“We are all on a voyage and none of us has arrived.” That’s what our former pastor, Rev. Steve Van Kuiken, used to tell us.

I had that in mind in 1998, when I wrote my first trio for clarinet, cello and piano, a work that aspires to describe, musically, a spiritual journey.

A journey must have a beginning point. The first movement is lovely, sad and mysterious, trying to reconcile resigned yearning with an intense awareness of the beauty of the world, of life. It's 'a tall order,’ as we Midwesterners say, but that was what I was trying to achieve. I figure, “Might as well aim for the stars!”

The second movement evokes the attempt most of us make to find meaning in Life through romantic love and, later, through nostalgia. A crisis is reached in the third movement, when the instruments intone an “Alleluia” which was an important part of the Lutheran liturgy in the church of my boyhood.

The fourth movement starts out to be an exuberant, joyful finale. Doubt and mystery are soon felt again; the mysterious music of the first movement recurs; indeed, the music almost stops altogether. Only the slow, strange ruminations of the cello keep it alive. Then Beauty, if not Certitude, is reaffirmed and the piece ends -- not with a strong, positive gesture, but with a slowing, fading, rising gesture, ambiguously suggesting both resolution and non-resolution. It seems to say, “The music ceases, but the voyage continues."

Today, I want to share only the beautiful, strange first movement. It is beautiful, partly because it uses harmonic progressions we remember from Bach. His music compelled us to love them. It is strange, partly because it is cast in 7/4, a meter which Bach, the most prolific of composers, never employed. Also, each phrase of the tune, as you’ll hear immediately, has an odd, symmetrical structure: four notes played first as quarter notes, then eighth notes, then sixteenth notes — and then in reverse — the next four notes are played as sixteenth notes, then eighth notes, then quarter notes.

See what you make of it.

Though I did not know it at the time, this trio, turned out to be the beginning of a much larger spiritual journey; it was the first of fifteen works I wrote for this combination of instruments, far more than I’ve written for any other combination of instruments. I was obsessed with the possibilities inherent in combining a clarinet, a cello and a piano. And the fifteen trios, considered as a whole, set a trajectory that culminated in my clarinet concerto, probably the best of all my works.

The Trio #1 was just the beginning. It was my response to a request from my friend the French clarinetist Lucien Aubert and his ensemble, “les Gavottes.” Lucien and his family live on the island of Corsica; he kindly hosted us in his home for a five-night stay two years ago. What a sweet little family he has. What a sweet home, what a sweet island. A place of magic: Lucien’s two little girls loved spotting how I did my corny disappearing-coin tricks. Sometime I want to share with you another work of mine, subtitled “Memories of Corsica."

Meanwhile, to hear the first movement of my Trio #1 for clarinet, cello and piano "Voyage of the Spirit” performed by the French ensemble “les Gavottes” and recorded by them on the CD “Enchantement d’avril," click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Jan. 31, 2016

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A few years ago I opened our mailbox to find a card from a lady with whom I was only slightly acquainted. She wrote to tell me that a few years earlier she had attended a concert of my music where she had bought several of my CDs. "To be honest," she wrote, "I had never opened them."

Then, a few weeks prior, her nine-year-old nephew died. She drove nine hours, alone, to attend the funeral. Just before leaving, she grabbed an armful of CDs and, by chance, mine were among them.

She had written to tell me that, as she drove, she listened to my CDs, over and over and over, all the way there and back again after the funeral. The music, she said, engaged her, made her smile sometimes and sometimes weep. The music eased her pain, she said, eased her sad journey. She said the music consoled her.

This was the greatest compliment I will ever receive. It's all the more meaningful because, when I wrote the music recorded on those CDs I did not dream that my tunes might solace someone in grief. Much of my music is happy and snappy, sometimes wistful, sometimes almost trite. Who would imagine such creations could comfort anyone?

Some critics hate my music, some love it. That's to be expected. But of what value is the opinion of any critic when compared to the content of that card? A rave in the New York Times, a standing ovation at Carnegie Hall, a Pulitzer Prize ... these would not mean as much.

I have breakfast every now and then with one of my oldest friends; we've been pals since the 5th grade. He has a nephew who is a composer. I've never met this nephew and I've never heard any of his music but my friend tells me that his nephew has come through one of our most prestigious conservatories of music, where he learned to write music that would "attract critical attention." He's in a PhD program now, doubtless destined to land a tenured slot as a Composition Professor in some lofty Conservatory or School of Music where he will compose yet more avant garde music that few people really want to hear and direct his students to do the same.

