Growing up in Mansfield, Ohio, I thought everyone in the world had a front porch.

Until I began exploring France in my forties, I did not realize that the front porch is so uniquely American. France, a country of 60 million, does not have, so far as I have seen, a single front porch.

French people love to escape the interiors of their homes, to pass time outside, to dine al fresco. But they set up their dwelling places with outdoor access to the rear, not the front. They create miniature worlds behind their homes, delightful flower gardens with water features and plenty of shady places designed specifically for enjoyment and surrounded with high walls. No one sees in or out.

Walking the streets of French villages or the residential areas of cities, one never glimpses these spaces, so well are they concealed.

Contrariwise, Americans cherish comfortable, well-appointed front porches. We take to our front porches to drink our morning coffee, read the paper, retrieve email or just sit on a rocking chair, fingers interlocked across our bellies, content to be entertained by anything that might be happening on the sidewalk and street. How very un-French!

People who live on Brinkerhoff Boulevard, in Mansfield, Ohio, have it good. Their homes are turn-of-the-century, spacious and elegant. Their front porches look out onto South Park, right across the street. Mansfield’s iconic pioneer Blockhouse, the park’s best-known feature, is in plain view; built during the War of 1812, it was frequented by Johnny Appleseed himself.

Brinkerhoff Boulevard is one of ten streets evoked in my Street Suite for violin and clarinet. The gentle rhythm of the music matches the slow ’n' easy, back-and-forth motion of a rocking chair. With the Blockhouse just across the way, the thoughts of those slowly rocking front porch daydreamers stray back to earlier times. The mood is meditative.

To hear Brinkerhoff Blvd. from Street Suite played by violinist Kenneth Goldsmith and clarinetist Craig Olzenak, click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Dec. 13, 2015

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Hello --

I'm asking 19 seconds for a little something that will make you smile. That's the duration of the mp3 you can hear by clicking on the third link above. 19 seconds.

It will take longer than that to read what I want to tell you about this piece.

How short can a piece of music be and still seem complete? What's the shortest piece by a Big Name composer? Chopin's so-called Minute Waltz comes to mind, but that piece actually requires a little under two minutes to perform. The shortest piece I know is one of Beethoven's piano bagatelles, which clocks in at 13 seconds.

Well, here's a very short piece by the undersigned, who is a Little Name composer.

It's been almost forty years since I wrote the music you'll hear on this recording, entitled "Beethoven Street." It's from a piece called "Street Suite"-- ten very short movements about streets in Mansfield, Ohio, the town where I was born and reared, played by clarinetist Craig Olzenak and violinist Ken Goldsmith. I wanted the music to have that rumbustious energy we associate with Beethoven. And since it's a short street, it had to be a short piece of music.

Forty years! Yet when you hear this, it will be as fresh as this morning's sunrise. That's the great thing about classical music. It has no 'shelf time.' A piece of music that is new to us feels like it was written five minutes ago. Amazing.

I wrote the "Street Suite" shortly after getting free of college, after five hard years of servitude. Ugh. At last I was free to write the music I wanted to write, well outside the groves of Academe, where I have thrived ever since. I think the joyfulness of this new freedom can be heard in the music. But I don't want to make too much of it; it's just a little piece; it attempts nothing grander than a little smile. And that's OK. Let us never undervalue things that prompt little smiles. They are sorely needed in this sad old world.

To hear Beethoven Street played by violinist Ken Goldsmith and clarinetist Craig Olzenak, click on the third link above.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH

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I like to imagine that someone must have asked the late Neil Armstrong, born and raised in Wapakoneta, Ohio, “What’s the furthest you’ve ever been from home?”

My answer would be Taiwan, 13,000 miles distant from Mansfield, Ohio, my hometown, a two-hour drive east of “WAH-pock,” as Wapakonetians call their hometown.

I got to Taiwan thrice, for a dozen days each time, leading cultural exchange tours. Taipei County, Taiwan and Richland County, Ohio, are sister counties. Organizing exchange tours was a fun part of my work when I served as a County Commissioner, 1986-1990. (I am, so far as I know, the only American composer of classical music ever elected to a public office.)

We got to see Taipei, Taiwan's capitol city, as well as the country’s rugged coast, its mountains peaking at 13,000 feet, the Polynesian culture that still thrives in the interior, Yang Ming Shan National Park, and the great museum displaying the personal art objects cherished by a 5,000-year-long string of Chinese Emperors.

The objet d'art in the museum that most impressed me was a peach pit. It was exhibited in a glass case with Sherlock-style magnifying glasses mounted on four sides so that visitors could give it the close inspection it deserved.

It was carved into the shape of a tiny boat afloat on the wavelets of a diminutive stream, with a miniscule pagoda mid-ships in which sat a scholar holding an infinitesimal cup of tea from which — I swear — a hair’s breadth tendril of steam curled upward!

