Film scores intrigue and inspire me. Sometimes at home I watch DVDs of movies I don't even like, parts of which positively make me squirm, just so that I can hear, again, a great film score; "The Ten Commandments," "Now, Voyager," and "How The West Was Won," and others.

I've never written a film score, though tracks from my CDs have been featured in several documentaries.

Of course, there's nothing to stop a composer from writing a film score, even without a film. Back in 1979, I did just that.

William Huggins, a lawyer and amateur violinist in Columbus, OH, commissioned me to write a piece he could perform with friends who played the flute, French horn and harpsichord. Considering the antique sound of the harpsichord and the heroic sound of the horn, I looked to medieval literature for inspiration.

"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is an anonymous masterwork of 14th-century England. I love this tale and have read it many times. Not in the original Middle English; only scholars can do that. I've read several translations and for my money the best is J.R.R. Tolkien's; it's funny, spooky, mystical. Reading it, I felt the presence of a master storyteller, wise and wry.

I thought, "What if there was a film version of this exciting, ambiguous, lovely story? What would a suitable film score sound like?" I set to work, devising five movements that could underscore the major scenes of the tale.

The third movement depicts the heroic knight, Sir Gawain, riding merrily through a gloomy, medieval landscape. It's entitled "Gawain's Journey."

Here's Tolkien's rendering of that scene:

By a mount in the morning merrily he was riding
into a forest that was deep and fearsomely wild,
with high hills at each hand, and hoar woods beneath
of huge aged oaks by the hundred together ....

So many a marvel in the mountains he met in those lands
that 'twould be tedious the tenth part to tell you thereof.
At whiles with worms he wars, and with wolves also,
at whiles with wood-trolls that wandered in the crags,
and with bulls and with bears and boars, too, at times;
and with ogres that hounded him from the heights of the fells.
Had he not been stalwart and staunch and steadfast in God,
he doubtless would have died and death had met often.

Bill Huggins and his friends played the piece enthusiastically but it was never performed by anyone else because the combination of instruments was so unusual. In 2011, I revised and re-scored the piece for piano trio plus trumpet, an ensemble much easier to assemble.

To hear Gawain’s Journey performed wit and gusto by violinist Cheryl Trace, trumpeter Thaddeus Archer, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba, click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Sept. 7, 2014

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Cincinnati, the Queen City, has whimsy. It’s her most lovable trait.

When I heard about Green Man Park, the city’s newest, I bicycled over to the Walnut Hills neighborhood to take a look at it. An empty lot on McMillan Street has been transformed into a public green space, featuring a seven-foot tall sculpted stone “Green Man."

Do you know about The Green Man?

You’ve seen his face, carved, drawn or painted, fashioned from herbaceous shapes. Twining vines comprise his hair, beard, eyebrows and mustache. From a thicket of leafy shrubbery, he peers out at you; his eyes are intense, his expression unreadable. Is he amused or menacing? Or both? Hard to say.

If this doesn’t sound familiar, google “Green Man,” select ‘images’ and you’ll see him, quickly enough. (What times we live in, when it is so easy to do such things!)

The carvers who adorned medieval cathedrals routinely rendered depictions of familiar Biblical figures, positioning the likes of Jesus, Joseph, Mary and Moses in lofty niches, plainly visible to the priests and congregations below. But higher yet, way back in the shadowy rafters, hidden from view, some of them covertly carved images of The Green Man.

Why hidden from view? Because The Green Man was a pagan remnant; he predated Christianity by thousands of years. The carvers deemed it necessary to include a hidden Green Man in a space that was going to be regarded as sacred for centuries to come. Knowing the clergy would not approve, the carvers did this work in secret.

The Green Man is often understood as a symbol of the cycle of growth, death, decay and rebirth. That’s plenty to think about ... but there is much more.

He raises questions about our relationship with Nature. Is Nature, in any sense, a mirror? When we gaze into a welter of leaves, shrubs and vines, is there, however figuratively, a human face, there in the foliage, gazing back at us?

