November is upon us now. In Cincinnati, brightly colored leaves remain on the trees well into November; the feeling of October lingers. We half-delude ourselves; maybe this year will be different, maybe winter won't come. But November has finally set in, even here in Ohio's southernmost (and most Southern) city.

My Trio #3 for clarinet, cello and piano is subtitled "Shadows of November." The subtitle sounds better in French: "Les Ombres de Novembre." That's how it appears on the score's cover page because I wrote it for a superb French clarinetist, my good friend Lucien Aubert, and the trio in which he played, who called themselves "les Gavottes."

You're invited to listen to the final movement, 3.5 minutes long, as recorded by les Gavottes. Gosh, they're good! You're going to love this, I predict.

It might not sound November-ish, so let me explain. There are three movements in this work. The first movement is ambiguous, like a November fog. The second movement is deeply mournful, perhaps the saddest music I've written. Then comes the third movement, the one I want to share with you this evening.

To me, this music expresses the bracing, exuberant, almost vulgar zest of November. We hunker down, snuggle into a cozy chair, stretch our legs in front of the fire, drink red wine, tell funny stories and laugh with our friends even as, outside, the freezing rain is slicing through the evening air. Half way through this movement the music becomes so spirited that it almost sounds like a high school band determinedly performing a half-time show in a heavy, pebble-y hail of sleet.

This music is jovial yet biting, as if to say: the great god Pan never dies, the energy of life is forever reaffirmed. Which reminds me of a poem I wrote.

I've written five books, but very little poetry. A few years ago, however, circumstances forced me to devise some words for a November-ish tune of mine which I wanted to include in a choral work. Choristers need words to sing, so I was forced to become, for once, a lyricist as well as a composer. I set myself to the task, bore down, wouldn't quit until I'd come up with something suitable.

I think the words I came up with express the same ideas about November that are expressed musically in this trio.

Here's the poem, such as it is.

Life's Oldest Song

Gone now are the autumn leaves,
to cold earth they have fled,
and all of the trees seem dreary now
that once were yellow and red.

Over us now cold winds are blowing,
mourning the passing of fall,
reminding us of the truth immutable:
death comes to us all.

Such words we cannot gainsay.
This truth to all is known,
and we feel it most keenly this time of year,
when autumn colors have flown.

Yet look again at field and forest,
study the stubble and twig:
a hint of color foretells a blossom
will bloom forth from each sprig.

So friends, let us gather now
and sing Life's Oldest Song,
reminding ourselves to love that well
which we must leave ere long,

Consoling one another's sorrows,
raising our voices high,
living life more fully though knowing
that, like leaves, we must fly.

My Trio #3, "Shadows of November," was recorded by Les Gavottes.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
November, 2013

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One of my oldest friends is Dick Ferrell, whom I have known for more than half a century. Back in 1961, when I joined Boy Scout Troop 152 of Lexington, Ohio, I was assigned to the Red Fox Patrol. Dick was my Patrol Leader. Through our teens we were together on many, many Scouting adventures — hiking, camping in all weathers, competing in woodcraft skills, cooking over campfires. We both became Eagle Scouts at the same Court of Honor in 1966. Later, in our thirties, we served Scouting as adult volunteers, leading High Adventure canoe trips to Algonquin Provincial Park where we saw moose, bears, minks, loons and heard wolves howl at the moon, a sound I will always remember.

Now we’re old guys. It’s been a long time since either of us slept in a tent. “The ground has gotten so much harder than it used to be,” says Dick. “It must have something to do with global warming.”

Troop 152 is still going strong and has turned out nearly a hundred Eagle Scouts. Dick still lives near Lexington and keeps me posted.

Sometimes he sends me poems he’s written. Here’s one about the peculiar, stark beauty of this time of year, something Dick and I have observed, firsthand, together, on many a camping trip.

November Has A Beauty All Its Own

He views the naked cornfield
Ringed with gray and brown and black,
And he knows that fall has fallen
And there is no turning back.