All this! A carved peach pit!

After a long series of grand banquets provided by our generous hosts, Jo and I were afforded an evening to ourselves. We had been amazed by the Chinese cuisine but amazement can be wearying. We were eager to find familiar fare.

Our Chinese hosts deposited us in a so-called “Western” restaurant. We took the decor to be an expression of the Chinese notion of Western civilization. There was a bust of Beethoven next to the cash register and a print of Monet’s Water Lilies on the wall, displayed, oddly, in a shiny, bright red, Chinese picture frame.

But the most striking exhibit inviting us to imagine that we had, for the nonce, left China and re-entered Western civilization awaited us in the center of the dining room.

A low, circular wall of bricks enclosed an area over which sand had been spread, covering the floorboards. Prominently placed in the sand were three large, shiny, plastic objets d'art. One was a cream-colored plastic Greek column, about five feet tall, made to look as if it was broken, a ruin, the crumbling remnant of a temple. The second was a glistening, green, plastic cactus plant, about six feet tall.

The third — I am not inventing this — was a figure about four feet tall, clad in his traditional blue nautical jacket, his white sailor’s hat tilted back on his head, his smiling bill a bright yellow. Yes, there he stood, pleased to take his place between the phony Greek column and the fake cactus, that enduring emblem of Western civilization: Donald Duck.

Apparently, for the restaurant's regular Chinese customers, those three objects, taken together, proclaimed “The West.”

The food was, well … you can imagine.

To be fair, the decor in our local Chinese restaurants, to say nothing of menu items like Chop Suey and fortune cookies, would probably seem just as absurd to any Chinese people who might eat there as the decor of the “Western” restaurant in Taipei seemed to us. Enter most any Chinese restaurant in Ohio and what do you see? A plastic Buddha, some more-or-less Chinese art on the walls, in bright red frames, weird red lanterns hanging from the acoustic tile ceiling, a large photo of the Great Wall. We glance and think, “Yes, definitely Chinese.” What do we know? Most Chinese would probably find plenty to laugh about in such a display.

The ten short movements of my Street Suite for violin and clarinet attempt to depict and evoke ten streets in my hometown, Mansfield, Ohio. For me, there is an affinity between the music I wrote and the actual streets, just as, I’m sure, the decorators of the “Western” restaurant in Taipei believed that something of Western Civilization was expressed in the display they had fashioned. The people who reside in the homes that line West Second Street in Mansfield, Ohio would likely be just as surprised by this music as we were by the column, the cactus and the Donald.

All I can say is, this music works for me.

To hear “West Second Street” from my Street Suite played by violinist Ken Goldsmith and clarinetist Craig Olzenak, click on the link above.

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

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Fifty years ago today — December 10, 1967 — I ventured on a blind date with Jo Ackerman. We attended the Mansfield Symphony’s production of “Swan Lake” featuring the Butler Ballet. Then we went to a restaurant.

Jo likes to tell how she noticed that I cut my spaghetti into little pieces with my fork and butter knife, pushed the severed noodles onto my spoon and sent ‘em ‘down the hatch.' That was how my family ate spaghetti. Contrariwise, she came from a family that used fork and spoon to twirl the noodles before consigning them to the fulfillment of their preordained destiny.

Despite my having failed The Spaghetti Test, she fell in love with me and I with her. We’ve been married to each other for forty five years.

Jo's mother was my Senior English teacher but Jo and I did not attend the same high school. Phil Lichtenstein, my classmate and best friend, knew Jo because they had the same piano teacher and he had dated her a couple of times. He was my source of information about her and, from what he said, I thought she sounded 'pretty cool' (as I would have expressed it in those days).

She was pretty cool! Still is!

Though our maternal grandfathers had been the closest of friends some decades earlier, Jo and I had never set eyes on one another. In the days before our date, I wondered what she would be like. I cannot now conceive of any event that, scheduled in the near future, would cause me as much pleasant anticipation as that blind date did in the days that preceded it. I was excited!

I remember ascending the steps to the front porch of her home, ringing the door bell, watching the door swing open. There she was! I remember her wheaten hair, her dark blue eyes, the pale pumpkin-orange dress she wore. She was petite, very feminine, adorable!

She was 16, I was 17. That date was our first adventure together.

What would excite me that much now? About the only comparably exciting thing I can imagine would be the announcement that a grandchild was on the way. (Scant chance of that happening anytime soon, both our kids being single. Oh well.)

Six years earlier, in June of 1961, I was even more excited by the prospect of my first week away from home, to be passed in the jolly company of the merry Scouts of Troop 152 at Camp Avery Hand, the summer camp of Mansfield's Johnny Appleseed Boy Scout Council.

