I am eager to share with you the "Spring" movement from my piano trio, Four Seasons in Bellville which I wrote in 1974-1977. It's one of the most delightful pieces to have come through me.

Bellville is the village in north central Ohio where I met my future wife, fell in love with her, courted, married and lived for twelve years. Our two children were born there. I loved Bellville during those years.

I was 27 years old in 1977 and it was one of the best years of my life. I had no regular job and was painting houses, off and on, for most of that happy year; I had plenty of spare time. I wrote some of the best music of my career. I earnestly tried to create a musical style that would express my immediate environs: Bellvillle, Ohio.

The challenge of figuring out how to express my immediate location inspired me. I thought that music composed in an Ohio village ought to sound subtly different than music written in, say, Nebraska or Vermont. I undertook to become a Regionalist composer. No one had ever attempted such a thing in Bellville, Ohio! I was a pioneer!

Regionalism has been a major force in American literature and painting, and also in American music. Charles Ives’ programmatic pieces express his New England, just as Gershwin’s jagged, sky-line melodies and Bernstein’s big-city rhythms express New York City; Oklahoman Roy Harris’ Third Symphony captures the massive spaciousness of the Great Plains; Ferde Grofe’s dear, old, Western-sounding Grand Canyon Suite conjurs that landscape perfectly; Aaron Copland caught the Midwest in The Tender Land, the West in Rodeo and Billy the Kid, New England in his Suite from Our Town and the Blue Ridge Mountains in Appalachian Spring (oh, I know he didn't name that piece until after it was completed but listeners everywhere envision the Appalachians when they hear that music).

Each of these composers evoked particular American landscapes. Their best-loved regionalist works have found a place in the hearts of music-loving audiences all over the world.

I studied these works and took a lesson from them. My piano trio, Four Seasons in Bellville, was the best result. The tunes are lyrical and abundant, the harmonies lush and rich, like the fabled soil of Richland County, Ohio, where Bellville is located. Richland County’s topsoil is sometimes eight feet deep! The best vegetable garden we ever had was in our backyard in Bellville.

This trio is a four-movement work, of course, one for each season. Music about Spring must suggest color, movement, growth and romantic love. Think of wild flowers, refreshing rains, filmy, yellow-y, breeze-tossed branches and burgeoning streams.

To hear "Spring" from Four Seasons in Bellville, click on the link above.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
May 11, 2014

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Summer in rural Ohio is a robust time for the plants; gardens grow like crazy, the leaves on the trees are a bright Kelly green. It’s an energetic season for humans, too: picnicking, hiking, boating and fishing, baseball, summer camps, Fourth of July fireworks, county fairs, long, bright days.

I ought to know because I lived in rural, north central Ohio for forty-four years before moving to Cincinnati in 1994.

In my twenties and early thirties I aimed to express my immediate environs in my music, to wit, Bellville, Ohio, the village where we lived. How I loved Bellville in those days! It was where I met my future wife, where she had grown up, where we fell in love, courted, married and lived for twelve years. It was the village to which we brought home from the Mansfield hospital our two newborns.

Music written in and about an Ohio village ought to sound different, I thought, from music written in and about villages in, say, Oregon, Nebraska or Vermont. I sought to imbue my music with the lush verdure of rural Ohio and the sense of abundance that arises from the fertility of topsoil that's eight feet deep! I wanted my music to convey vigorous good health and the feelings that arose from the rolling land around us, a quilt of thick forests and fields of corn, the green leaves and yellow tassels glistening in the sun between frequent and delicious rains.

I thought I’d live a long life there, then die and be buried in the Bellville cemetery. But in time we came to feel that we’d exhausted the resources of the place. Twenty-one years ago we moved to Cincinnati so that our children could attend the School for the Creative and Performing Arts. We’ll never exhaust the resources of the Queen City, a richly blessed and generously endowed cultural center which has been very good to me, to us.

My Piano Trio #1 is touchstone, a reminder of who we were and where we were in the summer of 1977.

To hear the exuberant Mirecourt Trio (violinist Ken Goldsmith, cellist Terry King and pianist John Jensen) superbly playing the “Summer” movement from my Piano Trio #1 “Four Seasons in Bellville,” click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
July 26, 2015

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I was born and raised in Mansfield, Ohio; I attended Jr. and Sr. High School in nearby Lexington, Ohio.

Bellville, ten miles south of Mansfield, six miles east of Lexington, is the village where, 50 years ago next month, I met Jo Anna Ackerman, my future wife. We fell in love, courted, and married in a 7:30 a.m. ceremony on the front porch of her family's Bellville home, the only home Jo had ever known.

Our falling for one another was in the stars; our respective maternal grandfathers had been the closest of friends, decades before we were even born.

Jo and I lived in Bellville for twelve years. It's where our two children were born and passed their toddler years.

One of the best of those years was 1977. I was 27, blissfully between jobs and writing some of the best music I ever wrote. My 'higher education' was three years behind me and I was at last discovering my own voice as a composer and discovering what it was that I had to say.

