We are yearning for Spring, but it seems such a long way off...

In lieu of Spring, here at least is my Pastorale for flute, violin, viola and cello (1979) played beautifully by Cincinnati musicians: flutist Betty Douglas, violinist Marian Peraza, violist Dorotea Hoffman and cellist Ellen Shertzer.

This piece was commissioned by Bill Dittoe, an architect who wanted to surprise his wife, Pat, with something special at the housewarming for their new home (which he designed). When the party was in full swing the musicians and I crept in the back door and set up music stands in a side room.

At the appropriate moment, Bill bade his guests be silent and drew back a partition, revealing -- to everyone's surprise -- the musicians, seated, music stands in place, instruments in hand, ready to play the world premiere.

They played their hearts out and everyone loved it. The happy couple embraced and the musicians were roundly toasted as was the composer, somewhat out of place at such a moment, with nothing really to do but stand there and smile, with his hands in his pockets.

The music is simple and tender, and it's in the good old key of C major, which my high school band teacher, Mr. Jan Dunlap, used to say was “Nature’s own key.”

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Feb. 1, 2014

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

Every year, upon the advent of August, I re-read a few favorite passages from my thumb-worn copy of Odell Shepard’s book, "The Cabin Down the Glen.”

When I discovered this book among Shepard’s papers it was merely a type-written manuscript with hundreds of hand-written corrections. Completed in 1935, it was never published, probably because of the economic conditions during the Great Depression. Editing that manuscript and eventually bringing the book into print was deeply meaningful and immensely satisfying.

I love this book and I greatly admire this writer. His prose style resonates an iron string in me. I like very much what he says but I admire still more the way he gets it said.

His prose comes as close to music as any prose I’ve encountered. As a writer, his dictum was: “Make it clear. Make it simple. Make it sing.”

We refer to the works of composers as “tonal” or “atonal.” Odell Shepard was a “tonal” writer. He reveals — in his rhythms, his alliterations and consonances, his lyric flights -- a capacity for musical composition. He had a fine baritone singing voice, was capable of playing Bach fugues on the organ and Beethoven sonatas on the piano, but so far as I know he never wrote music. Instead, he wrote musical prose.

His style is old-fashioned, of course, befitting the old-fashioned topics he explores. “All of the topics in this book are old topics,” he proudly asserts. Only an old-fashioned prose style could have served his ends.

His intense appreciation of the beauties of August could not have been rendered in the spare, starved style of Hemingway, let alone the made-for-movies, dialogue-heavy prose so fashionable among today's best-selling authors which well-meaning friends have misled me into reading.

I invite you to try to read the following paragraphs by Shepard as much with your ears as with your eyes. You may want to read this prose aloud, as I sometimes do ...
“And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice."

The next six paragraphs are from "The Cabin Down the Glen” in the chapter titled 'Ripening Hours':

* * * (quoted text) * * *

Looking westward from the hill slope in the morning, I can almost see the landscape change before me while I gaze. Certainly it is richer and more various in tone than when I stood here yesterday, and I see that if I am to watch the splendor of the year mount slowly through all its delicate gradations, I must be vigilant from hour to hour.

Early summer’s monotony of green has given place to the tints of maturity; brown and purple, dim orange and umber are faintly discernible along the lower slopes, and there are rare touches of scarlet from the dogwood and sumac in the thicket. Single trees that I have never distinguished before stand forth now from their backgrounds and claim a separate attention. The cedars far and near begin to glow with their peculiar nameless hue, which is not quite olive as one sees it elsewhere but a sort of olive beatified. Among the solid ranks of the ferns at my feet there is here and there a frond that seems to be made of beaten gold.

Slowly, leaf by leaf, yet swiftly too, if the total volume of change is considered, the landscape is turning golden and ruddy, like an apple, beneath these August suns.

Winter in these New England hills is a long stern conflict, spring is a brief ecstasy like first love, and autumn is sheer amazement, but late summer brings us peace. Then it is, if ever, that we pass the bounds of mere admiration for the outer show of sky and field and penetrate to understanding. Then we can almost fancy at times that we see the hills and valleys as the hawk does, while wheeling high in the noon, and the woods as the shy doe sees them with her soft and guileless eyes. Woods and hills and valleys have put off their strangeness and have given us back their fellowship.

Ah, to set out on a walk now, and a long one, through this ripe country of the summer hills; to loiter along lanes grass grown and spotted with shifting shade, where the goldenrod brightens the sunshine and the cardinal flower flows in the cool; to lean for hours over bridges while fancy follows the curl of the waves, and to lean on fence-rails at evening while my thoughts grow still as the corn; to ask my way of no one because one way is as good as another; to be free once more as the tiny glistening ball of thistle-tuft that slowly twirls and drifts and settles high up in the blue of noon; to find all the things I need and many that I do not deserve because I look for nothing; to lose haste and eagerness without losing intensity; to make my peace once more with the good brown earth from which I came and back to which I go; sometimes to sing because I am happy, sometimes to talk to myself because no other listener would understand, but most times to be silent because the only things worth saying are so far beyond the reach of words.

Ah, to sink down and down into the ancient quiet that broods among the hills, seeking no man’s company -- and yet, perhaps, to meet my better self someday on a bridge or a brown hilltop or resting beside a brook in the softly breathing woods, and to have some talk with him!

* * * (end of quoted text) * * *

I like to think that my drowsy Pastorale for flute and strings would enhance and deepen a moment of rest "beside a brook in the softly breathing wood."

To hear Pastorale for flute and strings, played by these fine Cincinnati musicians: the softly breathing flutist Betty Douglas, violinist Marion Peraza, violist Dorotea Hoffman and cellist Ellen Shertzer, click on the link above.

You can see a PDF of the full score by clicking on the link above.