Today I'm thinking about heroes, what makes a hero, and how to express heroism musically.

I've known some heroes. My father, Colonel Richard Sowash, US Army Reserves, was a decorated hero of WWII. My Piano Trio #5, "Eroica," written in 2000, is dedicated to his memory.

My Scoutmaster, Frank Culp, was a hero to me and to many other young men who came through Troop 152 in Lexington, Ohio.

My grandfather, John Hoff, whose influence was the most important in my life, about whom I wrote lovingly in my otherwise comical autobiography, The Boy Who Would Be Famous, entertained and inspired me, as a boy, with splendid stories of heroes from American history.

Fifteen years ago I wrote a book for older elementary school children entitled, "Heroes of Ohio: 23 True Tales of Courage and Character," dedicated to that same grandfather. For that book, my definition of a hero was: someone who volunteers to do something challenging to help other people. Simple!

Expressing heroism musically is not so simple.

Composers have expressed heroism: Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, Wagner's Gotterdammerung, Strauss' Ein Heldenleben.

But they lived long ago and far away and their heroic music, great as it may be, feels remote, perhaps too lofty, as an expression of heroism in the "here and now" of our own time.

Too, those are orchestral works. When I set out to express heroism, I was writing for just three instruments: violin, cello and piano. Quite a different thing! No brass, no timpani, no string and wind sections sawing and tooting, triple forte.

Most of the heroic music that genuinely moves me reached my ears via film scores for great Hollywood westerns like The Magnificent Seven, How The West Was Won, The Big Country. Also the TV westerns I grew up watching: Wagon Train, Bonanza. To me, that is what the music of heroism sounds like.

Yet not exactly, not entirely. After all, I am not a composer writing scores for Hollywood westerns. My peculiar career has been as far removed from Hollywood as it has been from Academe or the New York avant garde. My challenge was to find a way to incorporate the galloping excitement, the expansive textures and the sense of adventure found in the best western film scores into a work of serious, contemporary chamber music.

The result is this Presto, the final movement from my Piano Trio #5, "Eroica," in which a feeling of heroism is intended to prevail over the darker, troubled music of the earlier movements.

Does this final movement sound "too Hollywood?" I don't think so. You'd never hear music like this in a western film score. Does it genuinely express heroism, in a way that transcends the Hollywood influences? See what you think.

The Presto from my Eroica trio is beautifully performed by violinist Laura Bossert, cellist Terry King and pianist Phil Amalong.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Feb. 23, 2014

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

The terrifying events of September 11, 2001, brought sudden death to innocent people, called forth great heroism and sacrifice in the community of public servants who stand ready to try to rescue the imperiled, consigned many more to deep mourning in the months and years that followed, stirred dark urges for vengeance, precipitated our mad plunge into war with Iraq which in turn brought ceaseless chaos to the Middle East, leaving hundreds of thousands of civilians dead and displacing millions more.

The president chose Cincinnati’s Museum Center as the venue to announce that America was going to war with Iraq. With a couple hundred other Cincinnatians, I stood in the street outside, a pathetic figure, an obscure composer holding a home-made cardboard sign, protesting. We knew it was futile. Polls at the time indicated that fully 90% of Americans were strongly in favor of invading Iraq. Now almost all Americans say it was a mistake.

I wonder if anything could have stopped it. What if John Paul II, the popular but enfeebled pope, would have come to Washington D.C., knelt on the steps of our Capital building? What if, with the press crowding round, he had loudly prayed, begging God to sway America from this bad idea? Come to think of it, why didn’t he do that? I’m not Catholic but it seems like the sort of thing the pope and other major religious leaders ought to do. Where were they? I wonder if the current pope would do such a thing.

When you screw up, you find out who your friends are: they're the ones who tell you that you are screwing up.

France, our oldest ally, the only major world power against whom America has never gone to war, without whose support our own Revolution would have failed, sternly warned us against invading Iraq. Americans bitterly decried France for speaking up. Many demanded to know if the Frenchies had forgotten D-Day and how, at great cost to ourselves, we had liberated them from the Nazis.

Cincinnatians and Americans everywhere ceased patronizing French restaurants. The makers of French’s mustard ran TV ads, assuring viewers that French's mustard wasn’t actually French; it was "just a family name." In a bold gesture, our sagacious Congress forbade the serving of “French fries” in the Congressional cafeteria; the popular potato product was instead to be termed, “Freedom fries.” That showed ‘em! Absurd!

