Odell Shepard’s The Harvest of a Quiet Eye is a tapestry of essays and poems recounting a walking journey the author made through rural Connecticut in September of 1926. An engaging minor classic of the literature of walking, the book brims with good, sweet things: a deep affection for small towns and little rivers, an appreciation of solitude alternating with vivid character sketches and an abundance of gently humorous, pleasantly self-indulgent digressions into many other subjects. The book is imbued with optimism and serenity.

It's a book I love and have read many, many times. For years, I've purchased first editions of the book to give to friends. The first edition is beautiful, printed in dark green ink on rich, creamy vellum and with broad margins. Over a hundred illustrations. The book even smells good! No one is producing books like that, nowadays.

Shepard wrote in a way that suggests an alternative 20th century, the quiet, pastoral 20th century that might have been had we been able to dodge two world wars, the Great Depression, Cold War tensions, the strains of prolonged nuclear threat, overpopulation and the ravaging of the environment. Shepard kept his art clean of angst and alienation. He walked and wrote in an America as refreshingly remote from our own as Oz or Middle Earth.

Yet he is no fantasist; he roots his appreciation for the beauty of life in a full acceptance of its transience.

Who was he? Odell Shepard (1884-1967) was a professor of English literature at Trinity College, a newspaper columnist, a pianist and singer, an indefatigable walker and trout fisherman, and even, for one term, lieutenant governor of Connecticut! Shepard wrote well on an astonishingly diverse array of topics and in nearly every literary form. His biography of Bronson Alcott won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize. His novels Jenkins’ Ear, and Holdfast Gaines, co-authored with his son, were successful Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Books on Connecticut history, Shakespeare, and trout-fishing as well as essays, poems, newspaper columns and editings of other writers whose work he admired poured from his pen in the 1920’s and ‘30’s. Two of his books, The Heart of Thoreau's Journals and his masterful study of the unicorn myth, The Lore of the Unicorn, have never gone out of print.

Rhapsodizing in prose, his writing is strikingly good, quietly dignified yet impassioned, a noble, flowing, musical prose that aspires to poetry. If this was music, we'd describe it as tonal and melodic.

I've set to music several of his poems and in 2010 I wrote my only extended dramatic work, adapting Shepard's account, in The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, of his encounter with a grim marsh-land, "livid with Death." He dares to try to hear what the Marsh is "saying" to him; she asserts Nature's indifference to our brief human experiment with consciousness. It nearly undoes him. A message like that, if we really take it in, can just about undo any of us.

Then, rejoicing in the beauty of the dying leaves of autumn, he affirms Life all the more heartily and strides "with high-hearted singing" to the end of his day's hike, crossing the bridge and seeing the light of his inn "at the far end shining." I take the bridge as a metaphor for our journeys’ end in Death and the inn, with its shining lights, as a metaphor of a welcoming, restful afterlife.

My cantata, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye is in twelve-movements, scored for baritone (who sings the role of Shepard, the hiker-narrator), soprano (who sings the words of the Marsh-land), chorus (who comments on the action), four-part chorus and a miniature orchestra consisting of a flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano.

Just now I want to share the last two movements: the baritone solo in which Shepard so beautifully comes to terms with Death, followed by the Finale for baritone, chorus and instruments when he finishes his hike, crossing the bridge at last.

Here are the words:

Movement #11: It is true that I am walking in the Valley of the Shadow of Death and that soon I shall lie down there, never to rise, and that every flower and face and thought that I have known, together with all that my fellows have thought and dreamed and made, will lie there very soon beside me. But yet it is a most beautiful valley and I have always loved it and I love it more deeply at every step that brings me nearer the end. Why then should I grieve to lie here forever? The oak and the maple are dying too and they comfort me. For they do not dwindle and pine into the grave but go down trooping their colors and shouting hosannas as though they have some expectation of joy, some intuition that from this dying world unimaginable life may spring as the new year springs from the ruins of the old. In such company at least I can say that I will fear no evil.

Movement #12: The sun was setting behind the mountains and a breeze awoke in the sky. The new moon was blown bare of clouds and the stars shown round her like a shining wreath. By her pale illumination I found my way. I strode along with high-hearted singing until at last I could see the bridge and finally the light of my inn at the far end shining.

That ending touches my heart; when I hear this music my throat tightens, tears come. I want to raise a hand and wave goodbye to this good man as he crosses over. I may ask my choir director friend, Chris Miller, to sing and lead these two movements at my funeral.

To hear the last two movements of The Harvest Quiet Eye, in the premiere performance by the superb baritone Noel Bouley with the Cincinnati Camerata under the direction of Chris Miller, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Oct. 12, 2014

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“The Harvest of a Quiet Eye” is the name of one of my favorite books and also the name of my only extended work for soloists and chorus. The author of this book, Odell Shepard, borrowed the title from a poem by Wordsworth:

The outward shows of sky and earth,
Of hill and valley he has viewed;
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude.

In common things that round us lie
Some random truths he can impart, --
The harvest of a quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart.

My cantata opens with a choral setting of those noble words. What follows are settings of Shepard's account of his encounter with a grim Marsh-land, "livid with Death." He dares to try to hear what the Marsh is "saying" to him; she asserts Nature's indifference to our brief human experiment and it nearly undoes him. A message like that, if we really take it in, leads to despair.