Does Nature, carefully scrutinized, display any aspects of humanity? Which? How? Why?

The Green Man seems to assert that we humans, too, are part of Nature. If we believe that, then how shall we order our lives? How well are we doing? How healthy is our relationship with Nature?

The Green Man seems poised to address such questions, yet he has no voice; he is only a mute icon after all. His image, whether carven, drawn, or painted, is wordless and moveless. Does he have anything to teach us? Does Nature have anything to teach us? What? A warning? An admonishment? An inspiration?

Why is this figure always male? Does he give the lie to “Mother Nature?” and “Mother Earth?”

I have no answers for such questions. But I love The Green Man. He prompts us to think!

The enormous sculpture newly mounted in Green Man Park was carved by one David Hummel, back in 1890, to ornament a building in Walnut Hills.

A century later, in 1991, when the building was about to be demolished, the sculpture was rescued by a concerned citizen (who apparently prefers to remain anonymous) and was stored in obscurity for twenty-five years, almost forgotten.

How fitting it is that now, at last, comes The Green Man's resurrection and rebirth as the centerpiece of his own little park, here in our whimsical city.

The Green Man appears in literature, too, most notably as the Green Knight in an anonymous literary masterwork of 14th-century England, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” There he is not mute and moveless; he says and does things! He speaks forcefully, albeit ambiguously. His actions are bold but his motives are obscure. Existing outside the human realm, the Green Knight’s purposes are obscure.

I love this poem and have read it many times. My favorite translation (the original is written in an obscure dialect of ancient English) is the one by J.R.R. Tolkien; it's funny, spooky, mystical, crafted by a master who knows how to tell a story.

In 1979, I wrote a five-movement suite depicting scenes and characters from the poem, revising and re-scoring it for trumpet, violin, cello and piano in 2011.

Sir Gawain is the hero of the tale but since the Green Knight dominates the opening and closing scenes, I let him have the final movement all to himself.

To hear the final movement, entitled “The Green Knight,” performed with heroic gusto by violinist Cheryl Trace, trumpeter Thaddeus Archer, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba, click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
August 7, 2016

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A visitor at the Cincinnati Art Museum seemed almost too interested in our famous Van Gogh. He was inclining his head almost too close to the precious painting, one of the artist's very last, and his hands were twitching.

Ever the professional museum guard, dutiful and discreet, I quickly edged closer to him. Oddly, the painting’s ornate frame seemed to interest him far more than the painting itself. He raised his fist, curled as if to knock on a door, drawing even nearer this priceless, beautiful artwork. Too close!

Taking my cue from Byron’s Assyrian, I “came down like the wolf on the fold,” burbling a forceful “Ahem!” as I drew near.

He spun toward me, demanding to know: “May I tap this frame?” Pantomiming a tapping action in mid-air with his fist, he added, “Like this? Tap! Tap! Tap!”

“To that,” I replied, firm but friendly, wagging my forefinger, “I must say, “No! No! No!”

He smiled, normal after all. He was a frame-maker, he explained, wondering if the carved wooden frame was solid or veneer and that he could tell by tapping. I referred him to the Curatorial Department; that was the last I heard of the matter.

A frame can be a thing of great beauty, complementing the canvas it encases. Frame-makers are artists (though we’d probably dodge a museum exhibiting only empty frames).

Some artists make their own frames. Grant Wood made the frame for his sardonic “Daughters of Revolution,” also on display at the CAM, I’m proud to say.

Composers are sometimes framer-makers, too. I’ve devised ‘frames’ for some of my pieces, beginning and ending with music that is separate from, yet complements, the main content of the piece.

You’re invited to listen to an example of this; to wit, the first movement of my suite for violin, trumpet, cello and piano, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Christmas Legend.” The movement has its own title, too: “Arthur’s Court at Christmas.”