No upcoming travel adventure, now, would stir as much excitement in me as the journey from my home to Camp Avery Hand did back then. If I were leaving tomorrow for Tahiti or Machu Picchu or Tibet I would not be half as “stoked” as I was the day before my departure for Camp Avery Hand, ten miles distant from the home of the Sowash family.

Marion Avenue was the route one took from our house to Camp Avery Hand and, for me, the very name of the street, “Marion Avenue” -- the old road from Mansfield, Ohio to Marion, Ohio, a name that now seems so prosaic, so commonplace -- rang like a clarion, heralding enterprise, adventure, extravagance and, yes, romance.

Not romance in the amorous sense, no. Not when I was eleven. That kind of romance would come later. Rather, the two words, "Marion Avenue," evoked in me the romance that arose from the prospect of getting “out there” at long last, off and away into the wider world, where every object, every encounter, every moment, just by virtue of its remoteness from my everyday existence, would be imbued with glamour and mystery.

(Mrs. Ackerman, my Senior English teacher, later my mother-in-law, would not have admired that last sentence. She would have drawn an “X” through it and written “run-on sentence!” in the margin. Still, I’ll let it stand.)

Today, at 67, I can string words together well enough. But something wonderful has been lost. Nothing musters in me the excitement that ‘run-on sentence’ attempts to describe.

If I were leaving for Tahiti tomorrow, I’d be saying to myself, “Well, it’s bound to be a beautiful place and on the whole pretty great, and what not. But, on the other hand, getting there will be a long haul. Sitting in an airplane all that time will be a major drag. My feet will probably swell up. They say Tahiti is awfully humid and I’ll probably get sunburned. Really, how great can it actually be, when all is said and done?”

I’d already be anticipating the relief of getting back home afterwards, safe and sound.

But when I was eleven, on the verge of departure for summer camp? Ah!

When I was twenty six, I captured and expressed that boyish excitement, musically, in the “Marion Avenue" movement of my Street Suite, ten short pieces for violin and clarinet, each evoking a street in Mansfield, Ohio, my home town.

When you listen to “Marion Avenue,” try to remember what it was like when you were a pre-adolescent and had the capacity to become so excited that you almost thought you might burst.

Those were the days ….

To hear “Marion Avenue" played by violinist Ken Goldsmith and clarinetist Craig Olzenak, click on the link above.

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

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Would that the first few seconds of your hearing the music I want to share today could be as other-worldly wonderful as your first bite into a plump and impeccable apricot!

Envision the scenario. Smiling, your beloved gracefully places before you a hand-painted Provençal earthenware bowl, brimful of apricots. Choosing one, you gently press your thumb, first and second fingers into it. Fleshiest of fruits, perfectly ripe, it surrenders, in equal measure, the concave impressions of the gentle pressure of your convex and fleshy fingertips.

Mindful as a Buddhist, you lift this gustatory treasure to your mouth. Nearing your opening lips, its perfume permeates your nostrils. Close your eyes and sink your incisors into this, the sweetest, the most brazenly luscious, the most unabashedly sensual of foodstuffs.

To what, other than the tenderest, most leisurely love-making, can the first bite into a perfectly ripe apricot be compared?

In shape and hue and odor it is the virginal sister of the rose with the one great additional virtue that, unlike the flower, it can be eaten.

All winter long Kroger’s offered only the orange family of fruits, plucked green for all I know, maybe spray-painted orange, trucked hundreds of miles. We yearned for apricots, asked after them, but they were not to be had. “Not until June,” we were told. With a sigh, we settled for oranges, clementines and tangerine ‘cuties’ while apricots dwelt in our dreams.

Now, at last, midsummer is upon us and we discover once again that, while there is much to be said on behalf of berries, grapes, peaches and canteloupes, apricots are something more, much more: apricots are a dream that really does come true. Here it is at last, this largess, this bounty! Miserable sinners, however we struggle to live virtuously we always know that apricots are a reward far better than we dare hope to deserve.

What possible act of do-good-ery might we conceive and execute that would render us worthy the ecstasy, the exquisite pleasure of that first plunge of teeth and tongue into the inviolate delight that we, constrained by the clumsiness of language, have termed the “apricot.” The word evokes inevasible images of apes lollygagging on flimsy camp beds, “cots.”

“Apricots?" Really? That’s how the language of Shakespeare christens the Fruit Supreme?

Perhaps sensing the inadequacy of the appellation “apricot," Shakespeare develops its comic potential.

Titania, queen of the fairy folk in "A Midsummer Night’s Dream," instructs her attendants to feed her paramour, Nick Bottom, "with apricocks and dewberries.” Apricocks? Theatre-goers exchange furtive glances. Did Titania really say “apricocks?” Is it a typo, a mispronunciation, a Freudian slip? (300 years before Freud, yes, I know!) Or is it, like much else in the play, a slightly dirty joke?

Why name the fairy queen “Titania?"

