Pause your MP3 player and listen. A new musical age has started – the era of produced sound.

This was one key point of composer Libby Larsen’s Thursday night lecture “The Concert Hall that Fell Asleep and Woke Up as a Car Radio.”

“What does it mean for Beethoven to be listened to on an iPod?” Larsen asked.

As sound systems improve, people possess the ability to experience concert-quality music in private.

“[With radio technology], we were able for the first time to get the full spectrum of sound in our cars,” Larsen said.

The younger generation listens to the same music live that it does in cars or on MP3 players, she said.

“Cultures evolve the music, the ensembles and the delivery systems for the music they need in order to reflect their spirit through music,” Larsen said. “Over the past 100 years, our culture has evolved all three of these.”

She explained how the introduction of the electric guitar and microphone are signs of a changing era.

“If you watch the ‘Tonight Show,’ the grand piano has turned into music in the air,” Larsen said, referring to the transition to keyboards.

Although quartets and symphonies are still present, rock bands mark a new ensemble for music.

“I love to watch Bruce Springsteen,” Larsen said. “[His music] is always evolving.”

She added that the adaptation of notation systems and performance venues also mark a new era.

“The performance venues change and with them the essential and intensely private relationship of the listener to the music,” Larsen said. “The culture wants its own music at its own time at its own place, privately.”

She said people today are physically present, but mentally unavailable because of portable music devices.

Larsen, a composer and musician, has been published by major publishers and received commissions from world-class artists.

“It’s good to hear from a contemporary composer,” said Ari Micich, sophomore in music.

Marie Heiniger, senior in music, said attending this lecture was important to find out what’s going on in music today.

“It’s also important to support current composers,” she said.

Larsen’s work will be performed by students and faculty at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Martha-Ellen Tye Recital Hall in the Music Building. Both concerts are free and open to the public.