American composer Libby Larsen has created works in genres of opera, instrumental, orchestral, choral, and vocal music. These works have been performed in the United States and Europe. Her works have also been performed at various festivals, such as the Aldeburgh Festival, the Grand Teton Music Festival, the New Hampshire Music Festival, and the Aspen Music Festival. She has created more than 500 pieces of music and more than fifty CDs. Libby Larsen said, “I started composing out of a need, and that need was to communicate things that I was not able to express through any other venue. I had no idea of how deep that need was. I started composing in grade school, putting sound in order, attempting to communicate a sense of being. I didn’t recognize it as a valuable or even successful activity until college.” Csikszentmilhalyi (1996) says that creativity can be observed only in the interrelations of a system made up of three main parts. The third component of the creative system is the individual person. When we asked creative persons what explains their success, one of the most frequent answers was that they were lucky (p.46). Libby Larsen was just composing out of a need and in doing that she got lucky and has received numerous awards and accolades, including a 1994 Grammy.
Many writers on Libby Larsen analyze her creative process for the answers but unfortunately; the answer is not an easy one. Larsen owes much of her creativity to her hearing, meaning that when she is writing a new work, she hears in her mind what colors the composition makes. When she is working, she approaches her ideas from color and form, the “two important shaping elements that I consider at the outset of any piece,” no matter what genre she is writing. When asked to define her idea of the creative process she answered, “It is struggling toward an unnamed, inarticulate, unseen, unheard image, feeling. And trying again, again, and again somehow to get that thing out of you.” She continues “Each one of us develop processes as we go along, but never get there.” Larsen often doubts her work and is challenged by her ego. She believes every creative personality needs an enormous ego. She says, “Ego is a good
