became fascinated with the effect of time on the rocks, noting that time has turned them into objects which are precious to look at and hold. Finally, to paint the black birds which lived in the hills near her, O'Keeffe covered the red hills with snow and focussed on the bird as a metaphor for time, always there and always moving away."

My classical music post for today is Libby Larsen's Black Birds, Red Hills IV: A Black Bird with Snow-Covered Hills.


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