Today, a musical depiction of high spirits and abundant good health: the opening movement, entitled "Overture," from my five-movement Serenade for Mary, a Musical Get-well Card for flute, clarinet and string quartet.

The Serenade was written for Mary Hoffman, Music Director at WOSU-FM, a classical music radio station, in Columbus, OH, back when I was a twenty-something broadcaster there. Mary’s lively and gracious manner, her delightful sense of humor and her ardent love of classical music has inspired everyone who crosses her path.

In 1979, Mary took ill and was absent from work for six weeks. I wrote this piece for her as a musical “get-well card." I engaged some musicians from the Ohio State University Music Dept. to record the work; we then broadcast it on WOSU-FM while Mary listened at home.

The opening movement is brisk and flirtatious, a breath of fresh air for an invalid.

Listen for the wonderfully agile and expressive playing of clarinetist Michelle Gingras and flutist Betty Douglas and the other musicians -- all Cincinnatians -- violinists: Kris Frankenfeld and Elizabeth Steva, violist Dorotea Vismara Hoffman and cellist Ellen Shertzer. I was fortunate to have enlisted such fine players to make this recording and to have the skillful assistance of John Burgess, Cincinnati's finest recording engineer.

We recorded it in the chapel of Hyde Park United Methodist Church which is ensconced on the church's wooded campus, a park-like setting. Before the recording session, I helped John Burgess unload his equipment, making several trips back and forth, from his van to the chapel, with my arms full of microphone stands, headphones, control panels, etc.

Then, returning to the van for yet another load, I found him handing me two pots.

"Are you going to heat up some soup?" I asked, puzzled.

"No," he replied, "those are for the birds."

"Birds?"

"Yes. The chapel is surrounded by trees and birds perch in them. The microphones pick up their tweets, so they have to be chased away. It's no use yelling at them or throwing stones. The only thing that drives them away is for someone to go out under the trees bang pots together, real loud."

Well, you see what’s coming. An hour later the musicians were seated in front of their music stands, sawing away, and John was sitting in the back, headphones on, tweaking knobs. Suddenly, "Tweet! tweet!" Can't have tweets on a recording!

Whose job was it, do you suppose, to run around the chapel, banging pots together? Mine, of course. Such is the glamorous life of a composer who produces his own recordings.

To hear the "Overture" from my Serenade for Mary, click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Chief Composer and Pot-Banger
Cincinnati, OH
March 30, 2014

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Mary has been among y’all, the recipients of my weekly emails, beginning with the first one I sent to a handful of friends and fans back in October of 2013.

Two months ago she sent us a Christmas card in which she kindly expressed her appreciation for these e-pistles, expressing herself with a writer’s flair. She wrote,

"You pique my interest, pluck my heart strings and please my ear every Sunday morning.”

Well said, Mary! And thank you, from the heart, for the sincere interest you’ve long shown in my curious career and life’s work.

To hear the Lullaby from Serenade for Mary played with wit and verve by clarinetist Michelle Gingras, flutist Betty Douglas, violinists Kris Frankenfeld and Elizabeth Steva, violist Dorotea Vismara Hoffman and cellist Ellen Shertzer, (the musicians who recorded it on my CD entitled “Serenade”), click on the link above.

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

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My five-movement “Serenade for Mary,” is an affectionate homage to my friend, mentor and erstwhile boss, Mary Hoffman. She was the Music Director at WOSU-FM, Columbus’ classical music radio station, when I was a broadcaster there in the late 1970’s.

Four of the five movements portray Mary Hoffman’s personality but the fourth movement, “Spiritus Maria,” is about that other Mary, the Mary of all Marys, the First of the Faithful, the mother of Jesus.

Having grown up Lutheran and having been an active member of Cincinnati’s Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church for the past twenty years, I can attest that Protestants are pretty much at liberty to draw their own conclusions about Mary. Free of the weight of dogma, we Protestants consider ourselves to be free to choose whether or not and, if so, how to welcome the spirit of Mary, the “Spiritus Maria."

For me and, I suspect, for many progressive Christians, Mary brings pathos to the Jesus tale, personifying a nurturing femininity and a sense of what is sacred, a reminder of our very real and very fragile Mother Earth, taking her rightful place alongside the Trinity.

Because the Gospels provide so few details about her, we are at liberty to try to imagine what the mother of Jesus would have felt as the events of his short life unfolded and to try to imagine what we would feel, or to remember what we have felt, when the circumstances of our lives might be, or have already been, similar to those of Mary's life.

Historian Will Durant wrote that, next to Jesus, Mary is the most touching figure in the New Testament. We imagine her rearing her first-born "through all the painful joys of motherhood, proud of his youthful learning, wondering later at his doctrines and his claims, wishing to withdraw him from the exciting throng of his followers and bring him back to the healing quiet of his home . . . helplessly witnessing his crucifixion, and receiving his body into her arms . . .”

What music for such a figure? Across the span of five decades of writing music, the act of asking questions like that one has prompted inspiration, eventually leading to a finished piece of music.

The movement I titled “Spiritus Maria" begins with hushed strings and a French horn intoning chord progressions that arch upward like stained glass windows in a Gothic cathedral. This is intended to be sacred music, to evoke what we feel when we regard that which is holy.

58 seconds into the movement, the oboe enters with a lilting tune, like a soothing lullaby, offering comfort, charming us with its earnest innocence, its purity of intent.

At 2:13 the hushed chord progression that opened the movement returns, signaling that the movement carries its message via the simplest of musical forms: A - B - A. It is a simplicity that befits Mary. Or so it seemed to me, when I wrote this music almost forty years ago.