There's a twinkling of twilight
As he hurries down the path
To the warm and candled window
Of his rustic woodsy shack.

He smells decay and oldness
Mixed with pine and apple scent,
And he sees the snow clouds gather
Rank on rank, in their ascent.

He feels the cold wind quicken,
And he hears the forest moan
As he's reminded: November has
A beauty all its own.

In my Trio #3 for clarinet, cello and piano, subtitled “Shadows of November,” I tried to express it musically.

To hear the French trio, “les Gavottes,” play the first movement from "Shadows of November,” click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Nov. 8, 2015

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October turned my maple’s leaves to gold.
The most are gone now; here and there, one lingers.
Soon these will slip from the twigs’ weak hold
Like coins between a dying miser’s fingers. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

To put it plainly, November is upon us.

After evoking April in my second trio for clarinet, cello and piano, subtitled “Enchantment of April,” I immediately began writing work trio for that same, wonderful combination of instruments. Turning for inspiration to the opposite end of the calendar, I entitled my third trio: “Shadows of November.”

The title sounds better in French: “Les Ombres de Novembre.” Don’t roll your eyes! I am not trying to be fancy-schmancy. I wrote all thirteen of my clarinet-cello-piano trios for “les Gavottes,” three superb French musicians who make their home on the Riviera and they premiered and recorded several of them.

The first and last movements of my November trio are strong and defiant, rippling with dark energy, gainsaying the broodings on death and defeat that the penultimate month can prompt.

The first movement is robust; hearing it now, I remember what it felt like to split logs with a wedge and a sledge on a damp November day, back in the 1980’s when we lived on a half-acre enclosed by woods, at the edge of Gambier, Ohio. I felt fully awake and alive; my breath was visible, I was conscious of the muscles in my chest and arms, the slow onset of blisters on my hands, the sweat beneath my red woolen stocking cap. “Who splits his own firewood warms himself twice.”

The last movement is robuster yet, striving to channel the deathless energy of Nature herself, hibernating just now, certain to reassert itself come Spring.

The middle movement, the music I want to share with you today, squarely faces the inescapable facts of November: summer is gone, glorious autumn is in full retreat. Now comes a long string of cold, grim, raw, short, dark days.

Connecticut writer Odell Shepard gave a voice to November's intimations; it does me good to ‘hear’ his honest words, so strong, so simple:

“The frost walked last night. From the maple tree that shades my roof, the golden and scarlet leaves are sidling down through the sunny morning air, leaving at every moment a little more blue. No cricket sings. There has been havoc in the multitude of ferns. Summer is gone and I must soon be going.”

Hearing this music may do you some good, too. I hope so.

To hear the French trio “les Gavottes” performing the second movement from Trio #3 for clarinet, cello and pian, "Shadows of November,” click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Nov. 6, 2016

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Many of you have kindly asked about my ankle, which I broke falling off a staircase on August 30.

Carrying a load of laundry to the basement, unable to see my feet, I thought I was on the last stairstep when I was actually on the penultimate step and strode off into midair, coming down with a snap and a crash. Not my best moment.

E.R., X-rays, bone doctor, wheelchair, crutches, boot, cane.

Been there, done that!

My ankle is much better now, almost normal. I’m walking, caneless, and with only a slight limp.

It’s a miracle! No pills, no salve, nothing except inactivity. The bone that cracked, the malleolus (I call it the Malvoglio), healed itself. Amazing!

The snap I heard when it broke made me think of a stick, a branch, a tree. A tree is as alive as we are, but when a branch is broken, it doesn’t heal. This ankle broke like a branch but, unlike a branch, over time, little connective threads formed, bridging the crack, gradually thickening and filling the tiny emptinesses between them. I saw four x-rays of the break over a 10-week period. The progress was visible, just think of that!

And that’s just one of a million miracles that are around us all the time.

“Why who makes much of a miracle?
As for me, I know of nothing but miracles.”
— Walt Whitman, bless his heart

I’m back to riding my bicycle on the Little Miami Trail, just in time to enjoy the last of the season’s foliage. One more good rainstorm or a blast of wind and what remains of October’s colors will be over for this year. The leaves leave, “fall has fallen."