Nevertheless, surprised, he finds himself remembering the “brave, high-hearted songs” his fellow human beings have sung and he rejoices in that memory and in the beauty of the dying autumn leaves that “go down trooping their colors and shouting hosannas." He affirms our human adventure all the more heartily and strides through what remains of his day’s hike (and, we feel, through what will remain of his life), "with high-hearted singing."

Today I'll share just the two-minute opening movement. I think this sounds like an opening, a beginning. From the git-go, it's expansive. Something is astir. Good things lie ahead. It’s like the opening credits of a well-scored film.

The work is in twelve movements, scored for baritone (singing the role of Shepard, the hiker-narrator), soprano (the haunting voice of the Marsh-land), chorus (commenting on the action) and a miniature orchestra: flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano.

To hear the opening movement of The Harvest Quiet Eye, in the premiere performance by the Cincinnati Camerata under the direction of Chris Miller, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Nov. 22, 2015

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Hello —

Happy Easter. Speaking of which …

<< The God many Christians worship is far too small. God is not a “tribal” God, somewhere “out there,” belonging only to Judaism or Christianity. It’s no wonder so many educated, postmodern people have given up on such a God … not nearly as big as science is discovering the universe itself to be. >>
— Richard Rohr

For many, the reported bigness of the universe staggers Faith. Belief is rattled, too, by what we’re told of the History of the universe and its bleak, inexorable future.

We ‘educated, postmodern people’ are not the first to find that such discoveries are at odds with Religion. Even before Galileo there must always have been a long list of seemingly solid reasons to reject the sacredness of materiality, to remain willfully blind to the implications of consciousness, to resist the tempting notion of God.

My only extended dramatic vocal work, my cantata, “The Harvest of a Quiet Eye,” is a setting of excerpts from the book of that title by Odell Shepard; it addresses, in a drama, the issue that Rohr raises in an essay.

In the book, as in the cantata, the story is told of a solitary walker who encounters a marsh and dares to face what he perceives to be its grim message: that all Life dies, that this unutterably vast universe is devoid of meaning, that these assertions obviate and render empty the notion of God. The story does not stop there; surprisingly, it leads to a resurrection of Faith and ends in triumphant serenity.

Sometimes I find that “the world is charged with the Grandeur of God.” Other times the notion of God seems absurd and sentimental. I have good friends who cannot grasp why I show up, every Sunday, at a church service. Their notion of God is, I think, narrow. That’s why it seems ridiculous to them. I agree. A narrow notion of God IS ridiculous. As with the Christians Rohr references, many an ardent atheist clings to a concept of God that "is far too small.”

When I find myself bewildered, I try to remember to do what the solitary walker does in response to the grim assertions of the Marsh. I think about Consciousness, our human consciousness, unique, incredible, mysterious and inexplicable … no one knows what it is nor how it came to be … let alone, even more importantly, WHY it came to be. Who among us can answer that question?

When I ponder such questions I find myself traipsing into the realms of Theology. And there I find solace and certitude. The absurdly narrow idea of the tribal God of the Abrahamic Religions, that 'Big Man with the Long White Beard Who’s Got His Finger In Every Pie,' shrivels away. I am left filled with wonder, awe and humility. At such moments I have a yearning to worship.

To be sure, such moments do not always coincide with my attendance at the weekly 11 a.m. Sunday morning services at Cincinnati's Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church, my church, our church. But church attendance keeps me in touch with the notion of God and puts me into the company of friends who share my curiosity about such things.

The solitary walker in The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, after taking on board what the Marsh has to tell, remembers "our habitable little globe and the fires we have kindled, building them on the edges of the abyss and lighting only our own faces against the ring of darkness, but still ... fires.”

He recalls "the brave high-hearted songs we sing as though the dark were not, the songs that tally all our faiths, our hopes, our dreams, the brave high-hearted songs we’ve made to sing us through the dark, the songs that tally all our faiths, our joys and lamentations, our yearnings, our illusions and our heroic hopes."

Finally, this leads him to rejoice in the astonishing fact of our human consciousness.

The climactic tenth movement of the cantata is the four-part choral fugue I made, setting to music, as passionately as I could, the noble words he gives us at that moment:

"It may be that Nature did not foresee us, but in all her kingdoms she has brought forth no other such pathetic and marvelous thing as this human heart, so trivial and heroic, so dauntless though so filled with fears, that can smile into the eyes of Death.”

Resurrection!

To hear my fugue, “It May Be That Nature,” the tenth movement of my cantata The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, from the 12/3/16 performance by the Harvard-Radcliffe Community Chorus, with Edward Elwyn Jones conducting, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Apr. 16, 2017

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“Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!”

That’s what Ophelia says about Hamlet. That’s what I fear you might say about me when you hear the piece of music I am going to share today, if you’ll permit me.

It’s the “Song of the Marsh” from my cantata, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, my only extended dramatic vocal work, a setting of excerpts from the book of that title by Odell Shepard.

In the book, as in the cantata, the story is told of a solitary walker who encounters a marsh and dares to hear its grim message: that this unutterably vast universe is devoid of meaning. The story does not stop there; surprisingly, it leads to a resurrection of faith, celebrating consciousness and ending in triumphant serenity.

A few weeks ago, on Easter Sunday, I shared the triumphant music that follows in response to the "Song of the Marsh." Some of you kindly asked to hear the song itself. Today you will.