“Nine Eleven” was fifteen years ago today but the miseries it precipitated continue to be suffered by ever greater numbers of people and in ever widening geographical circles. Almost every day brings staggering news of terrorist attacks and heartbreaking stories of refugees, news that is nearly unbearable to hear and see. Our war in Afghanistan is the longest in our history. The Syrian Civil War has no end in sight. Other countries in the region are on the brink of war. Who knows when and how it will end?

Our pastor knew how it could end. The Sunday after the 9/11 attack, he said, “Terrorist attacks against America will cease only when we have befriended our enemies.” It sounds like something a pastor would say. Or Jesus. Or Gandhi.

You hear that, you nod your head in agreement, it makes sense ... and then it hits you: “How can we ever befriend such crazy people?” How indeed. That’s the question that the best among us must continue to ponder. I don’t know the answer but I am certain that it’s the right question to ask.

It begs another question. Are we currently doing anything to befriend our enemies? It appears to me that our actions, since 9/11, have only served to make our enemies hate us all the more. Sigh.

All this darkness reposed, unguessable, in the not-so-distant future when, in 2000, I wrote my fifth piano trio and subtitled it “Eroica.” My fiftieth birthday arrived shortly after the millennium. With those two major milestones in mind — 50 and 2000 -- I felt prompted to try to do something lofty and grand, to write as “great” a piece of music as I could. Something Beethovenian, if possible.

I chose to try to express heroism. “Eroica” is the Latin word for “heroic” and I subtitled the trio with this word, deliberately echoing Beethoven’s choice of that moniker for his great Third Symphony.

When I was writing my Eroica trio I could not have foreseen that it would turn out to be a piece I’d want to share on what would become a tragic anniversary, September 11.

Well, here we are, September 11, 2016 and I find myself asking you to listen to a piece of music, though I know that mere listening is a scant and shallow consolation.

Confronted with such Evil, what good comes of hearing music? Yet how can we acknowledge or express what we feel about this dark anniversary? How shall we shape our lives in response to it, today and in the days to come?

As most of us are not artists, we turn to the arts, in the hope of finding expressions on our behalf. We know what we feel but we cannot find the words, the paint or the tunes; we cannot say it for ourselves.

We can remember that we are not the first to confront a foundering, floundering world. We can ponder anew the wise counsel of those who have faced such a prospect before us. Their words may console us more effectively than paintings or pieces of music.

In 1935 when the world's economy had collapsed and fascism was on the rise, Odell Shepard, an America author whose writing I admire very much, wrote these words in his forgotten little book, The Cabin Down the Glen…

"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.”

On this September 11, I hope you find these words as comforting and inspiring as I do.

While Shepard’s words are still ringing in your consciousness, I invite you to listen to the opening movement of my Eroica trio, performed with passion and grace by my friends violinist Laura Bossert, cellist Terry King and pianist Phil Amalong. Click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
September 11, 2016

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

After a long, careful inspection of the front and back covers of “Eroica,” one of sixteen CDs I’ve produced, the gentleman gave me a piercing look and demanded to know, “Why is this CD entitled Erotica?”

Gulp.

“It’s not entitled Erotica,” I replied. "It’s entitled Eroica which is the Latin word for ‘heroic.' Beethoven copped it for his Symphony #3 and I pulled the same stunt for my Piano Trio #5, which is the title work on that CD.’”

“Oh,” he said, putting down the CD and beating a hasty retreat before I could discern whether he was disappointed or relieved.

Yes, I have done time as a street vendor, hustling my product line to whomever sauntered by.

For several years, aspiring to be a fully engaged participant in this greatest of capitalist democracies, I strategically positioned myself, every Saturday morning, at Cincinnati’s historic Findlay Market. I manfully took my place, cheek by jowl, with aproned butchers, cheese-mongers, fish-vendors and any number of other merchants, purveyors of vegetables, honeys, hand-made candles, soaps and myriad other finnimbruns.

I set up a card table and arranged my CDs in an appealing display, offering them for the inspection of all and sundry, smoothing the path for the possibility of a purchase by the likes of John Q. Public, Jane Doe, and Joe Sixpack.