Why name the guy who gets half-turned into an ass “Bottom?"

When I was a boy, I had an illustrated children’s book, recounting the plots of a dozen of the Bard's best-known plays. I knew the names of most of the characters though I was not always clear on the spellings. For example, I thought my piano teacher had graduated from the “Oberon Conservatory of Music" because that was what the framed diploma she displayed in her studio seemed to say. To me, it made sense to honor a fairy king by naming a music school after him.

Oberon seemed a proper name for a fairy king but consider the moniker Shakespeare assigns to Oberon's sidekick, his right-hand-man, his fixer. Fred? Ralph? Charlie? Oh, no. Shakespeare had to go and name him … well, you know.

As a boy, riding around Mansfield, Ohio in the back seat of my parent’s car I would sometimes spot, here and there, what I thought was the name of Oberon’s sidekick, crudely scrawled. I could not understand why anyone would spray-paint the name of Oberon’s sidekick onto the backsides of stop signs or the undersides of bridges or the walls of factories.

I asked my mother about this and she said that Bad Boys sometimes wrote that word here and there. I asked her why but I never got an answer that made any sense. Why Bad Boys went around the town randomly spray-painting the name of one of Shakespeare’s characters here and there was just going to have to remain another of the many mysteries which I was apparently never going to understand.

We have digressed; now we return to the apricot. The most striking aspect of this peerless fruit is that its unique taste is just what you would expect it to be, given its unique color.

Where else do we see the color of the interior of an apricot? Carrots and sweet potatoes are pale and never glisten. Fresh Copper River salmon comes close. Every now and again one comes upon a day lily boasting the color of an apricot. Sometimes, briefly, a sunset will serve up an apricot-colored spoonful of cloud-sherbet.

You are invited to contemplate all this as you listen to "Maplewood Avenue." To be honest, the taste and color of apricots was not what I had in mind when I wrote this music more than forty years ago. Maplewood Avenue was the street where my piano teacher, Eileen Eckert, a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, lived. The homes on that street were mansion-ettes built in the Tudor-style that was popular in the 1920’s; each with a winding path through tall, dark pines from the street to the front door, walls of ivy-covered stone, gables "of clay-and-wattles made." To me, a little boy, walking to my piano teacher’s house, Maplewood Avenue seemed exotic and ancient, a place of mystery and secrets.

Listening to this music nowadays, for reasons not entirely clear, it makes me think of apricocks … er ... apricots.

Here it is, played by violinist Kenneth Goldsmith and clarinetist Craig Olzenak.

To listen, click on the link above.

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

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After 10 Downing Street, the most famous London address must surely be 221B Baker Street, the apartment shared by Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson.

Rummaging in our basement last week, I came on a book I purchased years ago entitled, “Letters to Sherlock Holmes,” a collection of epistles addressed to "Sherlock Holmes, 221B Baker Street, London, U.K."

Letters addressed to the great detective began arriving not long after “A Scandal in Bohemia” (the first Sherlock story) made a splash and have, if the book's preface is to be believed, never ceased arriving and at the rate of about 700 per year.

Doyle spun out of thin air what he thought was a fictional address, little knowing that the characters said to dwell therein would become a phenomenon. He did not trouble himself to determine whether or not there actually was such an address in London. He never dreamed that thousands of enthralled readers, convinced that Sherlock was a real person, would write to him, directing the London postal service to deliver the envelopes to 221B Baker Street.

It happens that the Abbey National Building Society is located at 221 Baker Street (there is no apartment B), and has received these letters for decades. With admirable good cheer, the organization has, for years, assigned the secretary who opens the mail the cheery chore of reading and replying, albeit briefly, to every one of the letters addressed to Mr. Holmes. (This strikes me as a very English thing to do, but what do I know?)

The oddest and most entertaining of the letters were published in this book. Some are sad, some are truly intriguing (one concerns a lost treasure and a damaged map purporting to guide seekers to its location), some are bizarre. Some assert that the writer of the letter knows full well that Sherlock is fictional but that there HAS to be a real detective somewhere at the back of these remarkable stories; it is to HIM, whomever he may be, that these appeals are directed. Some are written to Doyle, asking the author to forward the letter to Sherlock. Most of them seem to express a genuine belief that the great detective is actual, alive and well.

There is one that begins:

“Dear Mr. Holmes,
I am at my wit’s end. I dare not give particulars here … a small fortune in gold coins and the good name of a kindly South African heiress hang in the balance…."

