Libby Larsen: "She Wrote" for string quartet (2008)

Kinetic performs Libby Larsen's "She Wrote" for string quartet, live at Archway Gallery, Houston.

0:00 I. What She Saw
6:18 II. What She Did
12:04 III. How She Felt
16:52 IV. And Then

Natalie Lin Douglas, violin
Matt Lammers, violin
Tonya Burton, viola
Bree Ahern, cello

Composer's note:

She Wrote is inspired by a passage from James Joyce’s Ulysses.

"Solitary Hotel in mountain pass. Autumn. Twilight. Fire lit. In dark corner young man seated. Young woman enters. Restless. Solitary. She sits. She goes to window. She stands. She sits. Twilight. She thinks. On solitary paper she writes. She thinks. She writes. She sighs. Wheels and hoofs. She hurries out" (James Joyce, Ulysses [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922], 637).

The four sections of this quartet correspond with Joyce’s narrative by imagining music for what occurs between these five sentences: “She thinks. She writes. She sighs. Wheels and hoofs. She hurries out.” In other words, where Joyce pares down his words to stark noun/verb sentences, I accept the creative invitation to imagine what might be happening in and around the noun/verb. I responded musically to the fact of “she” writing by imagining not what she wrote but instead by imagining her creative energy/emotion as she wrote.

Imagine yourself as “she”. Imagine the solitary paper. Imagine picking up the pen. Imagine this:

(She thinks)............................................. I. What She Saw

(She writes)............................................. II. What She Did

(She sighs).............................................. III. How She Felt

(Wheels and hoofs. She hurries out)...... IV. And Then