In 1985, the musical world was celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of Georg Frideric Handel. On today’s date that year, a much younger composer named Libby Larsen, then in her mid-thirties, was celebrating the premiere performance of her Symphony No. 1.

Larsen titled her symphony “Water Music,” and says its first movement was a deliberate homage to Handel, whose own “Water Music” is one of the most popular orchestral works of the Baroque Age. As a resident composer of a state with over 10,000 lakes, Larsen admits her own love of sailing also had something to do with the symphony’s descriptive title.

Since 1985, Larsen has gone on to write four more symphonies, each with its own particular title. And Larsen frequently gives individual movements of each symphony their own descriptive tag, as well.

One movement from her “Solo” Symphony No. 5, from 1999, is entitled “The Cocktail Party Effect.” Rather than the wallop of a stiff drink, Larsen says she means the ability of human hearing to pick out a single voice among the extraneous noise one encounters at a crowded cocktail party.

“It’s a kind of musical ‘Where’s Waldo?’” says Larsen. “In this case, Waldo is a melody, introduced at the beginning of the movement, from then on hidden amidst the other music.”