Some are written, with touching earnestness, in hilariously bad English:

“My Dear Mr. Holmes,
I am your fan in Japan. I have read a lot of story of you. I am sure that you are more wonderful than any other private detective. Not only I, but also my friend says so. Why are you so ability?
I want to be like you. If so, I would have been in favor.
I wish you will be active. Be careful to catch a cold!
Very truly yours,
Yukari Sakai”

“Dear Sherlock Holmes,
I am much honored by writing a letter to you because you are the world’s greatest genius of a detective I have ever seen. Oh, what a fantastic escape you had from that worst waterfall!
O God, how I waited and waited for a single book of yours.
Thanks to God, thanks to Conan Doyle and thanks very much to you for the world’s most beautiful adventures.
Moreover how could we Indians forget the British, at least they were here for a hundred years of ruling.
Long live the genius Sherlock Holmes!
Your greatest fan,
Mohamed Salim"

Some are from children:

"Dear Mr. Holmes,
I’m trying to become a detective but every time something is missing in my house, it’s just because someone lost it. If something is stolen, I can never get a suspect.
Could you please give me a few ideas on how to look for good clues and how to make a suspect show himself?
Sincerely,
John Fox”

Is there another fictional character who has risen from mere ink and paper to assume a comparably convincing corporality?

My favorite of all the letters I will keyboard below for your delight. In my opinion, it is a spoof but I love it because the writer parodies so precisely and affectionately the qualities we love about the stories. He catches the queerness of the characters that enter, along with us, into Holmes’ eccentric world. What’s more, it seems laden with hints and clues; doubtless this conundrum would afford plenteous scope for Sherlock’s peculiar talents. A two-pipe problem! In its way, it is a minor masterpiece.

"Dear Mr. Holmes,
I hope you can help me with a small but important problem. Being of a nervous disposition, several years ago I was ordered by my doctor to take up a relaxing hobby. As I am competitive by nature I selected an unusual hobby which could not be easily duplicated.
I hope you will not laugh when I tell you my hobby is collecting pieces of aluminum foil which I roll into a ball. Well, Mr. Holmes, you can guess what has happened. My foil ball got so big that my wife insisted I get it out of the house. For a while I kept it in the garage, but eventually it got too crowded in there. Finally I was forced to roll the ball out into the yard, where because of the many nasty children in my neighborhood, I had to chain my ball of foil to a tree.
Yesterday the ball disappeared!
True to your careful methods of pure, deductive reasoning, Mr. Holmes, I was able to follow the ball’s progress across the lawn because of the two smashed fences, remnants of a doghouse and a crushed Japanese car left in its wake. However, I lost its track in the street.
I have checked with all the metal recycling centers in my neighborhood, to no avail. Obviously, some fiend has made off with my foil ball for some foul purpose too devious for the decent, ordinary mind to unravel.
I find this all very upsetting. I do hope you can find the time to look into this small matter, Mr. Holmes, as I shall be most worried until the whereabouts of my ball of foil is known and the perpetrator of the deed discovered.
Yours truly,
Peter Wainwright”

Just as Downing and Baker are London’s best known streets, so Park Avenue West is the best known street in Mansfield, Ohio, my hometown. Take 33 seconds and listen to violinist Kenneth Goldsmith and clarinetist Craig Olzenak playing “Park Avenue West” from my Street Suite for violin and clarinet, which offers brief musical descriptions of ten Mansfield streets. click on the link above.

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

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Listening to classical music radio stations, we often hear announcements like this:

"Today is the birthday of Fafner von Hammerschlag, German expressionist composer born on this date in 1892, best remembered for his tone poem, “Sturm und Drang in einem überfüllten Bus“ which we will now hear performed by the Wieckiwczyc Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Hieronymus Siswof-Glompf.”

How does the announcer know the birthdays of composers?

When I was a twenty-something broadcaster of classical music, we announcers consulted a bulky almanac that listed the consequential events that happened on every date of the year, including the birthdays of significant musical figures.

Thumbing through this tome, I was curious to discover which notable musical figures shared my birthday.

I was born "on a night of high wind and wild portent” (quoting James Thurber), the 16th of January, 1950.

I was chagrined to discover that the date of my birthday was designated as "National Nothing Day" by columnist Harold Pullman Coffin and has been observed annually since 1973, when it was added to Chase's Calendar of Events.

The stated purpose of National Nothing Day is:

“...to provide Americans with one National day when they can just sit without celebrating, observing or honoring anything."

Undaunted, I found my way in the almanac to the subcategory of music and musicians. Finding the right page and column took some doing. My heart raced! What great musical figure shared my birthday? Who would it be?

I knew that Beethoven's birthday was in December, so he was definitely out. And I knew that Brahms and Tchaikovsky, by an odd coincidence, share the birthdate of March 15, one of those bits of trivia I somehow retain.

But there were plenty of other promising candidates. Puccini. Sibelius. Vaughan Williams. Ives. Copland. Barber. I’d be proud to share a birthday with any of those guys.

Ah! At last! Here it was! I peered to read the tiny print ... and found that the only musical figure listed as having been born on January 16 was .....

ETHEL MERMAN!