The introduction is a courtly fanfare, a little reminiscent of the unrivaled gem of a fanfare Franz Waxman penned for 20th Century Fox. My introductory fanfare recurs at the end of the movement … thus, the fanfare serves as both an introduction and an “outro-duction,” to coin a word. A musical frame, so to speak. One music framing another music.

(Speaking of intro-ductions vs. outro-ductions, is an Under-ture the opposite of an Overture? What’s the opposite of an Introit? A DE-troit?)

The fanfare-introduction takes 21 seconds. Then the piece gets down to business, chortling merrily along, all Christmas-y and quasi-medieval-ly. At 5:15, the music has said what it has to say. The “outro-duction” is now sounded, a 25-second modified repeat of the opening fanfare.

Voilà! The piece has a frame!

Just as a well-conceived frame complements a painting, my fanfare grabs attention, establishes a storytelling mood and evokes an ancient and fantastical setting. It readies us for the entry of noble King Arthur and his splendiferous court and, at the end, bids a fond farewell to the whole kit-and-kaboodle.

To hear “Arthur’s Court at Christmas” from my suite “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," performed with heroic gusto by violinist Cheryl Trace, trumpeter Thaddeus Archer, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba, click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Dec. 18, 2016

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Almost every day, at odd moments, I am visited by troubling memories of moments, some recent, some from long ago, when I have behaved badly, said stupid, hurtful things, missed opportunities to be gracious and kind, falling far short of being the sort of person I want to be, humiliating myself instead.

I drive away these futile and soul-devouring regrets as best I can, forcing myself to remember the good things I’ve occasionally managed to get said and done and to appreciate the fact that, if we will allow it, humiliation can lead to wisdom.

Hopefully, we learn, albeit the hard way, not to make that particular mistake again, meanwhile making new ones. Such experiences remind us that we all fall short, we all betray our ethical standards, however ardently we strive to embrace them.

That’s the implied moral of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," an anonymous 14th-century story-poem from western England. I love it and have read it many times, though not in the original, written in an arcane dialect of Middle English which only scholars can parse. I like J.R.R. Tolkien’s translation into plain English; it's funny, spooky, mystical, wise and wry. Tolkien knows how to tell a story.

Gawain is the perfect knight. Even so, he furtively allows a fair lady to gift him with a supposedly magical garment, said to render invincible whoever wears it. Then he breaks a promise by concealing from the lady's husband the fact of his having accepted her gift.

Knowing he will face certain death the next day, Gawain puts his desire to live, to escape death by any means possible, above his code of ethics. Which of us would not?

Later, dramatically confronted with his failure, Gawain is humiliated. However, from that moment on, he is wise. He has discovered that no one is perfect, not even himself, the very best knight at Arthur’s Round Table.

When I undertook to write a suite of music depicting various scenes in Sir Gawain’s adventure, I found myself straying far from my usual musical stomping grounds.

Since you’ve kindly allowed me to send you these messages for a while now, you know quite a lot about my music. It’s often about the changing seasons, the bucolic landscapes of the American Midwest and other places I’ve visited. My music is usually cheerful and optimistic, affirming humane values and the sweetness of life, lulling listeners into a roseate trance. At least that’s how much of it seems to me.

Devising suitable music for “Sir Gawain” led me to think outside that box. It’s one thing to write music about wild flowers, dark forests and sunsets, but how can abstractions like Humiliation and Wisdom be ‘music-ified?’ What music could trace a progression from Humiliation to Wisdom? Questions like that can raise creativity from a simmer to a boil.

To hear a beautiful rendering of what I came up with, played with great depth of feeling by violinist Cheryl Trace, trumpeter Thaddeus Archer, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba, click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
July 23, 2017

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Though tracks from my CDs have served as background music in a few documentaries, I've not had the opportunity to score a film from scratch.

That didn’t stop me from testing my mettle as a film score composer.