I would embrace Free Enterprise! Disdainer of arts council grants and/or the shelter of an academic niche, I felt I needs must stand toe-to-toe with my public; I would clasp ‘the invisible hand of the marketplace;’ I would swap the fruits of my artistic endeavors for filthy lucre!

It was fun. Friends, spotting my stand at the market, asked me what I was up to. “Hawking my wares!” was my riposte. “Like the Pie-man whom Simple Simon met, going to the Fair.”

I chaffed with strangers, too, humanoids as new to me as I was to them, enchanting one and all with my bright smile and merry sallies. I tickled such fancies as were within earshot by rendering well-known ditties on my recorder. I brought along the wooden blocks my father made for me when I was a lad and built little castles and towers to attract the attention of passersby.

Once in a while I even sold a CD, though not to the gentleman who had misread the title of the CD, Eroica.

After a while, I thought I’d branch out.

One Monday morning, I set up my card table on the sidewalk in front of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, figuring music students might be curious to discover the work of a classical composer with the verve and chutzpah to offer his best efforts in the above-described manner. Fully 75 minutes passed before a uniformed officer in the employ of Campus Security, safeguarding the purity of our academic institutions from the besmirching effects of commerce, ran me off.

Afterwards, I thought, what if I had resisted? What if I had drawn myself up, looked the officer in the eye and refused to leave? What would he have done? Called for back up. Then what? What if the students had used their cell phones to film what would happen next, to wit, the police overturning my table, frisking me, handcuffing me and pushing me into the paddy wagon?

Heck, a youtube like that might have ‘gone viral.’ I might have become famous overnight.

At the very least, it would have generated an unusual news story. “Local classical composer arrested for attempting to sell CDs of his music in front of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Details at Eleven.”

You can’t buy that kind of publicity!

I would probably have had to pay a fine and spend a restless night in The Slammer. It might have been worth every penny. It might have been worth a night of tossing and turning on a hard cot in a noisy cell block, trying to "knit up the raveled sleave of care."

I’ll never know because, in fact, I did not seize the opportunity. It shames me to admit it, but without so much as a murmur, I complied with the officer’s request. I put my card table and CDs in the trunk of my car and drove home.

For several years thereafter, I contented myself with vending at Findlay Market, ceasing only when I became an art guard, a gig which required me to be present and accounted for at the Cincinnati Art Museum on Saturday mornings.

My point is that peddling one's artistry is bewildering. Remember the Native American described by Thoreau in Walden? He was astonished to discover that it was not enough merely to weave beautiful baskets; now he must also entice people to buy them!

I hear you saying, "So what, Sowash? What else is new?”

Quite right, too. I don’t know what your life is like, but pretty much everything about mine is confusing. Not least of all, words.

After all, the word “eroica" is just one “t" short of “erotica.” So near and yet so far!

When I see “art heist,” I always think, “atheist.”

When I see “miniseries,” I always think, “miseries.”

When I see “facsimile,” I always think, “sick family.”

Music, on the other hand, never confuses me. Not like Life. Music is what it is. As with everything in the natural world, music means only itself, nothing more, nothing less. That’s one reason we love it.

To hear the Adagio movement of my Piano Trio #5, subtitled “Eroica,” performed superbly well by my friends violinist Laura Bossert, cellist Terry King and pianist Phil Amalong, click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Apr. 23, 2017

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

We rode the bike trail to Terrace Park and back, again, yesterday. Beautiful!

As I tooled along, I thought, “What music for bicycling?"

Music that gallops. Bicycles don’t gallop; they glide. But music that gallops comes close to expressing the exhilaration, the excitement of the experience.

Most of the galloping music that has excited me reached my ears via film scores for great Hollywood westerns like The Magnificent Seven, How The West Was Won, The Big Country. Also the TV westerns I grew up watching: Wagon Train, Bonanza. To me, that is what the music of heroic galloping sounds like.

I never scored a Hollywood western. My peculiar career has been as far removed from Hollywood as it has been from Academe. But in the finale of my Piano Trio #5, my challenge was to find a way to incorporate the galloping excitement, the expansive textures and the adventurous spirit of the best western film scores into a work of serious, contemporary chamber music.

The result is this Presto, the final movement from my Piano Trio #5, "Eroica," in which a feeling of heroism prevails over the darker, troubled music of the earlier movements.

Does this final movement sound "too Hollywood?" You'd never hear chamber music in a western film. Does it express a galloping heroism, in a way that transcends Hollywood influences? See what you think.