(brassy musical background, over which we hear that uniquely brassy voice)

"There's NO pee-pul like SHOW pee-pul, they SMAHL when they are BLUUUUUUUE!"

Nothing against Ethel. I give her her due. Great in her way. Still.

As for place of birth, I share Mansfield, Ohio with Louis Bromfield (1896-1956), author, conservationist and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. His best work is probably his home, Malabar Farm, now a much-loved Ohio state park.

Bromfield's novel “The Green Bay Tree” takes place in Mansfield, our hometown, Louie's and mine.

Similarly, my “Street Suite” depicts ten Mansfield streets.

To hear violinist Kenneth Goldsmith and clarinetist Craig Olzenak playing “Pinecrest Drive” from that suite, click on the link above.

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

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It’s a dry little factoid with potentially hilarious consequences: “T” is the second-most frequently used letter of the alphabet in our English/American language.

Harmless trivia, think you? Think again, friend, think again!

For decades the letters on the marquee of the Ohio Theatre on Park Avenue West, the busiest street in my hometown of Mansfield Ohio, informed pedestrians, drivers and riders as to what films were being shown.

The theatre opened in 1925, a splendiferous Grand Baroque movie palace with a fancy marquee touting names of stars and titles of films. Charlie Chaplin in “The Gold Rush.” Later, John Wayne in “Stagecoach.” Later still, “Gone With the Wind,” “Singin’ in the Rain” and “High Noon.”

By the time I came along, the theatre’s grandeur had faded. The seats were worn, the floors were sticky, the restrooms stunk, the marquee was rusty. Still, it was at “the Ohio” that I saw some great movies: “The Ten Commandments,” “The Magnificent Seven,” and “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”

The chain that owned the theatre spent little on its upkeep. When the once-classy marquee rusted to the point of becoming a hazard, it was replaced with a big, cheap, white, plastic rectangle to which dark red, translucent plastic letters were hooked. These cheesy marquees are still seen, here and there, sometimes spelling the single, sad word, “CLOSED,” on the marquee of a theatre ‘gone dark.’

When Mansfielders abandoned downtown retailers in favor of those at the new shopping malls opening in the suburbs, the old “Ohio” could not compete with the multiplex cinemas. The chain rented the theatre to an unsavory local who, to the horror of many Mansfielders, tried to make a go of it by screening X-rated films.

He sent the janitor up the ladder out front of the theatre with orders to affix the battered letters so as to spell out the shameless titles of the films.

When the films did not attract enough ticket-buyers to turn a profit, the entrepreneur offered X-rated videos for sale at the concession stand where wholesome popcorn had been peddled to generations of movie-goers.

It was a low moment for Mansfield. There was worse to come.

To apprise the public as to what was available for purchase inside, the following announcement was blazoned on the cheap, weather-battered marquee:

EROTIC TAPES
IN THE LOBBY

This was bad, very bad. The worst was yet to come.

Since the letter “T” is so often used in English, the supply of that letter had taken more than its share of beatings over the years. Snow, ice, rain and wind had done their work. Many of the plastic letters had fallen and broken on the sidewalk below, been repaired with glue and duct tape and returned to service on the marquee. The “T”s were in particularly bad shape.

God has a sense of humor. The wind removed one of the “T”s, so that, for several days, passersby on Park Avenue West were treated to this announcement:

EROTIC APES
IN THE LOBBY

With that, Mansfield had reached its nadir, could sink no lower, had bottomed out.

Not long after, the theatre ‘went dark’ and sat unused for a year before the non-profit corporation I led reopened and restored it, eventually returning the “Ohio” to its former glory, with a new name, “The Renaissance Theatre.” And a new marquee.

The theatre is going strong to this day.

Park Avenue West is featured in my “Street Suite” of miniatures for violin and clarinet, depicting ten Mansfield streets. The music I devised for Park Avenue West is not particularly funny. Since the vignette I shared above seems funny to me, I’d like to share instead the music I wrote for “Davis Road”, a very brief parody of the minuets Haydn and Mozart once wrote. A mere sliver of music, an aural nail clipping, 23 seconds long.

To hear violinist Ken Goldsmith and clarinetist Craig Olzenak playing Davis Road from "Street Suite,” click on the link above.

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

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“Hey, I’ve got an idea! Let’s —— “

You’ve said that. Everyone has. We all have ideas.

What is it, then, with people who sigh and say, “Oh, I’m just not creative.”

Of course they are creative. They have ideas, like everyone else, right?

What they mean is that they don’t write novels or paint paintings of compose symphonies. They forget that “having an idea” is ubiquitous among humans; some of us have ideas for novels, paintings and symphonies while others have ideas for other sorts of things. The thrill of a sudden inspiration comes to us all.