Most of my music is tame, conservative, pastoral sometimes funny. Music like that would not do justice to the powerful darkness of the monologue Shepard devised for the marsh.

Read the words and imagine how YOU might set them to music ...

"Soft and dreamy seeker of pleasant emotions, you see no farther into reality than a painted butterfly flapping from flower to flower. You too are convinced that the sun shines to warm your wings, that the meadows are strewn with flowers to flatter your delight in color.

"Stare into my vacant eyes, older than thought, older than mind-stuff, and learn more than e’er you have in pondering the wisest of books. Your poets have not told you such things as I tell, for I remember the dinosaur’s wallowing and the scream of the saber-tooth.

"Peer down into the savageries of the under-sea. Think your way out into the infinity of the sky or down into the answering infinity of the atom.

"Stand and look at me. As I am now, so was the planet for innumerable ages before you came and so it will be for endless ages after you are gone.

"Now you may pass, for I think you will not forget."

Chilling sentiments, they warrant music that is beautiful but harsh, and a performance that is deeply felt but anti-sentimental. The soprano in this performance is Jacquelyn Stucker and she is marvelous! Her dusky lower register is perfect for the opening and closing of the song; her higher register blossoms gorgeously when the music conveys the flower-strewn meadows and our delight in color. She thunders like heaven’s artillery when she sings of the dinosaur’s wallowing and the scream of the saber-tooth.

(Ms. Stucker told me, “This is the first time in my career that I’ve sung the word ’saber-tooth.’” We both smiled and I said, “Well, you never know what you might be gettin’ yourself into.”)

She was featured in the 12/3/16 performance by the Harvard-Radcliffe Community Chorus under Edward Elwyn Jones, conductor, in the Sanders Theatre on the campus of Harvard University. I’m very happy that I was able to attend the concert; it was one of the most meaningful events of my life.

This “Song of the Marsh” is, musically, far beyond the limits of my usual conservative style. It may approach the music we might imagine Debussy to have composed, had he lived another twenty or thirty years.

It may not be to your liking. The music is not intended to be likable in the usual sense. Hearing it, you may find yourself echoing Ophelia’s quip about the melancholy Dane.

I hope you’ll see why I wrote it the way I did.

If you want to give it a try, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
May 21, 2017

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W.B. Yeats dispraised the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, saying it was “all hot lobster and mountain tops.”

Funny, but perhaps better left unsaid. Poets are well advised, I think, to keep their opinions of other poets to themselves. The same goes for composers and all arts practitioners. Who rejoices in a sour snipe? No good comes of it. What does the faultfinder gain?

Similarly, religion and politics make unsuitable grist for the conversational mills in the workplace. One time when i was chatting with a fellow security guard at the Cincinnati Art Museum, the subject of Cincinnati’s hungry school children came up. The guard with whom I was speaking was a jolly fellow. Chubby, with a big white beard and twinkling eyes, the spitting image of Santa Claus. “Well,” he said, jumping simultaneously into religion and politics in a single breath, “their parents made mistakes and now someone’s got to pay.”

A grim, heartless Santa Claus. Until that moment, I had not understood the man. “I guess we’d better get back to guarding the art,” I said and that is what we did.

I would not confront him, not in the workplace, nor anyplace else. Confrontation is not my way. His deplorable remark, so harsh and hateful, still burns me, five years after he uttered it. A great many people would agree with him and vote accordingly. A great many others would be horrorstruck, as I was. Our perception of such a comment grows out of our religion, our ethics, our philosophy; our reactions to such a comment play out in our politics, i.e., how we vote.

The workplace is not the arena to explore such topics.

What about Nature as a topic? Is Nature a subject on which anyone can opine — anywhere, anytime -- with impunity? She would seem to be fair game, an easy target. Nature finds plenty of ways to wreak havoc on us but she cannot defend herself, not verbally.

What if she could? What might Nature, given a voice, have to say to us?

In a scene from one of my favorite books, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, author Odell Shepard gives Nature a voice; he personifies Nature and hears her speaking to him in the guise of what he calls The Desolate Marsh. Here is what that wetland has to say to him:

"Soft and dreamy seeker of pleasant emotions, you see no farther into reality than a painted butterfly flapping from flower to flower. You too are convinced that the sun shines to warm your wings, that the meadows are strewn with flowers to flatter your delight in color.
Stare into my vacant eyes, older than thought, older than mind-stuff, and learn more than e’er you have in pondering the wisest of books. Your poets have not told you such things as I tell, for I remember the dinosaur’s wallowing and the scream of the saber-tooth. Peer down into the savageries of the under-sea. Think your way out into the infinity of the sky or down into the answering infinity of the atom.
Stand and look at me. As I am now, so was the planet for innumerable ages before you came and so it will be for endless ages after you are gone. Now you may pass, for I think you will not forget."

He is nearly undone by these fierce verities. He writes:

"No, I shall not forget. For it set me for two or three shuddering minutes outside my little circle and I saw how that circle really looks. And I felt the Terror of Solitude. For even someone who can face Death cannot face the thought that life and death are utterly meaningless."

How else can any intelligent person respond? Now see how he finds his way forward.

"Then I thought of our habitable little globe and I thought of the fires we have kindled, building them only on the edges of the abyss and lighting only our own faces against the ring of darkness, but still ... fires."

Then, oh then, so movingly, so tenderly, he "remembers all the songs" and, by implication, the myriad other artifices we’ve fashioned, all of them multiloquent if we have ears to hear, transcending petty politics and even religion, “to sing us through the dark."