Sigh.

I told my friend about the card sent by the lady whose nephew died. I told my friend that by writing avant garde music his nephew may win critical acclaim and a tenured faculty position but that such music will never elicit a compliment like the one I received from the grieving aunt. My friend said I was probably right, but what can he do? He can't very well tell his nephew how to write music, how to shape his career.

Me, I'm one of those fools who rushes in where angels fear to tread ... if I ever meet this nephew, I'll tell him about the card the lady sent me. I'll try to gently caution him. I'll ask him to consider an alternative to the easy, obvious path to critical, academic and material success. I'll try to nudge him to leave that path and write, instead, music that -- who knows? -- might comfort a grief-stricken soul someday.

I'll tell him that, even this late in the History of Western Civilization, even after all we've been through in the last hundred years, even in these modern times ... memorable melodies with attractive tonal harmonies, interesting counterpoints and architectural integrity can still touch people, stir spirits, bring quiescent joy to a troubled heart.

I don't know which of my CDs or which selections of my music the lady heard during her long, sad, solo drive. I hope she might have come on the second movement of my Trio #1 for clarinet, cello and piano, subtitled "Voyage of the Spirit."

To hear it tenderly rendered by "les Gavottes," the trio comprised of my French friends clarinetist Lucien Aubert, cellist Francois Adloff and pianist Jean Tatu, click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Sept. 14, 2014

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Please accept a gift: a palate cleanser for the mind.

It’s a gift I received from one of y'all, i.e., one of you good folks who kindly permit me to catapult these weekly emails into your in-box. Today I want to pass along the gift to you.

It’s a five-minute film made by the late Gary Wakenhut and his wife Anne. The two were partners in this creation, did the video work together and collaborated in bringing the film to its final form. I never met Gary face-to-face but we enjoyed a warm exchange of emails for several years and Anne and I keep in touch via email.

Gary was a healer, musician and videographer. He was also an ardent protector and appreciator of the beautiful Pigeon River that flows through the north central part of the southern peninsula of Michigan, where he lived.

Utilizing, as the film score, the second movement of my Trio #1 for clarinet, cello and piano “Voyage of the Spirit”, Gary created a lovely piece of video art, shot at just this time of year, Indian summer. He titled his film, “Life of the Forest: The Pigeon River.”

Gary really listened to the music. You can tell by the way he ‘cross-fades’ his glorious images of the river at the precise moment when one phrase of music ends and another begins. And the way he matches a rising feeling in the music with a segment when the camera's view of the river is ascending.

With my blessing and gratitude, he mounted his film on YouTube for anyone to see and hear. It’s just gorgeous. See for yourself by copying and pasting this link into your browser:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CICbdPOsIN8

Gary planned to make more films coupling my music with his beautiful video imagery but cancer came calling and took him away before he could do so.

I’d love for more of my music to serve as film scores for video art with the quality of Gary’s work, either live action video or a series of still photographs, cross-faded.

If you or anyone you know would like to make films or slide shows using my music as the soundtrack, I’d happily give permission, expecting no payment.

As an ASCAP-affiliated publisher of my own music and producer of my own CDs, I own the rights to my work. I’m at liberty to give it away. That is what I’m doing these days, to the greatest extent possible.

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There are greater national treasures than the Shenandoah National Park. We’ve visited many of them: Glacier, Rocky Mountain, Acadia, Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, Yosemite.

None has as strong a claim on my affections as "the Shenandoah.” We even named our daughter after the park (and the beautiful folk song).

I undertook my first backpacking trip there when I was 22, the beginning of a ‘Voyage of the Spirit’ that continues to this day. I’ve been back many times, eating ‘Roosevelt Chicken' at Big Meadows Lodge, hiking down from the ridge to view waterfalls and up from the ridge to overlooks, ascending 'Mary’s Rock’ a dozen times or more in the company of family and friends, some now long gone.

The Skyline Drive (the narrow, 35 mph parkway traversing the hundred-mile length of the park) has provided me with the most useful metaphor I’ve found to explain what a composer does.

Almost a hundred years ago, someone looked at that hundred-mile long wrinkle of rock and had an idea: “Let’s build a road across the rim of the ridge!” That’s the composer, perceiving a possibility and drawing a map, i.e., notating a score, to rough out how the possibility can be brought to reality.