I remember when I had the idea that grew into the little piece I want to share today. I was fooling around at the piano and I played a note, then another note a fifth above the first note. Then I dropped a third and then, from there, went up another perfect fifth. A pattern! I dropped another third, went up another fifth, etc. And when I did that a couple of times, with all of the notes staccato, I felt that I had gone as far up as I wanted to go so I just HELD that last note.

I played it again. It pleased me. It felt good, the way a good idea does.

Then I thought, “What if a clarinet was playing the up-a-fifth, down-a-third, up-a-fifth pattern and a violin entered on the highest note of the pattern?” Cool!

Listen to the opening of todays’ piece and you’ll hear what this little idea sounds like. Follow the score. You’ll see how the little idea is repeated with a twist, etc. The piece grew from there.

The above description is all well and good, maybe a little technical-sounding for some. Composers are in love with music theory; they are fascinated by it. For most people, music theory is a topic that makes their eyes glaze over. They eagerly change the subject.

What people want to know from a composer is: “How does it feel to invent music?”

Pleasing, intriguing, exciting. But wait, there’s more.

When I did the work of composing, I felt keenly alert to what the music itself seemed to want to do, where the tune and harmonies seemed to want to go. I felt keenly alive.

But alertness is not an emotion. I felt a welter of emotions.

A shudder of fear, because I was afraid I would compromise and blow it, that the actual work would fall far short of what I hoped it might be (it often did).

A swelling of pride, yes, because if I hadn’t believed that I was writing a GREAT WORK, I would not have been able to muster the oomph to follow through and get it down on paper or, later, notated on a computer screen.

A wash of humility, simultaneously with pride, because I felt that something greater than my little self was passing through my mind and fingertips to the notated score. What had I ever done to deserve to be on the receiving end of such a good idea?

I included the little piece in my “Street Suite,” naming it Glenwood Boulevard, a graceful, sleepy street in my hometown of Mansfield, OH.

To hear violinist Ken Goldsmith and clarinetist Craig Olzenak playing Glenwood Boulevard from "Street Suite,” click on the link above.

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

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“I’m hittin’ the bike trail. Back in an hour.”

“You’re really going to wear that hat, then?”

“Of course.”

“And why, exactly?”

“Because it will be fun.”

My wife and daughter hold that, when riding a bicycle, one ought to wear a bicycle helmet. I usually do, even though it makes me look like a Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtle. Or a Slovenian tank commander.

I wish someone would design a bicycle helmet that a gentleman could wear with dignity. If there was a bicycle helmet in, say, the shape and style of Robin Hood’s green cap or a Three Musketeers’ hat with a big white feather in the headband or Teddy Roosevelt’s hat with the brim pinned up on one side or Lord Baden-Powell’s ‘lemon juicer’ … the chapeau of a gallant cavalier.

I am the proud owner of a really fine wizard’s hat. Made of stiff gray cloth, it rises crookedly to a point about two feet above the crown of my head and has a very wide circular brim. I resolved to wear this hat while riding the bike trail. Sometimes I like to be a little larger than life, cut a figure, stand out.

If I truly wanted to look like a wizard, I could bring along my hiking staff and wear my late mother-in-law’s teal-blue tunic that hangs from my shoulders down to my knees. These and my wizard’s hat comprise my Halloween costume at the school where I teach. But it’s cumbersome to ride a bicycle while carrying a staff and I was afraid that the tunic might get snared in the bicycle chain, bring me to an abrupt stop and fling me forward over the handlebars, confirming the efficacy of wearing a proper helmet.

These days I’m particularly qualified to wear a wizard’s hat because I am stricken in years and sport a rather long white beard, a feature I share with the likes of ‘Walt’ Whitman, ‘Hank’ Longfellow and ‘Lenny’ Da Vinci. Three good men and true. Mind you, my beard is not half so long as the ones those guys propagated. Still, having ‘sheltered in place’ for three months, mine has grown pretty long.

The other cyclists on the trail would not see me and if they did they would ignore me. Most tend to be pretty intense. Most costume themselves as if it was the Tour de France, not just Newtown to Terrace Park. Brightly colored, skin-tight outfits, blazoned with product names, stylized helmets, fancy gloves, fancy shoes, even sound systems to play music while biking. Such are the accoutrements, we are to understand, that announce the serious bikesman. They would have us know that they have spent much. A bicycle with tires hardly wider than my thumb costs a small fortune. I paid $300 for my bike 30 years ago. The tires are thick as my wrist. I am unnoticed by the big-spenders with whom I share the trail.

However, many pedestrians and joggers use the trail. Seeing me coming, those folks would smile and wave, perhaps calling out, “Hey there, Gandalf!”

I tried to think how I might reply. I could shout, “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!“ which is what Gandalf shouted at the Balrog. Or, “Fly, you fools!”, Gandalf’s last command to the Fellowship before the Balrog got the better of him.

