Want to hear a cello laughing?

In the opening measures of “Hither & Yon”, my tribute to my late, dear, long time friend Dick Ferrell, I hear him laughing. You’ll hear it, too -- his hearty, loud, robust guffaw.

We laughed together a thousand times, Dick and I. We discovered early on -- we became pals back in 1961 -- that we were both the sort of person who, when laughing hard, inexplicably, sheds tears. Thus, we literally wept together, even as we were roaring with laughter.

Not that all our laughter was loud. Sometimes we giggled. Sometimes we “kept a straight face,” laying the foundation for the joke that was coming. You’ll hear this in the sudden pianissimo that follows the loud opening. It’s a bit of teasing, a musical wink, a nudge in the ribs.

Later, the piece gets serious. That’s the journey described in this piece … we go “hither” and “yon” … veering between hilarity and seriousness. Later still comes a section marked “dolce.” The music turns sweet, a little sentimental, neither funny nor serious. Simply heartfelt.

And the one really sad touch comes with the quotation from “Shenandoah”, heard twice in the piece, reminders that my friend has gone “across the wide Missouri” and he won’t be coming back.

But those are brief moments. The overriding impression is of VITALITY, a quality Dick had in superabundance.
In addition to all this, there is a certain faint flavor of the Baroque in this piece, a distant echo of Bach’s great writing for solo cello. For example, the long pedal point on G.

Yet it is also a very American-sounding piece. Certainly no European composer would have written music like this.

it also strikes me as relatively timeless. If you didn’t know that this music had been written in 2022, when would you guess it was written? Anytime, really, in the last hundred years, wouldn’t you say?
Here is my friend’s poem, from which I drew the title and the idea for the music:

I've been to Hither many a time,
But I've never been to Yon.
I think I'll travel there sometime.
I'll wake up with the dawn.
I'll lace my boots,
And grab my hat,
I'll put my backpack on
And probably be about halfway there
Before they know I've gone.

I've been to Neither a time or two, But I've never been to Nor.
I'd like to go there sometime soon.
I'll walk right out the door.
I'll take the path that leads there,
To that far and distant shore,
Because isn't that what Life's about?
To find out what Life's for?

Have you ever wanted to visit a place
With a name like To or Fro?
Or If or When, or This or That,
Or maybe High or Low?
Or These or Those,
Or Now or Then
Or maybe Fast or Slow?
It's such an easy thing to do.
Just get up and go.

For me, it’s strange for me to realize that he laced up his boots, grabbed his hat, put on his backpack and left us. He’s reached that distant shore; he’s been to “Yon” and “Nor.”

To hear Randy Calistri-Yeh’s spirited rendition of “Hither & Yon,” click on the link above.

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