Workers arrive. They clear the brush, lay the asphalt, build the bridges, all as indicated on the designer’s map. These are the musicians, bringing the composer’s vision to reality.

Finally come the tourists, families on a Sunday drive. Leaf-peepers, bless ‘em! These are the listeners, be they on-line, in church, in a concert hall or taking in a radio broadcast.

For music to happen, those three roles must be cast: composer, musician, listener. Exactly thus, the Skyline Drive has been envisioned, built and enjoyed.

A physical reality, yes; also a metaphor for the Voyage of the Spirit.

* * * * * * * * *

Among nations, the definition and function of what we Americans call “a park" varies dramatically.

French national parks are punctuated with villages, cross-laced with roads and almost devoid of wildlife. There are no raccoons or wildcats, let alone elk, caribou and mountain lions. No grizzlies, no black bears. All have long since been hunted to extinction. About 80 wolves have eked out a living in southeastern France since the 1990’s.

French city parks are very pretty to look at but most are not for “use" in the American sense. Sun-bathing on the grass? Spreading a vinyl tablecloth and picknicking? No. Not on the municipal “pelouse.” In Aix-en-Provençe, our little family had to picnic on the hot, hard, crowded sidewalk, right next to the lush, cool lawn of the public park. “Defense de marcher sur la pelouse."

* * * * * * * * *

Taiwan’s Yang Ming Shan National Park presents an altogether different notion of a park. You must have seen Chinese landscape paintings: a rugged mountain-side, festooned in fog, arabesqued with twisting conifers, a tiny bridge arching a stream to a pagoda in which a scholar sits, sipping tea, writing a manuscript. At the edge of the scene there will be a vertical poem in delicate, black Chinese characters and, in scarlet ink, an impression of the artist’s ’name chop.'

The idea of Yang Ming Shan National Park is to provide the visitor with the opportunity to ENTER such a painting. There are little arching bridges and pagodas in which you can sit and imagine yourself to be the scholar in a painting. Even the red ’name chop’ is there: gigantic scarlet Chinese characters ‘defacing’ (to our way of thinking) giant flat-sided boulders. We see this as graffiti; the Taiwanese see it as another indication that they are actually INSIDE a painting. As for the fog, my interpreter told me that the Chinese love best the wet and misty days and that rainy days draw the biggest crowds to the park. For the Chinese, mist is a powerful metaphor with a vast library of associations; when the weather turns foggy, they want to feel close to Nature. Parks provide the opportunity.

* * * * * * * * *

Contrariwise, for Americans, a national park is intended to afford visitors the illusion of entering Eden, i.e., a region where Nature pristine, virginal, untouched by humankind. Ironically, the illusion depends entirely upon the exact reverse of the notion: roads must lead to and traverse the park, for the park to exist there must needs be food stands, gas stations, cabins, campgrounds, Visitor Centers, interpretive signs, ‘Do not to feed the wildlife’ signs, rangers, custodians, etc.)

Understand: our continent has never been ‘untouched by human hands.’ From the day of our arrival we have been manipulating the landscape to suit our needs. Our parks are a beautiful artifice, a precious illusion, every bit as contrived as the picture-perfect, untouchable French municipal parks or the Taiwanese notion of a park as a realization of a Chinese painting.

What’s this? The Shenandoah National Park an artifice? But the Skyline Drive is so beautiful, so natural. Yes, it is, in its way. Yet, I was surprised to learn that, back in the 1930’s, when the park was new, the CCC planted over 100,000 trees along the Skyline Drive. Today those trees are huge and look as if they sprang up ’naturally.’

In fact, approximately four-score and seven years ago, they were placed by boys supervised by foresters and armed with shovels. Left to their own devices most of those tree species would never have found their way to the Skyline Drive.

A park is a contrivance, an artifice -- be it in America, France or Taiwan.

And that’s OK! We dearly love our parks and rightly so. The love we have for our national parks is patriotism at its healthiest, wholesomest, most authentic. Ken Burns correctly termed our national parks “America’s best idea.”

They best express what is best in our national ‘Voyage of the Spirit.’

To hear the third movement from my Trio #1 for clarinet, cello and piano, subtitled "Voyage of the Spirit,” played by the French ensemble les Gavottes, click on the link above.

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

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Happy Bastille Day. As my way of affectionately saluting “la belle France,” I’d like to share the last movement of the first of thirteen trios I wrote for the French clarinet-cello-piano trio, les Gavottes.

The four movements of Trio #1 describe a spiritual journey.