But what if the pedestrian / jogger had not read “The Lord of the Rings” nor seen the movie? What if they didn’t get the reference? How might they feel about a bearded man so be-hatted telling them, on a public bike trail, that they shall not pass? Or terming them fools who should fly?

Such were my thoughts as I rolled down the trail. Presently, I saw a woman and her little daughter heading my way. An audience! The first of the faithful!

The little girl said, “Look, Mama. It’s Santa Claus.”

Santa Claus? Really, kid? S.C. wears red-and-white. I was wearing my khaki shorts, my green Mesa Verde Nat’l Park t-shirt and my gray wizard’s hat. How could I be mistaken for Santa Claus? Whatever.

As I made my way down the trail, many grinned at me but offered no comment.

Then a group of adolescent boys came into view. They were trotting toward me, kicking a soccer ball along the trail. Boys of that age can be a tough audience. One yelled out, “Hey, guys! It’s Grandpa Smurf!” which I thought mean.

I sniffed and cycled on with a certain hauteur, pretending not to have heard.

A wizard’s hat lacks a chin strap. I had to bicycle slowly so that the breeze didn’t blow the hat off my head. Nothing more clearly reveals the inherent comedy of existence than the spectacle of a man of a certain age chasing down the street (or bike trail) a hat which the wind has blown off his head. At such moments, one is made to know what it is to be nakedly on display as a hapless fool, what Lear felt on the storm-struck heath.

Despite my slow clip, the wind kept pushing the front of the circular brim of my hat up and across my forehead. It was not the look I intended. I overheard an older couple as I slowly approached them from the opposite direction. “Margaret!” said the man, pointing. “I’ll be ding-busted if it ain’t Gabby Hayes! an’ here I wuz, thinkin’ he was daid.”

After that I pulled over, took off my hat and stowed it in my wire basket along side my water bottle.

When I got home, Jo asked, “How did your hat go over?”

“OK,” I said, without enthusiasm. “I guess one time will be enough.”

“Well, you had your fun. Now you can go back to wearing a helmet like anyone who has any sense.”

“Yes, dear. It must be wearying, to be right all the time.”

She shrugged. “Not really,” was her reply.

To hear "Woodhill Road" (a street where I used to ride my bicycle when I was growing up in Mansfield Ohio, often while wearing a bright green plastic Robin Hood cap I cherished in those days) from my “Street Suite,” played by violinist Ken Goldsmith and clarinetist Craig Olzenak, click on the link above.

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

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Please let me share three of the ten short movements of my “Street Suite” for violin and clarinet, musical depictions of ten streets in my hometown, Mansfield, Ohio.

Though I wrote this music a long time ago -- in 1976 -- it sounds as fresh and new. This music might have been written last week.

How much has changed since then. Fashions, politics, the global map, technology. Back then, how could I have shared this music with you? No email, no PDFs, no mp3s.

1) Brinkerhoff Boulevard

We Americans cherish comfortable, well-appointed front porches. We take to our front porches to drink our morning coffee, read the paper, retrieve email or just sit on a well-cushioned rocking chair, fingers interlocked across our bellies, content to observe whatever entertainments are developing on the sidewalk and street.

Mansfielders residing on Brinkerhoff Boulevard have it good. Their homes are turn-of-the-century, graceful and dignified. Their front porches look out onto South Park, right across the street. Mansfield’s iconic pioneer Blockhouse, the park’s best-known feature, is in plain view; built during the War of 1812, it was frequented by Johnny Appleseed himself.

The gentle rhythm of the music matches the slow ’n' easy, back-and-forth motion of a rocking chair. The mood is meditative.

To hear Brinkerhoff Blvd. from Street Suite played by violinist Kenneth Goldsmith and clarinetist Craig Olzenak, click on the link above.

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

2) West Second Street

My music for this street is a waltz because the homes date from the 1890’s when the waltz was popular. As the architecture of a couple of the homes have a ‘Moorish’ look, I made the main waltz theme sound faintly ‘Arabian.’

The opening chord is a curiosity. When the violin plays two open strings at once, the two-note chord that is produced is a perfect fifth. When the clarinet plays the note in the middle between the pitches sounded by those two open strings, the resulting triad, oddly, doesn’t sound like either instrument. It’s as if a third instrument, neither violin nor clarinet, is playing the chord. It almost rings, like a chord played on an alto glockenspiel, if such a thing exists.

To hear “West Second Street” from my Street Suite played by violinist Ken Goldsmith and clarinetist Craig Olzenak, click on the link above.

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

3) Woodhill Road

Woodhill Road is where Mansfield's "Old Money" lives. Very elegant, a little pretentious. Think mansions, spacious lawns, big old trees, semi-circular driveways, a 'sun room,' a clay tennis court out back. The street is summed up with a satiric wink in half a minute of music.

To hear "Woodhill Road" played by violinist Ken Goldsmith and clarinetist Craig Olzenak, click on the link above.

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