Did you ever listen to a painting? I have. For hours at a time.

For eight and a half years, I worked two or three days a week as a security guard at the Cincinnati Art Museum, keeping watch over fabulous treasures displayed in large, echoing galleries. When there were no visitors, I sometimes amused myself by trying to imagine what a painting would sound like if its subject matter were to be conveyed musically.

That little mental puzzle resulted in my two three-movement "Impressionist Suites" for oboe, clarinet and bassoon, each movement conveying the imagery and brushwork of a major French Impressionist painter.

The Cincinnati Art Museum has only one painting by Monet, but it's a doozie. He renders the sombre cliffs of his native Normandy in tones of deep, dark rust and sets them in a tossing, vibrant ocean of sapphire, indigo, emerald and mint, dashed with strokes of salmon, magenta and lavender, arched by clouds like sherbet in a pink-orange sky.

How can a composer catch that in music?

By consulting his memory. Our understanding of music is shaped by our memories of all the music we have heard. When I ran a search through my memory for nautical-sounding music, my recollections were awash with half-remembered sea chanteys, fragments from "HMS Pinafore," "La Mer" and the stirring scores of many a swashbuckling pirate movie.

I thought of the 'colors' of those three piquant instruments: oboe, clarinet and bassoon. I put those three instruments to work, playing a canon. You'll hear it right off in the low bassoon, then an octave higher in the clarinet, then yet another octave higher in the oboe ... and we're away! like a ship with sails bellying into the wind! I Into the tossing, dazzling, salt-tanged seascape Monet evoked so memorably.

I wrote my two Impressionist Suites in 2000 for my friend Lucien Aubert, clarinetist in Le trio d’anches Ozi. Since these are Frenchmen playing for French audiences, I thought a suite about French Impressionist painters might please all concerned. And it has. This Monet movement will please you, too, hopefully. It's played -- beautifully! -- by Mark Ostoich, Ron Aufmann and Mark Ortwein.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
January 12, 2013

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Will you kindly permit me a longer-than-usual message?

Have I told you that I’m teaching French?

In the 2012-2013 school year I visited, twice, a remarkable K-12 Cincinnati school called “Leaves of Learning," a resource center where home-schooled students come for enrichment — for one or two classes or more, one, two, three or four days a week. I was very impressed with the joyful, easy, accepting tone of the school and the students’ genuine enthusiasm for learning.

You may know that, in addition to being a composer, I also write and publish books for young people about Ohio history, animals and folklore. As a result, over the past thirty years, I’ve spent a day or two in more than 2,000 Ohio schools as a Visiting Author. I became very accustomed to working with young people and have long felt very much at ease in visiting schools, albeit only as a 'One Day Wonder.’

Too, in my twenties and thirties, I had been a Scoutmaster. I’ve always felt happy and at ease with young people. I like them and they like me. I had plenty of experience showing kids how to do things — in Scouts and in the schools I’d visited — but I was never a regular teacher, never committed myself to regularly recurring instruction sessions with a particular band of young souls.

After my second day visiting Leaves of Learning, my host, a fine teacher named Terri Burch, said, “You should be teaching here!”

I baulked, scoffed. “I’m not certified.”

“You don’t have to be certified to teach here. Talk to the principal, offer a course or two and if there are enough enrollees, you’ll teach.”

Well, we set it up for me to start in September of 2014. I would teach only on Wednesdays. Two classes: Music Theory and The Art of Storytelling. I figured I’d give it a try, one day a week, for one school year.

I told the principal that I would also be willing to substitute for the teachers of some other subjects as well … Language Arts, History, French.

As it happened, the French teacher was unwell and I was soon ‘subbing’ for her quite often. It was a little daunting at first. My French is strong but it was rusty. In college, I studied French intensively and did well. But that was 45 years earlier. I’ve visited France many times since, often staying in the homes of friends who spoke only French. I've benefited greatly from their patient, humorous corrections of my gusty, improvised, somewhat surreal French. But could I teach French? Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you know how best to teach it!

Still, as a sub, I only needed to stay a little ahead of the students in order to lead the class.

I found that I loved subbing in French, imparting the mnemonic devices that have worked for me, challenging the students to create new ones, sharing stories of my adventures and blunders as an American joyfully floundering about in French. Plus stories of French history, culture and cuisine, garnered from my reading and experiences. I am ardent about France, the land of my father’s ancestors.

Unfortunately, the French teacher became increasingly unwell and in January of 2015 her bad health finally forced her to retire. The principal invited me to take over the French program. I gulped, but accepted the challenge. Being halfway through a school year would present a particular challenge but I figured I’d survive until May and then we’d see.