“Then I remembered all the songs we’ve made to sing, the brave, high-hearted songs we sing as though the dark were not, the songs that tally all our faiths, our hopes, our dreams, our joys and lamentations, our yearnings, our illusions and our heroic hopes.”

As you may have guessed or already known, I set to music Shepard’s account of his encounter with the Marsh. It’s the libretto of my cantata entitled “The Harvest of a Quiet Eye.” Today I invite you to listen to hear two movements from the work: the recitative “No, I shall not forget” and the aria “Then I remembered all the songs.” .

To hear “No, I shall not forget” immediately followed by “Then I remembered all the songs,” movements 8 and 9 from my cantata "The Harvest of a Quiet Eye," in the 12/3/16 performance by the marvelously expressive baritone Bradford Gleim — his voice is perfect for this music! — and the Harvard-Radcliffe Community Chorus, with Edward Elwyn Jones conducting, click on the link above.
http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/harvest_8_9.mp3

To see a PDF of the score for movement 8, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score for movement 9, click on the link above.

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Living in the heart of a sizable city, it’s easy to forget how beautiful Nature can be. And how ugly.

I was reminded during, of all things, an appointment with a doctor. The knee surgeon required me to have a ‘pre-op’ physical before the knee could be replaced. Dutifully, I made the appointment, drove to the sterile, modern Medical Arts building, parked, entered, ascended in the elevator (an uplifting experience, it took me to a whole new level), filled out forms, did a little thumb-twiddling in the waiting room, got weighed (212 lbs.) and was at length shown to an examination room.

There, a large window looked out upon a broad forested ridge, our Eastern woodlands in full mid-May flourish, their finest hour. Green, green, green! Oaks, maples, beeches, tall and ancient, leaves by the billions, a-quiver in the breeze. For a good five minutes, I watched two birds riding the currents above the trees, uplifted, taken to a whole new level.

Then the doc arrived and addressed the business at hand.

Customarily, we think of Nature as a thing of beauty. It can also be hideous. Have you come upon a rotting carcass, flayed and maggot-infested, strewn in your path? That’s Nature, too, red in tooth and claw. “Fish eating fish, bugs eating bugs, plants eating plants. It’s an enormous restaurant, that’s how I see it,” said Woody Allen.

In his book, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, Odell Shepard recounts a two-week walking journey through rural Connecticut, undertaken in 1926. His encounter with a desolate marsh prompts him, despite his love for Her, to ponder Nature at Her most hideous; he finds Her weirdly beautiful yet utterly grim.

When I set to music his encounter with the marsh I had to devise music that would express the beauty of Nature but also, simultaneously, the harsh despair She communicates when She makes no attempt to conceal Her ugliness and indifference.

I scored Shepard’s description of the marsh to be sung by women’s voices with the baritone narrator singing OVER the women’s voices. It’s like a painting of a figure posed in a landscape; the baritone is the figure, the women’s voices comprise the landscape.

Here is the text:

Women’s voices: There were thirty gray acres of slate-gray water under a slate-gray sky, and over it all there hung the curse of silence and a blank despair. There were hundreds of trees, submerged to the knees, all livid in Death.

Baritone: I dared to stand and face the marsh, and to make bold to wonder what it meant.
There are no words to articulate a message devoid of all humanity; still, I tried to perceive what it had to say.

What the marsh has to say is revealed in the movement that follows; that's beyond the scope of today’s message. Please keep that in mind when you find that this movement ends abruptly and inconclusively; remember that it is a prologue for what comes next, when the marsh has her say.

To hear “Thirty Gray Acres,” movement VI from my cantata "The Harvest of a Quiet Eye," in the performance by the marvelously expressive baritone Bradford Gleim — his voice is perfect for this music! — and the women of the Harvard-Radcliffe Community Chorus, with Edward Elwyn Jones conducting, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

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One of many things to admire about Walt Whitman is that he was not afraid to contradict himself.

“Do I contradict myself?” he asks. "Very well, I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”

For me, music expressing hostility and menace are a contradiction. By now, you have a feel for my music; you know that my instinct is to dole out sweetness and light, to induce smiles.

I had to contradict that instinct when concocting a scene in my cantata, “The Harvest of a Quiet Eye.”

The baritone / narrator tells of hiking from a bright place to a dark place and back. The dark place is a wetland he calls The Desolate Marsh; he is taken aback, then enlightened, by what the marsh tells him.

Today I want to share the music that precedes that encounter. The mood is tense and macabre, far from the delights in Nature her bucolic moods.

Just before this music, the baritone / narrator sings these words:

"My road was now only a path in the woods, printed with hoof-marks of deer. Once I caught a glimpse of a fox staring into my eyes. The afternoon wore away, the wind fell and the sky was filled with clouds. The silence of the woods deepened into mystery.”

Then, as you’ll hear, comes a harsh octave, the deepest “D” on the piano, thumping, ominously. The pace is that of a scherzo, very fast, breathless. It’s all over in two minutes.

The chorus enters: "It was as though the trees were making secret preparations. The air seemed alive with hostility and menace.”

Then the baritone: "I felt I was watched by many things at once from all sides. The air seemed alive with hostility and menace, when I came to the Desolate Marsh.”

The two musical forces — chorus and soloist — combine, the short movement quickly reaches its climax, then cuts off abruptly.