October is sheer amazement but I like November almost as much. As my old friend Dick Ferrell says, “November has a beauty all its own.”

To get it said right, he wrote this poem:

He views the naked cornfield
Ringed with gray and brown and black,
And he knows that fall has fallen
And there is no turning back.

There's a twinkling of twilight
As he hurries down the path
To the warm and candled window
Of his rustic woodsy shack.

He smells decay and oldness
Mixed with pine and apple scent,
And he sees the snow clouds gather
Rank on rank, in their ascent.

He feels the cold wind quicken,
And he hears the forest moan
As he's reminded once again:
November has a beauty all its own.

I too have tried to express the dark vigor of November, using, instead of words, the sounds of a clarinet, a cello and a piano.

To hear the 3rd movement of Trio #3 for clarinet, cello & piano, “Shadows of November,” played by les Gavottes (clarinetist Lucien Aubert, cellist François Adloff, pianist Jean Tatu), click on the link above.

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

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We grieve, rightly. We seek consolation.

I falter, trying to find words for such things. I mean to comfort grieving friends but I don’t know what to say. The pat response, “I’m so sorry for your loss,” seems the best I can do. I weep too readily, connoting the opposite of my intention: that I am the one to be comforted.

At least I am there. When Job is suffering, his friends are there. They say all the wrong things. But at least they are there.

“Who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth?” asks James Agee in his “Knoxville: Summer of 1915.”

It cannot be told. Perhaps it can sometimes be sung, by instruments as well as voices, the sorrow and the beauty, mingled in a single musical expression….

To hear the 2nd movement of my Trio #3 for Cl, VC & pno, “Shadows of November” played by les Gavottes (clarinetist Lucien Aubert, cellist François Adloff, pianist Jean Tatu), click on the link above.

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

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Eight years have passed since I began sending these weekly ‘mpFrees’ to fans and friends. I’ve shared over four hundred with you!

Thanks for allowing me to include you in the list of recipients. Sharing my writings and music in this way is immensely satisfying. It feels like harvest time for the little boy who, six decades ago, found that he liked “making stuff up” and never stopped.

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Our name for this month of the year aptly begins with “No.”

We tend to think of November in terms of what it is not. Thomas Hood’s adorable poem, “No!”, develops this thought precisely, humorously … and wisely, too, because what else can you do but smile and accept it?

No sun—no moon!
No morn—no noon—
No dawn—
No sky—no earthly view—
No distance looking blue—
No road—no street—no "t'other side the way"—
No end to any Row—
No indications where the Crescents go—
No top to any steeple—
No recognitions of familiar people—
No courtesies for showing 'em—
No knowing 'em!
No traveling at all—no locomotion,
No inkling of the way—no notion—
"No go"—by land or ocean—
No mail—no post—
No news from any foreign coast—
No park—no ring—no afternoon gentility—
No company—no nobility—
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member—
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!
Being English, Thomas Hood lacked the counterbalancing effect of “Thanksgiving,” our best loved American holiday. The month has many positive qualities. We only need a poet to awaken us to them.

Dick Ferrell, a poet and my good friend for more than half a century, loves November. When I joined Boy Scout Troop 152 of Lexington, Ohio in 1961, I was assigned to the Red Fox Patrol. Dick was my Patrol Leader. Through our teens we were together on many, many Scouting adventures — hiking, camping, competing in woodcraft skills, cooking over campfires. We became Eagle Scouts at the same Court of Honor in 1966. Later, in our thirties, we served Scouting as adult volunteers, leading ‘high adventure’ canoe trips to Algonquin Provincial Park where we saw moose, bears, minks, loons and heard wolves howl at the moon, a sound I will always remember.

One November, the troop was “on a campout” at Wildcat Hollow, a densely forest area and ravine behind the Wade & Gatton Nursery, midway between Bellville and Butler, Ohio. Dick and I were there as adult volunteers. I remember how Dick, after a long hard look at the bare trees all around us, sighed in appreciation, saying, “November has a beauty all its own.”