Before you give this music a listen I’ve a tidge more to say about bike trails.

On nice days like yesterday in Cincinnati, The Little Miami Trail, part of the network of trails threading from the Ohio River to Lake Erie. It's a mere 90-second bike ride from my house. I value that!

Today, “pert near” everybody loves bike trails.

’Twas not always so. There was a time when the notion of converting abandoned railways to trailways was new. For many Ohioans proposed bike trails were such stuff as nightmares are made on.

Back in the mid-80’s, when I was a County Commissioner in Richland County, way up in north central Ohio, I had to fight tooth and nail to get the area’s first bike trail approved. In public hearings the citizenry — some of whom were parents of boys who had been scouts in my troop when I was a Scoutmaster — expressed their First Amendment rights by all but spitting in my face. They were outraged, furious. They yelled and glaring at me with a hatred I had never experienced … because I made bold to say that I thought a bike trail was a good idea.

They said that bicyclers would descend upon properties near the trail, not only littering, but breaking-and-entering, perpetrating burglary and rape and murder … No one asleep in their bedroom in a house near the trail would ever sleep well again.

Even the bikers who did not go in for violent crimes would sell drugs … they would trespass … they would vandalize, spray-painting four-letter words on the sides of barns and sheds near the trail.

Even the bikers who steered clear of torts and misdemeanors would poop and pee along the trail, wherever they happened to be when the urge came upon them.

Property values would plummet! “Who would ever want to live near a bike trail?”

Plus, they said, NOBODY would use it!

At one hearing, an elderly man waved his fist and shouted, to thunderous applause, “This is just like what they do in ROOSHIE, them Communists, pushin’ things down people’s throats!”

The County Auditor, an elected official mind you, owned a large property across which the trail was to pass. He dramatized his opposition to the bike trail by hiring a construction company to bulldoze huge piles of dirt and gravel onto the abandoned railroad track where the proposed bike trail was to be.

I stuck it out and gradually Vox Populi changed its tune. Today …. well, you can guess.

I can’t take all the credit. The Richland County bike trail would eventually have come into existence without my pushing for it. Somebody, sooner or later, would have taken the heat and made it happen. But I had the chance and I seized it. I’m glad I did. When I ride the bike trail near our present-day home, though I had nothing to do with its creation, I feel it’s a privilege I’ve earned.

To hear the Presto from my “Eroica" trio, beautifully performed by violinist Laura Bossert, cellist Terry King and pianist Phil Amalong, click on the link above.

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

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

My fiftieth birthday arrived shortly after the beginning of the current millennium. It seemed to me that the imminent passing of those two major milestones — 50 and 2000 -- called for something lofty and grand. I felt prompted to write as “great” a piece of music as I could. Something Beethovenian, if possible.

Our reach should exceed our grasp, as Browning said. Might as well shoot for the stars, right? What is there to lose?

I wrote my ambitious Piano Trio #5, an attempt to express the thrill of awe we feel when we witness authentic heroism, define it how we will.

“Eroica” is the Latin word for “heroic” and I subtitled the trio with this word, deliberately echoing Beethoven, who attached that same moniker to his great Third Symphony.

Now, nearly a quarter century after I finished this piece, I ask myself to what extent I succeeded.

It’s one thing to consider pieces I wrote in my twenties. I can excuse the flaws by remembering that I was young. But at fifty, that excuse can no longer be made.

So … what to make of this piece now?

The music is certainly rumbustious, the architecture is ambitious, the style is neo-Romantic, closer to Tchaikovsky than Beethoven, yet not quite attaining the grandeur of either. Some parts feel more florid than monumental.

The sentiments seem deeply felt. There is sense of ‘the tragic’ in the best parts of the movement but it is difficult for me to say how much of that is in the music and how much in the impassioned interpretation these three superb musicians imposed upon it in the recording I hope you’ll let me share.

Scored for three instruments, the music at times seems almost orchestral -- but is that a good thing in a piece of chamber music? When music attains grandeur it loses intimacy. There is plenty of development but even after twelve and a half minutes, the movement seems to end a little too abruptly.

Listening, one feels that the composer has strived mightily and done his best. But is the music an apt response to heroism?

Here is the opening movement of my Eroica trio, performed with passion and grace by my friends violinist Laura Bossert, cellist Terry King and pianist Phil Amalong. click on the link above.

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