It is strange to write these words knowing that my friend Kirk Kassner will not be reading them, will not be listening to the music I hope to share today, will not immediately reply, as he long has done, with deeply knowledgeable insights and warm appreciation.

You will have guessed that Kirk passed away this week.

For the last decade I could expect such a response from Kirk every Sunday morning. He was among the most ardent fans of my music and encouraged me in every way to keep writing at the highest levels of excellence of which I was capable. And then to do the hard work of getting the music performed, recorded and sent “out there” to make its way in the world.

A few years ago he and his wife Carol hosted us in their home in Seattle for four days, culminating in an “all Sowash” home concert which Kirk organized, recruiting and rehearsing about a dozen musicians and rallying about thirty of his friends to attend. What an evening that was!

Kirk offered us the use of his condo in Mazatlan, Mexico and two years ago our son joined Jo and me there for a week, our first trip south of the border.

Last fall Kirk pressed me to write a substantial clarinet sonata for him, taking Brahms as my model, which I did to the best of my ability. The resulting five movement sonata in D minor for clarinet and piano will be recorded in October and eventually shared in these emails. The name of the piece is “The Kassner Sonata.” It will be featured on a CD of my new music for clarinet & piano and sent to radio stations all over America and broadcast, I hope.

Kirk was the single most generous contributor, financially, to my ongoing efforts to record and distribute my music and especially the pieces I’ve written in the last 3.5 years.

That music, and even more especially the music I have written since last August, is markedly different than my earlier works. It has a greater emotional depth, a richer harmonic palette, a more intricate and confident counterpoint and a more tightly conceived architecture than the music I attempted formerly.

Why? Partly because, for the past few years I have studied the string quartets of Haydn and Beethoven, particularly Beethoven’s late quartets. And also because I was thrilled to discover the video of Leonard Bernstein conducting a performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet in C sharp minor by the strings of the Vienna Philharmonic. If you’re curious about it, you can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE_crvhG3Co

What a blessing, what an inspiration! Bernstein at the height of his powers, Beethoven at the height of his powers, and those string players at the height of theirs! In my opinion, there is no greater music to be heard. Taking in this video dozens of times made me dare to try to write something that might be worthy that level of investment and passion by musicians of that caliber.

The result of was, first, a string trio titled “The Hand of God,” which turned out to be the first of four string trios I wrote in the next six months and which are now being recorded:

* String Trio #3 “The Hand of God” (three movements, one recorded, two not yet)
* String Trio #4 “Saints & Poets” (four movements, all recorded)
* String Trio #5 “The Birth of Hope” (three movement, all recorded)
* String Trio #6 “Sterner Stuff” (four movements, not yet recorded)

We hope to complete the recording soon and issue them on a CD album along with two single-movement string quartets and a piano quartet sometime next year

Today I want to share with you the second movement from the three-movement trio “The Hand of God.”

Why that title? Because my mystical inclinations prompt me to perceive the Hand of God in my life. I think of the support and friendship of Kirk Kassner. And of the inspiration that awaits us all in great performances of great works. Such achievements make us proud to belong to this human race, capable of creativity and to remind us that we are made in the image of the Creator of everything. When I ponder such things I shiver with gratitude.

What am I trying to express here? Feelings and thoughts. I can adequately express my FEELINGS musically. My attempt to give verbal expression to such THOUGHTS falls short.

When our own words fail, we may quote the words of great writers and thinkers, bidding them to speak for us.

I think of the Walt Whitman’s audacious, gently humorous assertion in “Song of Myself”:

“I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.”

Or Odell Shepard in his book “The Cabin Down the Glen” giving noble utterance to what he had found to be true:

"There is some Power …that stands waiting to help, to cheer, and to guide us. ... When we work against this Power, we sin and fail. When we try to work without it, we merely exhaust ourselves. When we work with it, we succeed and fulfill our destiny. … Here is the tap-root of the tree of religion; from this all the pantheons have sprung.”

To hear the second movement of my “String Trio #3: The Hand of God” beautifully performed by three Cincinnati musicians -- violinist Doug Hamilton, violist Rose Gowda and cellist Michael Ronstadt -- and to be featured along with other works for strings on a CD/album of my music soon to be released, click on the link above.

There's also a link to a PDF of the score.

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 can email me at rick@sowash.com, sending just one word: "Yes." I'll know what it means.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
June 8, 2025

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In 1935, when the world's economy had collapsed and fascism was on the rise, Odell Shepard, an American author whose writing I admire very much, wrote these words …

"At such a time in the world’s affairs, what can a man do to help -- a man who feels, as I feel it, his incalculable debt and obligation to mankind? Shall he add his voice to the shouters? Shall he too rush here and there? Shall he get himself elected, or wealthy, or famous, so that he may increase his “influence?”

Or might he do perhaps as well if he should strive not so much to do as to be something? … Better and more persuasive than anything he could say would be the example of a life lived quietly with the First Things, a life resting down upon the things found true, a life delving under and soaring over the wreck of the present to the things that everlastingly endure.”