William Huggins, an amateur violinist, commissioned me to write a piece he could perform with friends who played the flute, French horn and harpsichord. It was my first commission and I took it seriously. He offered me $100 and I was thrilled. It was 1979 and my annual salary was $11,000.

Considering the antique sound of the harpsichord and the heroic sound of the French horn, I sought inspiration in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” a masterpiece of medieval literature I had studied in college. (My B.S. is 'a double-major' in Music Composition and Comparative Literature.).

I love this anonymous 14th-century tale. It’s written in a dialect of medieval English, which I cannot read, but I've read several translations and for my money the best is J.R.R. Tolkien's; it's funny, spooky, mystical. Read it and you put yourself under the spell of a master storyteller, wise and wry.

Creative work begins with questions. I asked myself, "What if there was a film version of this story? What would a suitable film score sound like?”

I set to work, devising five movements that could serve as background music during the story's major scenes, should they be rendered in celluloid and projected onto a screen.

The third movement, "Gawain's Journey," depicts the hero riding boldly through a wild and gloomy landscape.

Here is Tolkien's rendering of that passage. (If he seems to you to be laying on the alliteration too thickly, you need to know that the original alliterates at the same pace; there are two or three and sometimes four alliterations in every line of this sixty-page poem; it’s part of the fun.):

By a mount in the morning merrily he was riding
into a forest that was deep and fearsomely wild,
with high hills at each hand, and hoar woods beneath
of huge aged oaks by the hundred together ....

So many a marvel in the mountains he met in those lands
that 'twould be tedious the tenth part to tell you thereof.
At whiles with worms he wars, and with wolves also,
at whiles with wood-trolls that wandered in the crags,
and with bulls and with bears and boars, too, at times;
and with ogres that hounded him from the heights of the fells.
Had he not been stalwart and staunch and steadfast in God,
he doubtless would have died and death had met often.

The music I wrote for this scene and others doesn’t sound like the of the Middle Ages. Rather, it evokes the scores of films that take place during that era. The piece is a bridge connecting Hollywood with chamber music.

Bill Huggins and his friends played the piece enthusiastically but it was never performed by anyone else because the combination of instruments was so unusual. There are no violin-flute-French horn-harpsichord quartets looking for something they can play together. My piece was a ‘white elephant.’ A lot of good music was trapped in the suite and would never be heard unless it was re-scored for a different and more likely ensemble.

In 2011, I revised and re-scored the piece for piano trio + trumpet, an ensemble much easier to assemble. My friend and fan, pianist Greg Kostraba, pulled together such a quartet and recorded the piece, beautifully! At last, my “Sir Gawain" music was unbound and now lives in the world!

To hear Gawain’s Journey performed wit and gusto by violinist Cheryl Trace, trumpeter Thaddeus Archer, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba, click on the link above.

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

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... It’s fun to compare [Tolkien's rendering] with Marie Boroff’s very different and much darker translation. Grim, she sounds no note of merriment:

“Now he rides in his array …
He had no mate but his mount, over mountain and plain,
Nor man to say his mind to but almighty God,
Over country wild and strange the knight set off anew…

Many a cliff must he climb in country wild;
Far off from all his friends, forlorn must he ride;
At each strand or stream where the stalwart passed,
‘Twere marvel if he met not some monstrous foe,
And that so fierce and forbidding that fight he must.
So many were the wonders he wandered among
That to tell but the tenth part would tax my wits.
Now with serpents he wars, now with savage wolves,
Now with wild men of the woods, that watched from the rocks,
Both with bulls and with bears, and with boars besides,
And giants that came gibbering from the jagged steeps.
Had he not borne himself bravely, and been on God’s side,
He had met with many mishaps and mortal harms.”

My music favors Tolkien’s cheerier re-telling.

Bill Huggins and his friends played the suite enthusiastically and often but, as the years passed, it was never performed by anyone else because the combination of instruments was so unusual. In 2011, I revised and re-scored the piece for piano trio plus trumpet. That ensemble being much easier to assemble, it’s been performed and broadcast several times since.

