“Lo, ’tis autumn,
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind,
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis’d vines,
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)
Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds,
Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well.

(from the poem “Come Up from the Fields, Father” by Walt Whitman)

I love his observation that the trees “cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages.” Indeed they do and I should know as I have lived in Ohio all my life and most of it in villages.

Even now, though it is convenient to say that I live in Cincinnati, and that is our mailing address, I actually live in the countryside between Mariemont and Newtown, two villages on the east side of the Queen City. Some of the maples, oaks, walnuts and beeches here “cool and sweeten” the villages while others band together to march as forests across the surrounding hills.

The leaves are turning, yes, but the trees “do not dwindle and pine into the grave, but go down trooping their colors and shouting hosannas as if they have some expectation of joy, some intuition that from this dying world unimaginable life may spring, as the new year springs from the ruin of the old.” (Now I’m quoting another American poet, Odell Shepard.)

“Autumn in the Woods” is the final movement from my recently composed four-movement suite for flute, oboe, viola and cello titled “Deep in the Woods.” There is one movement for each of the four seasons, ending with Autumn.

“Deep in the Woods” is the third suite I’ve written for this unusual combination of instruments: a flute, an oboe, a viola and a cello. My friend Yo Shionoya, who plays the oboe in this recording, remarked that the employment of those particular four instruments works so well because it combines the best sounds of the woodwind quintet with the best sounds of the string quartet.

He may be right but that is not why I chose to write the piece for those four instruments. I did so because I have good friends who PLAY those instruments and I knew I could get them together to rehearse and record any music scored for that combination.

The combination is like a string quartet; except that two wind instruments are playing the upper parts which would be assigned to violin in a string quartet.

The Suite "Deep in the Woods" will be featured on a new album / CD of my music titled "American Landscapes", slated for release next Spring.

If you are an oboist, you might like to know that I also made a version of this same piece for oboe and piano. That version will be performed in a worship service at my church in a few weeks. If you are a flutist or a clarinetist, you could transcribe the score and play it on your instrument. If you’d like to have free PDFs of the sheet music, just ask and I’ll send them, gladly.

The music is as autumnal as I could make it … beautiful, wistful, slow, replete with descending melodic lines to metaphorize the falling of the leaves.

Look at the cooling and sweetening trees outside your window as you listen to “Autumn in the Woods” performed by flutist Betty Douglas, oboist Yo Shionoya, violist Rose Gowda and cellist Michael Ronstadt.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Oct. 18, 2026
www.sowash.com