To hear Spiritus Maria, the fourth movement from my Serenade for Mary, performed by the Clermont Philharmonic under the direction of Jaime Morales, click on the link above.

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

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

My five-movement “Serenade for Mary” is an affectionate homage to my friend, mentor and erstwhile ‘boss-lady,’ Mary Hoffman. She was the Music Director at WOSU-FM, Columbus’ classical music radio station, when I was a broadcaster there in the late 1970’s.

Four of the five movements portray Mary Hoffman’s personality but the fourth movement, “Spiritus Maria,” depicts another Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Mary personifies nurturing and a sense of the sacred. Because the Gospels provide so few details about her, we are at liberty to try to imagine what the mother of Jesus would have felt as the events of his short life unfolded.

Historian Will Durant wrote that, next to Jesus, Mary is the most touching figure in the New Testament. We empathize with her "through all the painful joys of motherhood, proud of his youthful learning, wondering later at his doctrines and his claims, wishing to withdraw him from the exciting throng of his followers and bring him back to the healing quiet of his home . . . helplessly witnessing his crucifixion, and receiving his body into her arms . . .”

The movement I titled “Spiritus Maria" begins with hushed strings and a French horn intoning chord progressions that arch upward like stained glass windows in a Gothic cathedral. This is intended to be sacred music, evoking the holy with a certain grandeur.

58 seconds into the movement, the oboe enters with a soothing lullaby, offering comfort. The music is simple, innocent, quietly charming. We imagine Mary singing lullaby to her infant son.

At 2:13 the hushed chord progression that opened the movement returns; the movement offers its message with a simplicity befitting Mary by employing the simplest of musical forms, sometimes called “‘song form”: A - B - A.

Recently I re-scored and expanded this music into a piece for French horn and piano, suitable music for performance as an offertory in a church service. I re-titled it “Spiritus.” I have sent PDFs of the score to all the horn-players I know. Maybe I’ll make a cello-piano version of it one of these days and send it to my cellist friends.

Meanwhile, to hear Spiritus Maria, the fourth movement from my Serenade for Mary, performed by the Clermont Philharmonic under the direction of Jaime Morales, click on the link above.

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

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You might enjoy discovering what I’ve been doing these past six weeks: writing a symphony!

Here’s how it came about. Last spring I sent an email message to all the musicians in my database. These are people who have inquired about my scores, asking for PDFs of the sheet music.

I provide them with free PDFs of my music and retain their contact info.

I asked them all: for what combination of instruments or voices would you like me to compose something? I got about two dozen replies raising all sorts of possibilities. Some were practical, others seemed a little beyond the pale.

Then again, sometimes, on second thought ...

A cellist in Arizona asked for a piece to be scored for the unlikely combination of flute, oboe, trumpet, piano, violin, viola and cello. At first I demurred. If I did write such a piece, excepting the ensemble in AZ, who would ever play it? When and where does one find seven friends who play those particular instruments and are open to performing a new work (without payment)?

I asked the cellist what repertoire they play and the answer was: transcriptions, rescore a Brandenburg Concerto, for example. But they had never approached a composer, asking that a piece be written specifically for them (without payment).

I asked if a bassoon could be added. Nope. A clarinet? Nope. It was just those seven. Take it or leave it.

I let the possibility rest for several months while I happily wrote a dozen other works for more standard combinations: flute & strings, oboe & strings, a piano trio, a piano quartet, flute & piano, oboe & piano, cello duo, clarinet & piano, brass choir, cello choir.

That seems like a lot of music to write in a period of “several months,” but bear in mind that I pass four to six hours composing almost every day and it is amazing what can be accomplished with the investment of that much time.

But I wrote nothing for the Arizona Seven (not their real name).

Then it struck me. I had not noticed it before. There is a beautiful symmetry in that combination. Picture it in a concert setting. The piano is in the center, the three strings are to the left, the three winds are to the right. The strings and the winds are opposing, antiphonal forces while he piano, placed centrally, balances the other six.

Such a symmetry can serve as a metaphor for many things -- politics for instance. We have “the Left”, “the Right” and “the Center.” The Left tugs leftward, the Right tugs rightward while actual governance originates with the Center.

It’s a notion that I thought could be expressed musically and in exciting ways. I got to work. I came up with some big ideas that warranted expansive development -- or so it seemed to me. In short order, relatively speaking, I wrote a four-movement symphony!

I’ve titled the piece “Symphony for Seven Instruments.” It is a symphony in every sense except the number of musicians required to perform it. Seven and not Sixty, i.e., not a full orchestra. Yet the seven DO comprise an orchestra: they offer strings, woodwinds and brass while the piano stands in for the percussion section.

The Arizonians are delighted and they tell me that it’s going to be performed next spring and -- guess what? -- the cellist has invited us to attend the premiere, offering to put us up in “guest quarters.” Are we going? You bet!

Do any of you happen to know a group of seven musicians who play those same instruments? Seriously. If you do, give me their contact information and I’ll ask if they would like to play this new symphony sometime, too.

Meanwhile, I’m moving on to the next project, a two-movement piece for a trio in Eugene, OR; they play the flute, the cello and the piano. Fun! It will be my third work for that combination.

I cannot share a recording of the Symphony for Seven Instruments with you today, obviously. I trust that the premiere will be recorded when they premiere the piece next spring. After that, I’ll be able to feature the movements in my Sunday morning emails.

For now, instead, please give a listen to the finale of my Serenade for Mary, scored for SIX instruments: flute, clarinet + string quartet.

It is beautifully performed in this recording by clarinetist Michelle Gingras, flutist Betty Douglas, violinists Kris Frankenfeld and Elizabeth Steva, violist Dorotea Vismara Hoffman and cellist Ellen Shertzer, click on the link above.