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Last week I wrote about the similarities I found in the writing of my new book, The Blue Rock (I’ll begin sending it to many of you in about two weeks), and the building of a stone wall.

I’m an old hand at building with rock. I built long stone walls in our gardens when we lived a stone’s throw from the campus of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. And later at our Cincinnati property on Milton Street, where Mt. Auburn meets Over-the-Rhine. But it was in the French village of St.-Victor-La-Coste, about thirty miles northwest of Avignon, where I handled rocks most meaningfully.

There’s an organization centered there called “La Sabranenque” that recruits and supervises volunteers in the restoration of medieval ruins.

Look ‘em up:
http://www.sabranenque.com/eng/Presentation/La_Sabranenque.html

When I participated, twenty-one years ago, I was one of forty volunteers from ten countries who had signed up for a two-week session in July. All spoke either French or English. None were stonemasons but we were assigned, in teams of eight, to artisans skilled in medieval construction techniques.

We shared marvelous, chef-prepared meals at noon and in the evening, eating outdoors in a trellised courtyard in the dry, crisp Provençal weather. We roomed in beautifully restored medieval dwellings.

Breakfasts in France never amount to much: a baguette, a peach and coffee. After working from 8:30 to 12:30 we were ‘good ‘n’ hungry!’ We feasted until 2:30, then napped, hiked, bicycled or hung out on the village green, sipping pastis, playing pétanque.

Then came supper, an evening of conversation, mostly storytelling, and then to bed. Life was good! On both Saturdays we were transported in vans to Arles and Avignon where we passed the days exploring those marvelous towns. The cost to participate in the two-week program was a mere $535, an incredible bargain compared to what a tourist in France would pay for a fortnight of hotel-stays and restaurant meals.

We worked at shoring up the 9th-century castle on the summit of the hill on the side of which St.-Victor-La-Coste is perched. “La coste” is Old French for “the hillside.” It was hard work but we took it slow and undertook our tasks in the cool of the morning. One morning the ‘Mistral’ was blowing strong and I, for one, bundled up in a sweater AND a hooded jacket. Even so I was cold and stayed warm by working. We mixed mortar and gathered stones from the surrounding hillsides and from a nearby quarry, fitting them into place in the crumbling walls under the watchful eye of our team’s leader.

It was fun and fascinating. I improved my French and learned such a lot about castles and castle-building! We were a jolly bunch and I still keep touch with one of the fellow volunteers I befriended there, a retired French school teacher. We did a ‘zoom’ session together just last week.

You can see the castle here:
http://www.saintvictorlacoste.com/en_US/TOURISM-AND-HERITAGE/le-Castellas-et-le-vieux-village

The most arresting thing I learned was the “why” of castle-building.

The people who built that castle were not professional castle-builders. They were not architects, nor even masons. They were simple farmers, shepherds, and artisans. They were not forced to do this heavy labor under the lash of a cruel taskmaster; nor were they paid for their labors by the local duke or baron. They -- the men, women and children of the village -- built their castle because it was, for them, a matter of life or death.

In those days, bands of wandering brigands, with their wives and children in tow, descended upon small farming villages. They killed the inhabitants who did not or could not flee, slaughtered and consumed the livestock and the stored grains, and then moved on, mapless, at random, in search of another vulnerable village. For the brigands as well, this was a matter of life or death.

Five centuries after the fall of Rome, all memory of large-scale civilization had faded. No one knew who had built the unused road, thirty feet wide and straight as an arrow, that traversed the valley below St.-Victor-La-Coste. Even the knowledge of how to extract metal from ore had been lost. It was another Stone Age.

There was no central government. No sheriff or highway patrol or police or National Guard. The minor baron who owned and ostensibly protected the village had sworn fealty to a grander, more powerful duke who dwelt far away. The baron and the men of the village would go to war if summoned by the duke, but protection from brigands was not on offer in return. Self-defense was the only option; the village was on its own. It was very much like the “Wild West” Americans know from films and fiction.