The first movement is lovely but also sad and mysterious, an expression of resigned yearning in tandem with an awareness of the beauty of the world, of life.

The second movement evokes our attempt to find meaning in Life through romantic love and nostalgia for an idealized past.

A crisis is reached in the third movement, resolved only when the instruments intone an “Alleluia” which was an important part of the Lutheran liturgy in the church of my boyhood.

Then comes the movement I want to share today. It starts out to be an exuberant, joyful finale. However, doubt and mystery are soon felt again; the mysterious music of the first movement recurs; indeed, the music almost stops altogether. Only the very slow, strange ruminations of the cello keep it alive.

Then Beauty, if not Certitude, is reaffirmed and the movement ends -- not with a strong, positive gesture of arrival at journey’s end, but with a slowing, fading, rising gesture, ambiguously suggesting both resolution and dissolution.

The music ceases, but the voyage of the spirit continues for all of us.

To the final movement of my Trio #1 for clarinet, cello and piano "Voyage of the Spirit” performed by the French ensemble “les Gavottes” (clarinetist Lucien Aubert, cellist François Adloff and pianist Jean Tatu), click on the link above.

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

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There are realms above and beyond the marshy shoreline of this rising swamp of terrible news.

For example … here’s a vignette that’s blessedly unrelated to the troubles confronting us.

Did I ever tell you that my name is on the Eiffel Tower? You smile.

It’s emblazoned in gold, no less, and the letters are two feet tall! You scoff.

It sounds like a tall tale, an unverifiable brag. But, in a manner of speaking, after a fashion, in a sense only slightly less than literal, it happens to be true.

On the Eiffel Tower, are engraved, in honor of their contributions, the names of 72 French scientists, engineers, and mathematicians.

Gustave Eiffel chose this “invocation of science” in response to the protests against the tower when it was being constructed. The sight of it horrified most Parisians. To them it appeared to be a grotesquely stylized human form, an armless, shoulderless giant with splayed legs, enormous feet, and a tiny head. “Yes, but,” Eiffel said in effect, “it’s also a monument to the scientific prowess of France.”

The tower was to have been a temporary fixture, installed for the 1889 World’s Fair. It survived only because of its potential as a radio tower when it became clear that radio was ‘the coming thing.’

The engraved names are found on all four sides under the first balcony.

My family name appears on the northeast side, also known as La Bourdonnais side. When you stand there, next time you’re in Paris, gazing up in wonder, your back will be toward the upstream direction of the Seine.

“Gosh!” you’ll exclaim (if you are among those who continue, at such moments, to employ that quaint expression), “Rick wasn’t kidding!”

Some of the names emblazoned there remain famous today: Lavoisier, Ampère, Daguerre and, yes, Sauvage, my ancestral family name. (The origin of “Sowash” is the French name “Sauvage.” My branch of the family changed the spelling in the 1840’s.)

For 25 years I thought that the name represented Frédéric Sauvage, who in 1832 showed that his invention, the screw propeller, could propel a boat through water more efficiently than the then-standard paddle-wheels attached to the sides of a boat. He first demonstrated this great leap in the science of hydro-dynamics during a public demonstration in the bay of Honfleur, a harbor town on the coast of Normandy. Our family read about him on a plaque alongside the quay there during our ten-week visit to France in 1994.

“Gosh!” we said and have honored the achievements of “Uncle Fred” ever since.

I recently discovered, however, that my assumption was wrong. The Sauvage on the Eiffel tower is not “Uncle Fred” but rather François Clément Sauvage, a geologist and mining engineer. “Cousin Frank,” we call him now.

Having my name, by a stretch, emblazoned, so to speak, in gold on the Eiffel Tower gives me, I admit, the merest toehold in the Pantheon of the great men and women of French descent whose names ‘echo down the corridors of Time.’

In the vast Francophone world it is a footnote, a barnacle, a smidgen, a crumb, a speck.

Still … it’s a fun story to tell. It makes me feel just a little more French.

Gosh! Or should I say, Mon Dieu?

To hear the final movement of my Trio #1 for Clarinet, Cello & Piano "Voyage of the Spirit” performed by the French ensemble “les Gavottes” (clarinetist Lucien Aubert, cellist François Adloff and pianist Jean Tatu), click on the link above.

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

I'd love to know what you think about this music; reply if you're inclined. But please don't feel that you are expected to reply. I'm just glad to share my work in this way.

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“We are all on a voyage and none of us has arrived.” That’s what our former pastor, Rev. Steve Van Kuiken, often told us.