Remember, this is a fragment from a larger work, like a short scene from an opera. It’s not intended to ‘stand alone.’ I think you’ll find it interesting because it’s so different, even contradictory, compared to the other pieces of my music you’ve kindly allowed me to share.

By the way, the entire cantata is going to be performed by the Thomas Circle Singers under James Kreger at 5pm on Saturday May 18, 2019 at the Church of the Epiphany, 1317 G St, NW, Washington, DC 20005. Jo and I and our daughter, who lives in DC, will be there! If you live in the DC area, join us!

To hear “It was as though the trees…”, the fifth movement from my cantata "The Harvest of a Quiet Eye," in the 12/3/16 performance by the marvelously expressive baritone Bradford Gleim — his voice is perfect for this music! — and the Harvard-Radcliffe Community Chorus, with Edward Elwyn Jones conducting, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

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September is upon us.

It was in September of 1926 that Odell Shepard undertook the two-week walking journey chronicled so beautifully in his masterpiece, “The Harvest of a Quiet Eye.”

I set to music several scenes from the book in my cantata of the same title.

Here are the lyrics for the two movements that follow the Prologue. The first expresses, I think, the feelings of excitement and expansiveness so characteristic of beginnings … beginnings of journeys, beginnings of choral cantatas, all sorts of beginnings. The second is a fugue in which the choral entrances overlap like hills rising “tier upon tier.” I tried to catch those tones of “blue and dimmer blue” in the music by using, when the word “blue” is sung, harmonies slightly tinged with a ‘Blues’ sound.

Follow the lyrics as you listen:

Baritone: I came to a road running northward, and the borders were woven with thickets of birches and maples. The yellowing leaves were atwinkle in the wind and the lane was a vista of dazzle and shine.

Chorus: Here were old stone walls running through woodland, and old apple orchards recaptured by forest.

Baritone and chorus: A mile more and the lyric beauty of my road was changed into grandeur.

Chorus: The hills to the north and west rose tier above tier in tones of blue and dimmer blue to the far horizon.

To hear “I came to a road running northward” followed by “The hills to the north and west,” movements 2 and 3 from my cantata "The Harvest of a Quiet Eye," in the 12/3/16 performance by the marvelously expressive baritone Bradford Gleim — his voice is perfect for this music! — and the Harvard-Radcliffe Community Chorus, with Edward Elwyn Jones conducting, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

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Good Friday is always grim. This one is grimmer.

Yet, how beautiful the natural world is just now!

Behind our house is a small backyard, enclosed by a picket fence we've painted forest-green. Behind the fence are seven noble pines, 60 feet tall. At their knees are a dense mass of viburnum. Behind the pines and viburnum is a vast expanse of fields and trees and sky. The bluffs of the Little Miami River rise in the distance.

We walk there most days, having it to ourselves. The daffodils and forsythia are passing but the redbud are a-flourish.

Spring herself is untroubled by the virus. To her, it is boresome; she gives it no thought. The burgeoning Japanese maples are as unaffected as the squirrels that raid our bird-feeder.

“It is true that I am walking in the valley of the shadow of death … but it is a most beautiful valley and I have always loved it.”

Those are the words of an author often mentioned in these messages, Odell Shepard, and they are borrowed from his masterpiece The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, one of my favorite books. My cantata of the same title, one of my best efforts, is a setting of wise words from that book.

Next Wednesday, I am going to post on-line the PDF of a remarkable book of Odell Shepard's which I discovered, edited and brought into being, one of the meaningful undertakings of my long career. It is a sequel to The Harvest of a Quiet Eye titled The Cabin Down the Glen. There’s a long story behind its discovery and publication — and a good one, too — but I’ll wait until Wednesday to share it.

For now, let’s listen to the final two movements of my cantata, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye. The words speak to this particular Good Friday in ways I could never have imagined or anticipated when I set them to music.

As you listen, follow these marvelous words, wise, serene, radiantly resigned:

"It is true that I am walking in the Valley of the Shadow of Death and that soon I shall lie down there, never to rise, and that every flower and face and thought that I have known, together with all that my fellows have thought and dreamed and made, will lie there very soon beside me.

But yet it is a most beautiful valley and I have always loved it and I love it more deeply at every step that brings me nearer the end.

Why then should I grieve to lie here forever? The oak and the maple are dying too and they comfort me. For they do not dwindle and pine into the grave but go down trooping their colors and shouting hosannas as though they have some expectation of joy, some intuition that from this dying world unimaginable life may spring as the new year springs from the ruins of the old. In such company at least I can say that I will fear no evil.

The sun was setting behind the mountain and a breeze awoke in the sky. The new moon was blown bare, blown bare of clouds and the stars shown round her like a shining wreath. By her pale illumination I found my way. I strode along with high-hearted singing until at last I could see the bridge and finally the light of my inn at the far end shining."

That last line touches me deeply; when I hear this music my throat tightens, tears come. I want to raise a hand and wave goodbye to Odell Shepard, this good man, as he is crossing over and, I imagine, waving back at me. When my turn comes to cross over, I aspire to raise my hand and wave, making that same radiant gesture of farewell and in just the same spirit. I will ask my friend Chris Miller to sing these two movements at my funeral, if funerals are a possibility by then.

May such an occasion be a good ways off yet for all of us! But who knows?