Who were these brigands? Farmers, shepherds, artisans who had once had a village of their own. Failing to build a castle, they were raided. The survivors, stripped of all capacity for self-support, turned from gentle husbandry to brutal brigandry. It was that or starve. Many starved.

Strictly speaking, the castle at St.-Victor-La-Coste was not built for military defense. It is a small castle. About 400 villagers might have squeezed together within its walls with about as much elbow room as we might have found at a pre-COVID cocktail party. There was no water source within its walls and only a small grassy courtyard for grazing animals. Under siege, the castle would have quickly fallen. But the castle was never attacked. It just sat there on its hilltop, visible from miles away.

What was the good of it? It’s obvious, once you understand. The mere sight of that castle, viewed from a distance by brigands on the march, dissuaded them from raiding the village. In effect, seeing the castle, they concluded, “Those people built a castle; they are hardy, organized and prepared; we’ll look for a more vulnerable village.” The most significant power of the castles of medieval Europe was pyschological.

To an American, a castle is exotic and romantic. We think of knights in shining armor and the green-clad men of Sherwood, filmed in Technicolor. We remember King Arthur, Merlin, Richard the Lionheart, Sir Gawain et al.

But a castle is a gloomy thing. Dark, dank, and cold, it is heavy with memories of torture and imprisonment unto death, of ruthless power-lust and an unforgiving, intolerant theology that exterminated dissenters in public acts of terrorism, burning heretics at the stake. “A mighty fortress is our God” is a stirring hymn and, having grown up Lutheran, I sing it lustily but the theology of that image can be troubling.

Repairing stonework that other hands lifted into place a thousand years ago carries us back into history and, even pre-history, to those interminable centuries when the weak and ragged human animal held out somehow, struggling to stay alive and not quite hopeless, pitted against hunger and the creeping terrors of the dark.

Shelter! Stout stone walls that break the wind and keep the brigands at bay! Intellectually lazy, we easily fail to remember how good these things are. Too easily, we take for granted our modern comforts, forgetting that our society, while far from providing all it might, at least forfends attacks by wandering bands of brigands.

In my suite, “Sir Gawain & the Green Knight,” the slow movement attempts to evoke the sombre Middles Ages and the gloomy, yet strangely intense atmosphere of the castle described in the 14th-century poem of that title, inhabited by the mysterious, powerful Lord Bertilak and his beautiful, sinister wife.

To hear an evocative rendering of the slow fourth movement, played with great depth of feeling by violinist Cheryl Trace, trumpeter Thaddeus Archer, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba, click on the link above.

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

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

Let’s begin the New Year with a fanfare. Everybody loves a good fanfare.

When I was a boy, growing up in Mansfield, Ohio in 1950’s, “Nana” (our maternal grandmother) took my brother and me to ‘the movies’ every Saturday afternoon. It made no difference what movie “they” were showing. We didn’t go to see a particular film. We went because going to the movies on Saturdays was a thing we did.

We got popcorn, seated ourselves in the midst of a large, noisy crowd of 500 or more, mostly children, a scattering of grownups. The most exciting moment was when the lights went down and the screen lit up. As we had paid no attention to what movie “they” were showing, we could not foresee what would shortly be on the vast screen before us. Anything seemed possible. The West, outer space, pirate ships, cops and robbers, a comedy, knights in armor.

I cherished one fervent hope, however: that “they” would start the film with that image of searchlights sweeping the sky above the giant yellow words: “Twentieth Century Fox.” The words made no sense. If asked, I might have guessed that they had something to do with a fox living in the 20th century. Whatever. I didn’t care about that.

What I DID care about the marvelous music: Franz Waxman’s thrilling fanfare that accompanied the image. I could not depend upon it. Not all movies began that way. When “they” did not start the movie with those big yellow letters and that music, I was very disappointed. When “they” did, I was thrilled.