Teaching French the way I thought I could best teach it, free from the constraints of the lesson plans that are necessarily imposed on a substitute teacher, turned out to be a slice of Heaven. I’ve loved every minute of it. The school encourages creativity in both faculty and students and we make the most of it! The students are great souls and we love to joke and ponder together as we explore the intricacies and delicacies of this beautiful, expressive, eccentric language.

In my Scout troop we had a saying: “If it isn't fun, it isn't Scouting.” If something we were doing wasn’t fun, we knew we were doing it wrong. I apply that same approach in my classes with the happy result that we laugh together, frequently, often loudly.

When the school year ended and summer began, I found that I missed teaching very much. I signed on for another year and my enthusiasm for teaching French (and Music Theory and Storytelling, which I have continued to teach) is unabated.

I expect to continue teaching at Leaves of Learning for several years, into my seventies. I tell the students, “I’m the school's Oldest Living Teacher.” They laugh.

“I’m the Gandalf of this school,” I tell them, “and you guys are the Hobbits!” They laugh, but in a way, it’s true. I’ve got the white beard. I'm jolly but a little mysterious. I’m very interested in them. I’ve been “out there,” doing various things in the wide world for a long time -- France, most often -- while they've been growing up in the Shire.

Most of my trips to France have resulted from my music, one way or another. I’ve been there for rehearsals, performances, recordings. I’ve written many works for my French musician friends.

My two “Impressionist Suites” for reed trio, for example. Each movement attempts to evoke the spirit and character of a major French Impressionist painter.

Today I’d like to share with you the final movement of the first of the suites. It’s entitled, “Manet: Spanish subjects.”

French people are fascinated by Spain; so far as I can tell, the French seem to consider the Spanish to be more spontaneous than themselves, in closer touch with the earth, with basic passions. To the French, Spaniards seem to be more alive, more authentic, their approach to Life seeming more vivid, colorful and spicy than than theirs. Just think about “Carmen” or the Spanish subjects in the paintings of Manet. By contrast, the French seem to view themselves as overly cultivated, too cerebral, too self-conscious, more than a little jaded.

Of course, to an American like me, an outsider, these attitudes seem almost laughable, laden with stereotypes. But delicious to discover.

I hope my delight comes across in this music. Note that it ends with all three musicians shouting, “Ole!"

To hear it played -- beautifully! -- by oboist Mark Ostoich, clarinetist Ron Aufmann and bassoonist Mark Ortwein, click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
March 13, 2016

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When my clarinetist friend Lucien Aubert, who was kindly hosting me in his Nice apartment for five days, asked if I wanted to come along to his gig on Tuesday night, I gladly accepted.

Come Tuesday morning, Lucien said I should be ready to leave about 3:30 that afternoon. This surprised me as I had assumed that the gig would take place in Nice. No, he explained, we had to drive to a village on the far side of Avignon, a 3.5 hour trip.

The concert was to be given by Lucien’s reed trio (oboe, clarinet, bassoon) for whom I had written my two “Impressionist Suites,” six movements paying homage to celebrated Impressionist painters. Because the musicians were French, I wrote the music in what I imagined to be a French style, after the manner of Poulenc, Milhaud, Ibert, Francaix, French composers I admire.

To my surprise, Lucien’s trio didn’t much like the two suites. Lucien explained that they already had plenty of French music; they had hoped I’d write something that would sound American. Too late, but a lesson learned. Still, worse things can be said about music than “it sounds too French.”

From what I saw as we entered the municipality where the concert was to take place, it seemed to have perhaps 400 residents. A mighty small place for a Tuesday night event. We met up with the other musicians at one of two little cafè-restaurants operating side-by-side in the village’s ‘downtown.’ I don’t recall the name of the village nor what I ate for supper but I remember that the meal was inexpensive and surprisingly delicious. I didn’t expect to dine that well in such a tiny burg. Most of Ohio’s better restaurants are found in cities.

After supper, we crossed the street to the community center, a spruced-up stone barn, at least three centuries old. It was a comfortable space, with a well-lit stage, a pleasant smell, good acoustics and perhaps 200 folding chairs already in place. Two hundred! To fill that many seats, half the village would have to show up.

Another surprise: the concert was to begin at 9:00 pm. Nine o’clock PM? On a Tuesday night? To hear a reed trio? If such an event were taking place in Bellville, Ohio, pop. 1500, where I lived for twelve years, not a dozen people would consider attending. And those who did attend would expect the show to begin at 7:30 and wrap up by 9:00 at the latest, or else.

Next surprise: 8:55 pm and every seat was filled. More chairs were set up to accommodate late-comers. The crowd was attentive and enthusiastic and the music-making was wonderful, no surprise there. I could sense no impatience or restiveness in the audience. There were encores, even!