So true! We talked about it and how the month gets short shrift, falling as it does between the autumnal glories of October and the Holiday cheer of December. His happy phrase became an aphorism for both of us and we’ve reminded one another of that occasion every November since.

Now we’re old guys, in the November of our days. It’s been a long time since either of us slept in a tent. “The ground has gotten so much harder than it used to be, have you noticed?” says Dick. “Something to do with climate change.”

Master of the witty quip, he says, “The bald Eagle Scout is an endangered species.”

Here is a fine little poem Dick developed out of his observation about the peculiar dark vigor of this time of year:

November Has A Beauty All Its Own

He views the naked cornfield
Ringed with gray and brown and black,
And he knows that fall has fallen
And there is no turning back.

There's a twinkling of twilight
As he hurries down the path
To the warm and candled window
Of his rustic woodsy shack.

He smells decay and oldness
Mixed with pine and apple scent,
And he sees the snow clouds gather
Rank on rank, in their ascent.

He feels the cold wind quicken,
And he hears the forest moan
As he's reminded: November has
A beauty all its own.

In my Trio #3 for clarinet, cello and piano, subtitled “Shadows of November,” I tried to give musical expression to this same paradox. To me, the opening of the first movement catches the animalistic vigor of November.

The middle section expresses the wistful beauty and tender sadness of the month; knowing the year is ending we can’t help but contemplate our own ends.

Then the vigorous music that opened the movement returns and has the last word. The bare trees of November instill in us an expectation of joy, an intuition that from this dying world unimaginable life will spring when the new year springs from the ruins of the old.

To hear the French trio, “les Gavottes,” play the first movement from "Shadows of November,” click on the link above.

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

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Most of the trees in southwestern Ohio have shed almost all their leaves. When autumn reaches this point I always remember Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s poem, “October.”

October turned my maple’s leaves to gold;
The most are gone now; ere and there, one lingers;
Soon these will slip from out the twigs’ weak hold
Like coins between a dying miser’s fingers.

Strange to tell, there is one magnificent exception. The maple tree in my front yard, for reasons unknown to me, makes a glorious display only when almost all of the other trees have lost their “weak hold” on the golden leaves.

What’s more, the leaves on MY maple tree are not golden, not a one. They are all a dazzling, dashing, ruby red, as bright a red as can be seen anywhere, like the tunic of Robin Hood’s best pal, Will Scarlet.

Our maple tree is, every year, the last holdout, the last defense against the advancing colder months, defiantly trooping its colors against the onslaught of gray.

For me, that tree is emblematic; it exhibits just the sort of old age I aim to have, striding along with high hearted singing, a little larger than life, colorful, laughing, turning heads, doing my thing.

My Trio #3 for clarinet, cello & piano, subtitled “Shadows of November” gives expression to the contradictions of this eleventh month. On the one hand, yes, everything seems to be dying and a feeling of farewell is in the air. On the other hand, we know the trees are not really dying but merely retreating for a time, to dream away the winter months in the expectation of an approaching joy, the joy of Spring, almost unimaginable in November.

The first movement of my trio immediately puts across a dark energy, my attempt to capture what is really going on when everything appears to be dying, that primal energy, mostly unseen, that burgeons in the root systems beneath our feet.

At 1:30, the mood changes abruptly and utterly. The thumping vigor of the opening music gives way to a tender, deeply felt expression of gratitude. It is a musical way of giving thanks for all that is good in our world and in us. November was wisely chosen as the month in which our great holiday, Thanksgiving, is embedded.

At 4:01, the subterranean energy returns and just as abruptly as it left and sees the piece right on through to the end.

To hear the French trio, “les Gavottes,” play the first movement from "Shadows of November,” click on the link above.

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

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With Hallowe'en and All Saints Day at hand, I hope you’ll permit me to share my "Ghostly Waltzes at Congress Hall," the finale of my Cape May Suite.