What exactly are those “First Things” ?

Which “things” emblematize the “things the everlastingly endure”?

I need look no further than the wall of my kitchen to see them listed by another great American author.

For a half century, our kitchen wall displayed this quotation, framed and hand-calligraphed:

Good cookery,
a cottage that is a home
not a plaything,
gardens,
repose.
These are first-rate things
and out of this first-rate stuff,
art is made.

—Willa Cather

Those two sentences are a credo. In a few, spare, well-chosen, plain-spoken words W.C. evokes a lifestyle, a system of values, an openness to the inspirations that may arise from things humble and near to hand, and a commitment to the highest artistic standards.

In Shepard’s paragraph and in Cather’s creed, power-lust, venality, money-grubbing, flamboyance for its own sake and the stark, selfish evil of it all are nowhere to be found. In place of these, good sense and good health offered, even promised.

I try to order my life accordingly. I think I’m living more closely to that ideal now than ever before, here in our “cottage that is a home not a plaything," in a state of repose checkered with grouchiness, with good cookery most days but not all. The gardens are coming along but they are not all they could be, despite our efforts.

It’s the thought that counts. I think Odell and Willa would approve.

Many of you make the same attempt, though none of us could describe it as lushly as Odell or as leanly as Willa.

All of which brings me to the music I want to share today.

It’s the opening movement of my String Trio #3, written almost exactly a year ago and recorded about six weeks ago. Hardly anyone has heard this music. You are almost the first.

The trio is subtitled “The Hand of God” because that is the title of the second movement, not this one. I shared that movement in a message to y’all back in June. If you want to hear it again, click the link to that movement above.

But the music I want to share with you today is the opening movement. It is robust and hearty, suggestive of garden work, good cookery and cottages, maybe yours and mine. It prepares the way for the more spiritual, mystic second movement but it stands happily alone as well. I think you’ll like it.

To hear the first movement of my String Trio #3 “The Hand of God,” performed by the Cincinnati String Trio (violinist Doug Hamilton, violist Rose Gowda, cellist Michael Ronstadt), click on the link above. There's also a link to a PDF of the score.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
September 8, 2025

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In the third act of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” the Stage Manager delivers this speech directly to the audience:

“Now I’m going to tell you some things that you know already. You know ‘em as well as I do. Things we all know, but we don't take ‘em out and look at ‘em very often.

I don’t care what they say with their mouths, everybody knows that something is eternal. We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings.

All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being.”

As a piece of theatre, it is wonderful. A hush falls on the audience.

What does it mean? I can’t explain it but, to me, it certainly feels true.

When I am at work on a new piece of music, I am often taken -- mentally, spiritually -- to a place where Time ceases to exist. All those flimsy artifices of fashion, business and politics, they all seem far, far away and of no consequence.

Once the piece is finished, the effort in “the real world” begins. Getting my music “out there” where it can be heard is a gritty business, but at times it can be immensely satisfying.

As a choreographer friend said, “We mark the world.” And in a good way, even if our markings endure only for a short while, evanescent as dance steps or a melodic ribbon of sound.

But then, after all, relatively speaking, everything built by human beings lasts only for a short while.

Which takes me to another quotation from Thornton Wilder, this time from a letter he wrote to a friend:

“I am writing both for the waste-basket and for posterity which is only a temporary postponement of the waste-basket.”

That’s pure Wilder: funny, wise and true.

The most important thing to ask about “writing” or any form of artistic expression is whether or not there is Truth in it. If there isn’t, then the heck with it. And if there is, well, Truth endures, however many manifestations of it may come and go. There are lost masterworks beyond number, but the Thing those masterworks celebrated remains with us yet. As the Stage Manager puts it, “something is eternal.”

These days I try to get at this in more and more of the music I write. I subtitled my third string trio “The Hand of God” because I hoped that the music would prove worthy such a title, would arouse some of the emotions, whatever our beliefs, that we experience when we ponder that eternal Something.

The final movement begins with a descending tune in E minor which is taken up by the instruments and played as a three-part canon. The canon is heard throughout, sometimes in quarter notes, sometimes in half notes, sometimes very fast -- in eighth notes. Sometimes all three note values are heard simultaneously. I was amazed when I discovered that the tune would work that way.

The music moves from E minor to E major and then goes outward from there. One section of the movement, at 2:58, turns unexpectedly grotesque; we are “giving the Devil his due.” The music turns dark, strange, agitated.

But not for long. The Hand of God prevails -- the movement ends in serenity.

(Be assured, these references to the Devil and God are artistic, not theological. I am describing mere musical contrasts, not cosmic battles between Good and Evil.)

To hear the third movement of my new String Trio #3, subtitled “The Hand of God,” performed by The Cincinnati String Trio (violinist Doug Hamilton, violist Rose Gowda and cellist Michael Ronstadt), click on the link above. There's also a link to a PDF of the score.
 

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Dec. 7, 2025