“Why, what’s the matter, that you have such a February face, so full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?”
-- from Much Ado About Nothing

A few weeks ago I shared an account of my efforts to choose a title for a new piece of music. I finally settled on “The Last Storm of Winter.”

I love the thought of listeners hearing a howling winter gale in some parts of this piece and warm and cozy in-doors scenes in other parts. Yet the title was conferred about ten days AFTER the music was written. I was not thinking of winter storms as I wrote the piece. I was thinking about the music and the instruments and how to make the piece both practical and beautiful.

When Aaron Copland came to the school of music I attended, he gave a talk to the composition students. He told how he had completed a new ballet score for the choreographer Martha Graham and thought of titling it “Ballet for Martha” … but neither he nor she were satisfied with that name.

During the time when the ballet was in rehearsal, Copland happened to be in a book store where he came upon a new book of poems by Hart Crane. He opened it at random to the poem “Appalachian Spring” and he thought, right away, that would be a good title for the ballet.

He ended the story by telling us that, although he had not intended to evoke particular images while writing the piece, he could not count how many times people had told him, “Oh, Mr. Copland, when I hear your music I can just see the Appalachians and in the springtime, too!” And he added that when he heard the music, he too envisioned those same images.

The anecdote begs some questions. The title, “Appalachian Spring,” is perfect for that piece, after all. Copland knew it immediately when he saw that title in Hart Crane’s book.

Is it too far fetched to say that Fate guided the composer to that title? … that Fate led him into the book store on that particular day, just before it would have been too late to change the title? That Fate guided his hands to that particular book and to that particular page? Then, click! Our answers to such questions depends upon how open we are to mystical experience.

Programmatic titles confer meanings to music that would otherwise be lacking. They are a blessing, I think, to the many music lovers who cherish a point of reference when they listen and who want to know what the music is “about.”

Just now I’m at work on a new piece for French horn and piano. It’s nearly finished and I haven’t the slightest idea what title to give it. If I end up calling it “Fat Man on a Crowded Bus” (kidding) listeners will say, “Oh, Mr. Sowash, when I hear your music, I can just picture that fat man on the crowded bus.”

Music doesn’t need a programmatic title in order to mean something. Consider all those Chopin pieces titled nothing more than “Étude” or “Prelude” or “Ballade” or the Impromptus and Intermezzos and Waltzes of Schubert and Brahms. All are rich with non-specific, musical meaning, despite their lack of a programmatic title.

The piece I want to share with you today presents two contrasting ideas, one in the first measure and another in the second. These two musical opposites are developed, aligned and contrasted through the rest of the piece and finally transformed at the end.

This piece is “about” is the reconciliation of opposites. Using the elements of music, it offers a metaphor, in purely musical terms, of our efforts to reconcile the opposites we encounter in Life. That is how music means, what music does; that is why music moves us while random traffic noises do not.

Writing this piece, last summer, I knew exactly what I was doing, musically, but I struggled find a name for it.

The facts are these: the tempo is “Andante” and at one point in the score I inserted the word “intimo” meaning ‘intimately.’ I settled on the title “Andante intimo.” I could have called it “Intimate Andante” but since the noun “Andante” is Italian then the adjective that modifies it must also be Italian.

The music is, I think, darkly beautiful, mysterious and intriguing but there’s nothing Italian about it. It warrants a better title. “Andante intimo” is the best I could do. It doesn’t give a listener much to go on but it will just have to do.

See what you think.

To hear “Andante intimo” performed by cellist Randy Calistri-Yeh, click on the link above.

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