I had that in mind in 1998, when I wrote my first trio for clarinet, cello and piano, aspiring to describe a spiritual journey by utilizing, not words, but the gestures of music.

A journey must begin somewhere. The first movement is lovely, dark and mysterious. Despite our keen awareness of the beauty of the world, of life, of the precious here and now, we yearn for something else, something more. Reconciling this divergence is how we advance toward serenity, resigned yet radiant.

I strive for serenity. Am I serene? My wife would know. Ask her; she will laugh. “Not often,” she might say and she would be right. The same malicious imps that pester you pester me: resentment, regret, anxiety, worry. “Go away,” I tell them and it works … for a while.

The second movement evokes the attempt most of us make to find meaning in Life through romantic love and, afterwards, through nostalgia.

A crisis comes in the third movement, when the instruments intone an ancient “Alleluia,” an important part of the Lutheran liturgy in the church of my boyhood. It moved me then and the memory of it moves me now. We fall away from Faith and then return. That’s part of the journey.

The fourth movement starts out to be an exuberant, joyful finale as if to say, “We have arrived!” Not so. Doubt and mystery are soon felt again; the mysterious music of the first movement recurs, interrupting the exuberance. The music falters, the journey almost stops. Only the dark ruminations of the cello keep the piece alive.

Then comes an affirmation, a blessing, and the piece ends -- not with a strong, positive gesture, not with a Beethoven ending, but rather with a slowing, fading, rising gesture, ambiguously suggesting both resolution and non-resolution. It seems to say, “The music ceases, but the voyage continues and none of us have arrived."

Today, I invite you to listen to the beautiful, strange opening movement. It uses harmonic progressions we remember from Bach. His music compels us to love these progressions, even when employed by another, far lesser composer. The music is cast in 7/4, a meter unknown to Bach. Each phrase of the tune has a symmetrical structure: four notes played first as quarter notes, then repeated as eighth notes, then sixteenth notes — and then in reverse — the next four notes are played as sixteenth notes, then eighth notes, then quarter notes. This is the music of deliberate ambiguity: is it slow or fast? Not even that is clear.

Though I did not know it in 1998, this trio turned out to be the beginning of a much larger journey for me. The subtitle, “Journey of the Spirit,” was prophetic: this was the first of fifteen works I wrote for clarinet, cello & piano, far more than I’ve written for any other combination of instruments.

I became fascinated, even obsessed, with exploring the metaphors presented by a clarinet, a cello and a piano. The fifteen trios, considered as a whole, comprise a zig-zagging trajectory culminating in my clarinet concerto, my magnum opus, perhaps the best of all my works.

To hear the first movement performed by “les Gavottes,” the French trio for whom it was written, (clarinetist Lucien Aubert, celist François Adloff and pianist Jean Tatu), click on the link above.

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

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Now I’m going to “get all spiritual.” :-)

“We are all on a voyage and none of us have arrived.” That’s what our former pastor, Rev. Steve Van Kuiken, often told us.

I had his aphorism in mind back in 1998 when I wrote my first trio for clarinet, cello and piano, aspiring to describe a spiritual journey with musical gestures, not words.

A journey must begin somewhere. The first movement is wintry, lovely, dark and mysterious.

It employs harmonic progressions we remember from Bach. The meter, however, is 7/4 time, a meter Bach never used.

Each phrase of the tune has a symmetrical structure: four tones played first as quarter notes, then repeated as eighth notes, then as sixteenth notes — and then in reverse — the next four tones are played as sixteenth notes, then eighth notes, then quarter notes.

The tempo is ambiguous: the best is steady but is it slow or fast? Each beat of a given measure answers differently.

Though I did not know it in 1998, this trio turned out to be the beginning of a much larger musical and spiritual journey for me. The subtitle, “Journey of the Spirit,” was prophetic: this turned out to be the first of fifteen works I wrote for clarinet, cello & piano, far more than I’ve written for any other combination of instruments.

I was fascinated with exploring the metaphors presented by a clarinet, a cello and a piano. The fifteen trios, considered as a whole, are a trajectory culminating in my clarinet concerto, one of my best works. In a sense, all those trios were a long preparation for the writing of the concerto.

To hear the first movement performed by “les Gavottes,” the French trio for whom it was written, (clarinetist Lucien Aubert, celist François Adloff and pianist Jean Tatu), click on the link above.

There's also a link to a PDF of the score.