The concert ended about half past eleven. It was late and I was ready to head back to Nice. But no. We returned across the street where both cafés were not only open (two cafés in a village of 400 people!) but crowded. Extra tables and chairs had been set up, extending out onto the street.

The concert’s attendees, enjoying drinks after the concert, applauded again when we arrived and the three musicians visited every table, shaking hands and accepting the congratulations of every customer. The manager had reserved a table for us and we finally sat down and ordered.

I figured we’d have a drink and then head back. But no one was leaving. This made me wonder, for the thousandth time while visiting France, “Do none of these people have to be at work in the morning?”

At 1:30 am the party was going strong but the musicians finally took their last bows and headed home. At best, Lucien and I would be back in Nice by 5 am! Lucien thought nothing of it. “We’ll sleep until noon,” he said.

But as the miles passed, he became more and more quiet. He seemed sleepy. I offered to drive but he refused. I tried to engage him in conversation to keep him awake but he had little to say. I grew more worried when, every quarter mile or so, the car weaved a little too close to the shoulder or to the center line. At what point does one take matters in hand?

Suddenly, he shook his head and said, “Je m’endors.” (“I’m falling asleep.”) He asked me, “Aren’t you sleepy?” I said, truthfully, that I was not sleepy because, for me, riding across southern France in the moonlight was an adventure.

I thought he would relent and allow me to drive, but he didn’t. Instead, he pulled over and announced that he needed a siesta. He positioned his seat as far back as it would go and was out like a light.

I got out of the car and walked around. The countryside was empty and desert-y, like our Southwest. I sat on a rock and looked at the stars, the silhouettes of the mountains and the glow of the distant lights of the Côte d’Azur to the south. My eyelids were heavy but I couldn’t sleep on a rock.

After an hour or so, Lucien tooted, I returned to the car and we finished the trip back to Nice.

Everything about that evening was profoundly non-American. An SRO crowd in a hamlet of 400 souls, gathered in a 300-year old barn to listen to a reed trio concert, starting at 9PM and then partying afterwards until who knows when -- and on a TUESDAY night, yet?

The whole scene would NEVER happen in any village in America. At least none that I know of. Not even Yellow Springs, Ohio. Not on a Tuesday.

Yet everyone involved -- musicians, audience, café owners -- took the whole thing entirely for granted even as they relished every minute of it.

What a culture.

To hear a beautiful rendering of the Renoir movement from my Impressionist Suite #1, titled "The Play of Colors," played by oboist Mark Ostoich, clarinetist Ron Aufmann and bassoonist Mark Ortwein, click on the link above.

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

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“Don’t you think we ought to reserve a hotel room for tonight?”

“Nah!” Knocking about France, solo, I’d never failed to find a room. More than once, asking at the municipal “Office du Tourisme” if the local hotels might be “complet,” I had observed the old timers, sitting around the “Mairie,” overhearing this question, burst into laughter, muttering what I took to be the French equivalent of “As if!” or “That’ll be the day!”

So Jo, myself and our two kids, 11 and 8, passed a mid-June day in 1994 happily exploring St. Jean de Luz, the southwestern-most town in France. We saw the gorgeous cathedral where a large model ship is suspended from the ceiling and where Louis XIV married a Spanish princess. We frolicked on the beach at nearby Biarritz, gate-crashed the ballroom of the Hotel du Palais there, built during the Second Empire for the Empress Eugénie. We roamed the narrow streets of both towns, bought some victuals from small vendors and made a picnic of our supper, in a park, surrounded by flowers. Passersby smiled and wished us, “Bon appétit!”

When dusk fell, I confidently pulled up in front of a hotel. “Complet” read the sign. No problem. There were plenty of other hotels around. You see what’s coming. My family invented a term for such a scenario: “FATHER FAILURE.”

We tried a half dozen hotels. No vacancy. By eleven p.m, I feared we’d have to sleep in the compact car we’d rented. Then a compassionate receptionist suggested -- somewhat hesitantly, I thought -- that I might try the Hotel Kapa Gorry. She kindly dialed the number and handed me the phone.

Yes, I was told, the Kapa Gorry had a room with two double beds. “Hold it for us, please!” We jumped in the car and made our way through the “centre ville” and beyond to a drab and dingy part of town, not mentioned in the guide books. It took more than half an hour. Had he held the room for us?

He had. The lobby was faintly malodorous, the spare furnishings threadbare but I gratefully signed us in. Entering our room, I found one double bed and one twin bed. I returned to the lobby, explaining that he had said he would hold a room with two double beds. He assured me that our room did have two double beds. No, it doesn’t, I said. Yes, it does, he said. I insisted he come back to the room with me. In front of my family, I pointed to the two beds and said, “These are not two double beds.” “Yes, they are,” he replied, going on to say, with a straight face, “These two beds are exactly the same size.”