When our kids were little, a friend was part owner of Congress Hall, an historic hotel in Cape May, NJ. This allowed him three weeks of free lodging each summer. Unable to use it, he kindly offered the free lodging to our family. We joyfully accepted! Each summer for seven years we had a free place to stay for three idyllic weeks in beautiful, quaint, Victorian Cape May. Right across from the beach!

We had some of the happiest weeks of our lives at Cap May, strolling streets lined with lovingly restored homes, enjoying the gardens, tumbling in the surf, picnicking at the Cape May Point Lighthouse and exploring vast old Congress Hall.

It has since been fully restored, but back then Congress Hall was terribly dilapidated. It had a decadent splendor, replete with grand staircases, high ceilings, fancy woodwork, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, yes, but also threadbare carpets, plaster dropping off the walls and long, creaky hallways. Our room had fans but no AC and the faucets in our bathroom could not be fully turned off; all during our three week stay they never ceased to drip.

The housekeepers were Zulus, African college students who worked at Congress Hall each summer. If you’ve ever met any Zulus, you’ll know what they are like: friendly but also proud, stern, erect and noble; they gave the place a regal and exotic air.

We loved everything about it.

Congress Hall had a huge ballroom with a badly worn, hardwood floor and an out-of-tune grand piano on which I sometimes improvised grotesque waltzes. Waltzes were the popular music of the 1890's, when Congress Hall was in its heyday. Waltzes were the right thing to play on such a piano in such a place, the waltz itself being, nowadays, a ghost among musical genres, a dim shadow of what it once was. Who writes waltzes today?

While I played these improvised waltzes, I told our kids to imagine that, while we slept, the ghosts of the hotel guests from long ago returned to Congress Hall, the scene of their youth, and assembled in the ballroom and waltzed 'til dawn. Accordingly, my waltzes were a little macabre.

In 1993 I configured these strange little waltzes into the movement I want to share today, "Ghostly Waltzes at Congress Hall."

Pay close attention to the ending; you'll hear dawn breaking, upon which the ghosts scurry off, with one last “OOM-pah-pah! Tah-DAH!”

To hear "Ghostly Waltzes at Congress Hall" from my Cape May Suite played by oboist Robert Franz, violinist Brandon Christensen, cellist Carl Donakowsky and pianist Adrienne Kim, click on the link above.
http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/ghostly_waltzes.mp3

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.
http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/ghostly_waltzes.pdf

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October turned my maple’s leaves to gold.
Here and there, one lingers.
Soon these will slip from out the twig’s hold
Like coins between a dying miser’s fingers.
-- Thos. Bailey Aldrich

It is altogether fit and proper to grieve the passing of October, the loveliest month of the year. Yet, in the words of my late, dear friend Dick Ferrell, who wrote poetry to amuse himself and his friends, “November has a beauty all its own.” That’s the title and last line of one of his best poems:

He views the naked cornfield
Ringed with gray and brown and black,
And he knows that fall has fallen
And there is no turning back.

There's a twinkling of twilight
As he hurries down the path
To the warm and candled window
Of his rustic woodsy shack.

He smells decay and oldness
Mixed with pine and apple scent,
And he sees the snow clouds gather
Rank on rank in their ascent.

He feels the cold wind quicken,
And he hears the forest moan
As he's reminded once again:
November has a beauty all its own.

Here’s another thought that cheers Jo and me as the top half of our planet descends into the darker season: come what may, in three or four months time the hundred and fifty daffodil bulbs we planted last week will sprout magnificently, “as if no artifice of fashion, business or politics had ever been.” (I’m quoting Walt Whitman.)

Still, for the moment, we grieve. “Who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth?” asks James Agee in his “Knoxville: Summer of 1915.”

It cannot be told. Perhaps it can be sung, by instruments as well as voices, the sorrow and the beauty, mingled in a single musical expression….

To hear the 2nd movement of my Trio #3 for Cl, VC & pno, “Shadows of November” played by les Gavottes (clarinetist Lucien Aubert, cellist François Adloff, pianist Jean Tatu), click on the link above.

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