Hearing that fanfare still thrills me today, every time. As fanfares go, it is a miniature masterpiece. “They” have never come up with a better one.

“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” my suite for violin, trumpet, cello and piano, begins with a fanfare that is my homage to Waxman. My fanfare isn’t nearly as good as his but it gets the show started.

The opening movement is titled “Arthur’s Court at Christmas,” and the fanfare invites you to imagine a splendiferous scene: rowdy knights feasting at tables heavily laden with steaming hot ‘belly timber,’ ten thousand candles gleaming in a great hall, a roaring fire, servants coming and going, carrying heavy trays, the King and his Queen at the head table, laughter, music.

The introductory fanfare is heard at the end of the movement, too; it serves as both an introduction and an “outro-duction.” A musical frame, so to speak. One kind of music framing another.

The fanfare-introduction lasts 21 seconds. Then the piece gets down to business, chortling merrily along, sounding Christmas-y and quasi-medieval. At 5:15, the tunes have had their say. The “outro-duction” is sounded, a modified repeat of the opening fanfare.

Just as a good frame complements a painting, my fanfare grabs attention, establishes a storytelling mood, evoking an ancient and fantastical setting. It marks our entry into the scene, like the beginning of a movie, and at the end, it marks our farewell. When the movie was over, “Nana” took us home.

To hear “Arthur’s Court at Christmas” from my suite “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," performed with heroic gusto by violinist Cheryl Trace, trumpeter Thaddeus Archer, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba, click on the link above.

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

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

Composers sometimes tell stories. Writing a suite of movements depicting the adventures of Sir Gawain, a knight of the Round Table, I found myself far removed from my usual stomping grounds.

As a recipient of these email messages, you know quite a lot about my music. It’s often about the changing seasons, the bucolic landscapes of the American Midwest and other places I’ve visited. It’s usually cheerful and optimistic, affirming humane values and the sweetness of life.

Devising suitable music for “Sir Gawain” forced me to think outside that box. There is seduction and sorcery in that tale. Using only the elements of music, how could I metaphorize such concepts?

Seduction? Gawain is a guest in a mysterious castle for three days. Each morning he is awakened when his beautiful hostess furtively enters his bedroom. As her husband off hunting, she attempts, more aggressively each time, to elicit an invitation from Gawain to … well, you know.

He’s in a delicate position. As a high-minded Christian knight, he strives to be pure in heart and deed. But if he rejects her advances he risks offending a lady who is also his generous hostess. He barely manages it, conceding only a kiss each time.

I tried to evoke this tense, sensual scene with tip-toe staccatos in the piano and a weird tune played by the muted trumpet, representing Sir Gawain a-bed, followed by a “soprano solo” — the violin representing the Lady, in effect singing her song of seduction. Smilingly, invitingly, she sings, “Take me, I’m yours.”

The three attempts to seduce Sir Gawain comprise a test of his worth. He fails, not by having sex with his hostess but by accepting from her a secret, supposedly magical gift. It is a green girdle which, she hints, will save his life in the deadly combat he must face in the final scene of the tale.

Sorcery? in the contrasting middle section of this movement, the four instruments play in counterpoint with one another, intertwining like would-be lovers. But in the middle ‘sorcery’ section, the counterpoint ceases and they join in four-part, choral harmonies to “sing” a weirdly harmonized, profane hymn, sinister, somber and mysterious.

Then comes the seduction music again. Near the end, the tippy-toe staccatos in the piano suddenly become more rapid and intense. As in the story, the song of seduction becomes more forcible.

“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Christmas Legend,” a five-movement suite, is featured on my CD “A Christmas Gift,” in a beautiful rendering by violinist Cheryl Trace, trumpeter Thaddeus Archer, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba To hear their delightfully sly and sensual take on "Seduction and Sorcery," click on the link above.

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