Meanwhile, quite literally, for however long I have left, I intend to stride along with high-hearted singing -- in every sense of the word! I earnestly wish that this music may help inspire the same impluse in you.

To hear the last two movements of The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, in the 12/3/16 performance by the marvelously expressive Boston baritone Bradford Gleim — his voice is perfect for this music! — and the Harvard-Radcliffe Community Chorus under the direction of Edward Elwyn Jones, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

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I can add nothing to these stirring, Easter-ish words Odell Shepard wrote in 1926 and which comprise the lyrics of the choral work I want to share with you today:

"It may be that Nature did not foresee us, but in all her kingdoms she has brought forth no other such pathetic and marvelous thing as this human heart, so trivial and heroic, so dauntless though so filled with fears, that can smile into the eyes of Death.”

To hear “It May Be That Nature,” from my cantata The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, text by Odell Shepard, performed by the Harvard-Radcliffe Community Chorus, with Edward Elwyn Jones conducting, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

This Wednesday I will announce a website offering a PDF where Odell Shepard’s sequel to The Harvest of a Quiet Eye can be read on line or downloaded for free, to be read later.

My discovery of the manuscript of this lost book, titled The Cabin Down the Glen, and my editing and publishing of it, was one of the most meaningful endeavors of my long career and makes for a good story, which I’ll also share on Wednesday.

Few of you have read this book, though many of you have some awareness of it, as I have often quoted it in these emails and shared my musical settings of portions of the text.

A book written by a man discovering richness and depth during a period of self-imposed isolation speaks to our present circumstance in ways I could not have imagined when I brought the book to light in 2006.

Here is the description from the back cover of The Cabin Down the Glen:

When Pulitzer Prize-winning author Odell Shepard turned 50, he retreated to a cabin in the deep-forest solitude of his beloved northwestern Connecticut to write this book. In clear, elegant prose, Shepard draws insights from things common and near to hand: bird song, spring water, stone walls and starry nights. Yet, pondering the signposts of his passing youth, present maturity and eventual decline, his thinking brings him to the brink of mysticism. Written in 1935, published now for the first time, The Cabin Down the Glen will engage admirers of Walden, The Outermost House and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek ... and all who love Connecticut.

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I’m excited! My only extended dramatic vocal work will be presented next Sunday!

what: “The Harvest of a Quiet Eye” a cantata for soloists, chorus & chamber ensemble
when: Sunday, October 9 at 4pm
where: Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church,
103 Wm. Howard Taft Rd. Cincinnati, OH
who: the October Festival Choir, Chris Miller director
Heidi Miller, soprano Samuel Smith, baritone
admission: FREE

Many of you live far from Cincinnati, but many live near as well. Please come if you can! For those of you who cannot attend the concert I will append the libretto in a post-script below the body of this message, so that you can read the words and perhaps enjoy imagining how they will be sung by the soloists and chorus.

Also on the program will be “Lux Aeterna” by Morten Lauridsen.

This is the best time of year to perform this piece because autumn is upon us and the story the work tells takes place in that season.

Odell Shepard’s The Harvest of a Quiet Eye is a tapestry of essays and poems recounting a walking journey the author made through rural Connecticut in September of 1926. An engaging minor classic of the literature of walking, the book brims with good, sweet things: a deep affection for small towns and little rivers, an appreciation of solitude alternating with vivid character sketches of people he met on his journey and many gently humorous, pleasantly self-indulgent digressions into other subjects. The book is imbued throughout optimism and serene acceptance.

It's a book I love and have read many, many times, always with pleasure.

Odell Shepard (1884-1967) was a professor of English literature at Trinity College, a newspaper columnist, a pianist and singer, an indefatigable walker and trout fisherman, and even, for one term, lieutenant governor of Connecticut! Shepard wrote well on an astonishingly diverse array of topics and in nearly every literary form. His biography of Bronson Alcott won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize. His novels Jenkins’ Ear, and Holdfast Gaines, co-authored with his son, were successful Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Books on Connecticut history, Shakespeare, and trout-fishing as well as essays, poems, newspaper columns and editings of other writers whose work he admired poured from his pen in the 1920’s and ‘30’s. Two of his books, The Heart of Thoreau's Journals and his masterful study of the unicorn myth, The Lore of the Unicorn, have never gone out of print.

Below, you can read the lyrics for the two movements that follow the Prologue in my cantata. The first expresses the feelings of excitement and expansiveness so characteristic of beginnings … beginnings of journeys, beginnings of cantatas and oratorios, all sorts of beginnings.

The second is a fugue in which the choral entrances overlap like hills rising “tier upon tier.” I tried to express those tones of “blue and dimmer blue” in the music by using, when the word “blue” is sung, harmonies slightly tinged with a ‘Blues’ sound.

Follow the lyrics as you listen:

Baritone: I came to a road running northward, and the borders were woven with thickets of birches and maples. The yellowing leaves were atwinkle in the wind and the lane was a vista of dazzle and shine.

Chorus: Here were old stone walls running through woodland, and old apple orchards recaptured by forest.

Baritone and chorus: A mile more and the lyric beauty of my road was changed into grandeur.

Chorus: The hills to the north and west rose tier above tier in tones of blue and dimmer blue to the far horizon.

