Choosing a title for a piece of music can be tricky. Not unlike naming a baby.

Seeing as how we’d named our firstborn “Shenandoah,” when our second was imminent I wanted to continue the pattern of naming our progeny after National Parks. I suggested “Yosemite” with “Sam” as a middle name.

We might have named additional sons “Great Smoky” or “Glacier,” additional girls “Acadia” or “Olympic.” Not all park names would serve; “Zion” and “Cuyahoga” seem a bit much and I’d hesitate to send someone down the road of life with “Badlands” as their given name.

But don’t you agree that “Yosemite Sam Sowash” would have made a heckuva name.

Jo would have none of it. Instead, we named our second “John Chapman,” the real name of Ohio’s great hero, better known as Johnny Appleseed. When he was little we called him “Chappy.” As a teen, he went by “Chap.” Nowadays, a full blown philosopher, guru and man about town, he goes by “Chapman.” (He is actually a professional trombonist on the side and, for his ‘day gig,’ a “Technology Deployment and Installation Specialist.”)

Recently I was taken aback to learn that the name Vaughan Williams gave to his greatest hymn tune, “Sine Nomine,” means “without a name.” Unable to think of a name for the tune, he dodged the issue. And this from the guy who named another of his tunes “Down Ampney” after the hamlet in which he had been born. Come on, Ralph!

Facing the same challenge, some painters fail to rise to the occasion. Thus all those paintings with the disappointing moniker, “Untitled.”

My droll and beloved grandfather, John Hoff, had a generic title for all abstract paintings: “Woman on a Crowded Bus.”

Wouldn’t that make an hilarious name for a piece of music? I should write a single-movement work for woodwind quintet and dub it, “Woman on a Crowded Bus.” Seeing that title listed on a concert program, you would smile in anticipation. I’m half-serious. Could be my next project.

“Apology” would be a funny name for a piece of modernistic music especially if it was scored in a preposteriously difficult key such as B sharp major or C flat minor. Scoring a piece in keys like those (which only exist in theory, thank goodness) would warrant an apology!

Compared with composers and painters, poets have an easy time of it. If the poet’s powers of invention fail, the first line of a poem can serve as the title. Naming poems that way was the habit of Emily Dickinson, A.E. Housman and Rabindranath Tagore. See below a beautiful poem by the latter, my setting of which I want to share today.

Tagore likens the act of singing to a bird spreading its wings as it flies across the sea. Listen for an aural evocation of that wing motion in the fluttering piano accompaniment. At the very end, you can ‘hear’ the bird flying away, disappearing into the distance.

When Thou Commandest Me to Sing

When Thou commandest me to sing
It seems that my heart would break with pride;
And I look to Thy face, and tears come to my eyes.

All that is harsh and dissonant in my life
Melts into one sweet harmony --
And my adoration spreads wings
Like a glad bird on its flight
Across the sea.

I know Thou takest pleasure in my singing.
I know that only as a singer
I come before Thy presence.

I touch by the edge of the far
Spreading wing of my song
Thy feet which I could never aspire to reach.

Drunk with the joy of singing I forget myself
And call Thee friend who art my Lord.

I wrote this song 45 years ago. The first recording of it was made just a month ago when soprano Hayley Maloney and pianist Ian Axness performed it in a Batavia chamber music series organized by my friend Angelo Santoro.

When would you guess it was written? A month ago? 45 years ago? A hundred years ago? Impossible to say. That’s the thing about the kind of music you and I love; it doesn’t age. There is a label stating, ‘best if used before such-and-such a date.’

To hear Hayley and Ian performing, and very beautifully, too, click on the link above.

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