I remembered something. I said aloud, “I have read about this, how the French will deny reality rather than admit that a mistake has been made.” He affected not to have heard me. Were there any other rooms? None.

Most likely, when I had called, 45 minutes earlier, he still had a room with two double beds but he had given it to another customer before I could get there, a bird in hand being worth two in the bush. “Un tiens vaut mieux que deux tu l’auras” (literally, “One ‘hold’ is of better value that two ‘you might haves’.”

There was nothing to be done. Jo slept in the twin, the kids in the double and I on the floor, miserable. Jo was uncomfortable, too, the twin mattress hammocking badly beneath her. The kids, as always, slept soundly.

Lesson learned. Come morning, the kids were fine, d’accord. I arose, stiff and sore, Jo even moreso. The floor had proven to be less uncomfortable for me than the hammock-bed had for her. I am sorry to admit that it was not the first concave mattress we had encountered in French hotels.

I was determined that none of this would happen again. We consulted our guide books (this was before cell phones and the internet) and found high praise for the Hotel Raymond IV in Toulouse, our destination for that day. I telephoned from the Kapa Gorry lobby. (There was no phone in our room.)

After the receptionist at Raymond IV accepted our reservation, I made bold to say, in the most ceremonious French I could muster, hoping to sound like one of the Three Musketeers addressing the nobility: “Monsieur, if it pleases you, it is never my intention to be impolite but circumstances force me to dare to ask you a very important question: would you wish to have the goodness to assure me that the mattresses are firm?”

There was a pause. I thought I could sense him clicking his heels and standing tall. He answered me with a syllogism worthy of Descartes. “The French do not appreciate mattresses which are not firm. Therefore, unfirm mattresses do not exist in the hotels of France.” Evidently, it was, for him, a matter of national pride and identity. The ancient glory, the radiant grandeur of ‘la belle France’ had been called into question along with it’s standing as a beacon to the world, the premier guardian and steward of the highest standards of excellence in all things.

“With all the great respect that I must owe you, Monsieur, I beg that you will permit me to differ. My family and I have suffered considerable discomfort from unfirm mattresses in French hotels in recent days and the matter is of not of small importance to us.”

To my surprise and delight, he simply repeated his crisp demonstration of Cartesian logic. Some would be angry but I was tickled. What could be more French?

I wondered what sort of fellow I was dealing with but when we arrived, he was courteous and charming. He loved my eccentric French. He complimented me on my mastery of the language, more generously, I knew, than was merited. He counseled us about dinner plans and the sites of the city we must take in, come the morrow.

I thought perhaps he had forgotten my question or hadn’t identified me as the fellow who had asked it.

We stayed two nights. The Raymond IV was all we could have asked and we loved Toulouse.

The second morning, we packed our bags. I brought the car around and while Jo was installing the family, I settled the bill with my “carte de la crédite.” I told the receptionist how much we had enjoyed our stay and thanked him for his guidance and his friendly manner. “Je vous en prie,” he replied, very properly.

I was uttering the opening syllables of “Au rev---”, when he asked, his eyes atwinkle, “And the mattresses, Monsieur? Were they firm?”

“Very firm, Monsieur,” I said. “Very comfortable.” I bowed slightly. “Would you wish to have the goodness to accept all my homages?”

We laughed and shook hands in a friendly display of good cheer and mutual understanding, compatriots, two savvy inhabitants of this modern time and place, ‘men of the world,’ confident in our tandem possessorship of ‘savoir faire.’

- - - - - -

Just as many Americans are fascinated by France, many French people are fascinated by Spain. They consider the Spanish to be spontaneous, in touch with the earth, living out their primal passions. To the French, Spaniards seem to be more alive, more authentic, more vivid, colorful and spicy than they. Consider Louis XIV’s Spanish bride, Bizet’s “Carmen,” Ravel’s “Rapsodie Espagnole,” the Spanish subjects in the paintings of Manet. By contrast, the French view themselves as overly cultivated, too cerebral, too self-conscious, more than a little jaded.

Of course, to an American, looking at the French from the outside, these attitudes are laughable, laden with stereotypes, yet delightful to discover.

This delight found expression in the final movement of my Impressionist Suite #1,”Manet: Spanish Subjects.” Note that it ends with all three musicians shouting, “Olé!"

To hear it played -- beautifully! -- by oboist Mark Ostoich, clarinetist Ron Aufmann and bassoonist Mark Ortwein, click on the link above.

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