To hear “I came to a road running northward” followed by “The hills to the north and west,” movements 2 and 3 from "The Harvest of a Quiet Eye," in the 12/3/16 performance by the marvelously expressive baritone Bradford Gleim — his voice is perfect for this music! — and the Harvard-Radcliffe Community Chorus, with Edward Elwyn Jones conducting, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

I'd love to know what you think about this music; reply if you're inclined. But please don't feel that you are expected to reply. I'm just glad to share my work in this way.

As always, feel free to forward this message to friends who might enjoy it.

Anyone can be on my little list of recipients for these mpFrees (as I call these musical emails). To sign up, people should email me at rick@sowash.com, sending just one word: "Yes." I'll know what it means. To unsubscribe, reply “unsubscribe.”

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Oct. 2, 2022

P.S. If you care to read it, here is the libretto for the entire cantata:

Libretto: The Harvest of a Quiet Eye adapted by RS from the book of that title by Odell Shepard

I. Chorus: The outward shows of hill and valley he has viewed;
And impulses of deeper birth have come to him in solitude.
From common things that round us lie some truths he can impart,
The harvest of a quiet eye that broods on his own heart.

II. Baritone: I came to a road running northward, and the borders were woven with thickets of birches and maples. The yellowing leaves were a-twinkle in the wind and the lane was a vista of dazzle and shine.
Chorus: Here were old stone walls running through woodland and old apple orchards recaptured by forest.
Baritone and chorus: A mile more and the lyric beauty of my road was changed into grandeur.

III. Chorus: The hills to the north and west rose tier above tier in tones of blue and dimmer blue to the far horizon.

IV. Baritone: I picked an apple in a dense thicket near the top of the mountain. Ages of culture went into that apple, yet there was no human habitation anywhere, nothing but a brambly wilderness. Then I saw a ruined chimney and a worn doorstep, a gaping cellar hole, and a dying lilac bush.
Baritone and chorus: Only these remain to mark the scene of a family’s long heroic toil.
Baritone: My road was now only a path in the woods, printed with hoof-marks of deer. Once I caught a glimpse of a fox staring into my eyes. The afternoon wore away, the wind fell and the sky was filled with clouds. The silence of the woods deepened into mystery.

V. Chorus: It was as though the trees were making secret preparations. The air seemed alive with hostility and menace.
Baritone: I felt I was watched by many things at once from all sides. The air seemed alive with hostility and menace, when I came to the Desolate Marsh.

VI. Women’s voices: There were thirty gray acres of slate-gray water under a slate-gray sky, and over it all there hung the curse of silence and a blank despair. There were hundreds of trees, submerged to the knees, all livid in Death.
Baritone: I dared to stand and face the marsh, and to make bold to wonder what it meant.
There are no words to articulate a message devoid of all humanity; still, I tried to perceive what it had to say.

VII. Soprano: Soft and dreamy seeker of pleasant emotions, you see no farther into reality than a painted butterfly flapping from flower to flower. You too are convinced that the sun shines to warm your wings, that the meadows are strewn with flowers to flatter your delight in color. Stare into my vacant eyes, older than thought, older than mind-stuff, and learn more than e’er you have in pondering the wisest of books. Your poets have not told you such things as I tell, for I remember the dinosaur’s wallowing and the scream of the saber-tooth. Peer down into the savageries of the under-sea. Think your way out into the infinity of the sky or down into the answering infinity of the atom. Stand and look at me. As I am now, so was the planet for innumerable ages before you came and so it will be for endless ages after you are gone. Now you may pass, for I think you will not forget.

VIII. Baritone: No, I shall not forget. For it set me for two or three shuddering minutes outside my little circle and I saw how that circle really looks. And I felt the Terror of Solitude. For even someone who can face Death cannot face the thought that life and death are utterly meaningless. Then I thought of our habitable little globe and I thought of the fires we have kindled, building them on the edges of the abyss and lighting only our own faces against the ring of darkness, but still ... fires.

IX. Baritone (and chorus): Then I remembered all the songs, the songs we’ve made to sing, the brave high-hearted songs we’ve made to sing, sing us through the dark, the brave high-hearted songs we sing as though the dark were not, the songs that tally all our faiths, our hopes, our dreams, the brave high-hearted songs we’ve made to sing us through the dark, and I remember all the songs … the songs that tally all our faiths, our joys and lamentations, our yearnings, our illusions and our heroic hopes.

X. Chorus: It may be that Nature did not foresee us, but in all her kingdoms she has brought forth no other such pathetic and marvelous thing as this human heart, so trivial and heroic, so dauntless though so filled with fears, that can smile into the eyes of Death.

XI. Baritone: It is true that I am walking in the Valley of the Shadow of Death and that soon I shall lie down there, never to rise, and that every flower and face and thought that I have known, together with all that my fellows have thought and dreamed and made, will lie there very soon beside me. But yet it is a most beautiful valley and I have always loved it and I love it more deeply at every step that brings me nearer the end. Why then should I grieve to lie here forever? The oak and the maple are dying too and they comfort me. For they do not dwindle and pine into the grave but go down trooping their colors and shouting hosannas as though they have some expectation of joy, some intuition that from this dying world unimaginable life may spring as the new year springs from the ruins of the old. In such company at least I can say that I will fear no evil.

XII. Baritone (and chorus): The sun was setting behind the mountain and a breeze awoke in the sky. The new moon was blown bare of clouds and the stars shown round her like a shining wreath. By her pale illumination I found my way. I strode along with high-hearted singing until at last I could see the bridge and finally the light of my inn at the far end shining.

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Today, I am happy and excited to share with you some music you can hear nowhere else. Titled the “Song of the Marsh,” it is the keystone movement of my cantata, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, a setting of excerpts from the book of that title by Odell Shepard.

The libretto, adapted from the book, recounts the encounter between the narrator, a solitary walker, and a desolate marsh. He dares to try to hear ‘what it has to say,’ to take in a grim message: that Nature, for all her beauty, is utterly indifferent to us, that this universe we inhabit is unutterably old and vast, that we will soon be forgotten, that our futile antics are devoid of meaning.

Whew! Dark stuff! And on such a lovely October day.

The story does not stop there; surprisingly, it leads to a resurrection of faith, a celebration of the human heart, and a triumphant, serene ending.

Two weeks ago the cantata was given a stirring performance here in Cincinnati by the October Festival Choir under the direction of Chris Miller.

A word of warning: this “Song of the Marsh” is unlike the rest of my œuvre. Most of my music is tame, conservative, pastoral, sometimes funny, sometimes neo-Romantic. Music like that would not do justice to the powerful darkness of the monologue Shepard devised for the marsh.

Hear are the words of “The Song of the Marsh.” As you read them, imagine how YOU might set them to music if you were a composer ...

"Soft and dreamy seeker of pleasant emotions, you see no farther into reality than a painted butterfly flapping from flower to flower. You too are convinced that the sun shines to warm your wings, that the meadows are strewn with flowers to flatter your delight in color.

"Stare into my vacant eyes, older than thought, older than mind-stuff, and learn more than e’er you have in pondering the wisest of books. Your poets have not told you such things as I tell, for I remember the dinosaur’s wallowing and the scream of the saber-tooth.

"Peer down into the savageries of the under-sea. Think your way out into the infinity of the sky or down into the answering infinity of the atom.

"Stand and look at me. As I am now, so was the planet for innumerable ages before you came and so it will be for endless ages after you are gone.

"Now you may pass, for I think you will not forget."

Chilling sentiments, they warrant music that is beautiful but dispassionate, even harsh, and a performance that is deeply felt but anti-sentimental. The soprano in this performance is Heidi Miller and she is marvelous! Her dusky lower register is perfect for the opening and closing of the song; her higher register blossoms gorgeously when the music conveys the flower-strewn meadows and our delight in color. And when she sings of the dinosaur’s wallowing and the scream of the saber-tooth, she thunders.

You’ll have to undertake a bit of fussing to hear the “Song of the Marsh.”

When you get to the website indicated below, find your way to 14:27, which is where the “Song of the Marsh” begins; it ends at 22:02.

I apologize that I lack the technical means of extracting just this one segment for you to hear in isolation from the entire video, but I think you will find that the extra effort I’m asking of you will be rewarded, particularly if you follow the score or the lyrics as you listen. Flutist Becky Jones is also outstanding here, with her rich low-register tones.

To access a video of the entire cantata, copy and paste this link into your browser:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo6ffo3eEzI

To see a PDF of the score for the “Song of the Marsh,” click on the link above.

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If Nature could express itself in words, what might it say to us?

In one of my favorite books, “The Harvest of a Quiet Eye,” author Odell Shepard imagines an answer to that question. What Nature has to say is beautifully expressed but grim:

"Soft and dreamy seeker of pleasant emotions, you see no farther into reality than a painted butterfly flapping from flower to flower. You too are convinced that the sun shines to warm your wings, that the meadows are strewn with flowers to flatter your delight in color.
Stare into my vacant eyes, older than thought, older than mind-stuff, and learn more than e’er you have in pondering the wisest of books. Your poets have not told you such things as I tell, for I remember the dinosaur’s wallowing and the scream of the saber-tooth. Peer down into the savageries of the under-sea. Think your way out into the infinity of the sky or down into the answering infinity of the atom.
Stand and look at me. As I am now, so was the planet for innumerable ages before you came and so it will be for endless ages after you are gone. Now you may pass, for I think you will not forget."

He is nearly undone by these fierce verities. He finds a way through that dense thicket of despair by pondering the power of music and, in particular, remembered songs:

"No, I shall not forget. For it set me for two or three shuddering minutes outside my little circle and I saw how that circle really looks. I felt the Terror of Solitude. Even someone who can face Death cannot face the thought that life and death are utterly meaningless.

"Then I thought of our habitable little globe and I thought of the fires we have kindled, building them on the edges of the abyss and lighting only our own faces against the ring of darkness, but still ... fires.

“Then I remembered all the songs we’ve made, the brave, high-hearted songs we sing as though the dark were not, the songs that tally all our faiths, our hopes, our dreams, our joys and lamentations, our yearnings, our illusions and our heroic hopes.”

I set to music Shepard’s account of this encounter. It’s the libretto of my cantata, “The Harvest of a Quiet Eye.” Today I invite you to listen to two movements from the work: “No, I shall not forget” and “Then I remembered all the songs.” .

To hear “No, I shall not forget” immediately followed by “Then I remembered all the songs,” in the 12/3/16 performance by the marvelously expressive baritone Bradford Gleim — his voice is perfect for this music! — and the Harvard-Radcliffe Community Chorus, with Edward Elwyn Jones conducting, click on the link to movement "8," above.

To see PDFs of the scores for “No, I shall not forget” and "Then I remembered all the songs," click on the links to "8" and "9," respectively, in the list of scores above.