I felt inspired to try to create a musical style that would express my immediate environs, a great point of departure for any young artist. I felt that music written in and about an Ohio village ought to sound subtly different from music that might be written in and about a village in Vermont, Nebraska or Hawaii, to say nothing of villages in India, Paraguay or Lithuania.

But how, exactly? How should Bellville, Ohio be expressed, musically? What intervals, chords and rhythms should be used? What contour should the melodies have?

I would be the first composer to address such questions about Bellville, Ohio. I would be a pioneer.

Music lovers are curious to hear works that express a particular part of the world. Thus, the success of nationalist composers like Grieg, Dvorak, Vaughan Williams, Sibelius and our own Copland and Gershwin. Those composers had a lot to say about the parts of the world from which they hailed and we relish their works to this day.

Too, musicians in other parts of the world expect an American composer to sound American. When I wrote French-sounding music for my French musician friends, they objected: "We already have French-sounding music,” they said. "Give us music that sounds American."

I absorbed that lesson early on and Four Seasons in Bellville was one of the best results.

Bellville is in Richland County, Ohio where the soil is famously fertile; our vegetable garden was a wonder. I felt that the music of Bellville must express this. Such music must be, I thought, lyrical and lush, rich and abundant, tonal and, above all, generously tuneful.

There is nothing in the least edgy or sketchy about Bellville. No hipster has ever dwelt there, nor ever will. No avant garde music could express that village. Music about Bellville must be conservative, i.e., tonal and melodic.

What music for autumn in Bellville? It must evoke the colors of October. The melodies must descend, gently, like falling leaves. It must be radiant though imbued with a feeling of fond farewell. If I have my way, the Autumn movement from my Four Seasons in Bellville will be played at my funeral.

Autumn in an American village is a commonplace, a cliché for gift calendars and magazine covers, an enticement for the ‘leaf peepers.' Trite? Perhaps. But if we cannot relish the near-at-hand, the obvious, the commonplace, then what is left will be, by definition, only the far-off, the remote, the inaccessible, the blandly international. About that time, I read Thornton Wilder’s last novel, "Theophilus North," in which is to be found this caution: "If we shrink from platitudes, platitudes will shrink from us."

Thornton Wilder also said, “Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.” Let’s orchestrate the obvious, as beautifully as we can. Let's bloom where we're planted. Let's rejoice in who we are, where we come from and what is right in front of us.

To hear the incomparable Mirecourt Trio (violinist Ken Goldsmith, cellist Terry King, pianist John Jensen) play, with deep feeling, the "Autumn" movement from Four Seasons in Bellville, click on the link above.

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

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I am eager for you to see our newly finished backyard garden. I can’t invite you to come in person, so I made a slide show of its development, put my music to it and made it available for you to view with a click on the link below.

But first, this:

Year that trembled and reel'd beneath me!
Your summer wind was warm enough, yet the air I breathed froze me,
A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken'd me,
Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself,
Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled?
And sullen hymns of defeat?

Thus wrote, of all people, America’s great optimist, our dear, sweet, gay, old Walt Whitman,. You don’t expect Uncle Walt ever to be downcast. In this poem, he is.

All of us are struggling through just such a year.

How shall we respond, hour by hour, day by day? Shall we chant the ‘sullen hymns of defeat’?

Not me. Not yet, anyhow. We must resist the grief, shock, stress and depression as best we can. As you find ways to do this, share them with others. What are your tricks? How do you dodge despair? I’d like to know.

Here are some of my practices:
Each morning I read the NYTimes.
I phone elected officials three or four times a week.
I paint toy soldiers (I’m working on a really cool set of Robin Hood figures right now).
Almost every day, Jo and I ride the bike trail to Terrace Park, sit on a bench on the village green, eat a peach, and then bike home. We’ll miss that very much when the cold weather comes.
We undertake challenging jigsaw puzzles.
I plan the meals, order groceries, cook and clean up while Jo does political phone bank work.
We watch too much news but also good TV when we can find something that interests or amuses both of us. (That is difficult, as our tastes are quite different.)

Another positive thing I do is write these emails to y’all -- about 650 ‘friends and fans’ who have asked to be recipients.

I sometimes feel a little embarrassed when I send y’all a cheery email, like last week’s trumpet duet. I’d feel the same way if I were distributing M & M’s to fellow passengers on a sinking ship. But a friend corrected me: “You’re not passing out M & M’s,” she wrote. “You’re passing out life jackets.” That was a pleasing reassurance. In any case, I persist.

Finally, there is our garden, a small but splendid thing that took shape as these past six months “trembl’d and reel’d beneath” us.

Throughout this difficult span of time -- March through September, 2020 -- we often reminded ourselves, “At least our garden is coming along.” It was a comfort and the finished garden is a delight. I’m sitting in the Greek revival pavilion right now, touching up this week’s message. The fountain is burbling, the crickets are screaking.

To see a 5-minute slide show of how the garden took shape between last March and last week, accompanied by the Mirecourt Trio’s recording of the “Summer” movement from my Piano Trio #1 “Four Seasons in Bellville,” click on the link above.

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October is the best month. Autumn is beautiful.

Saying so is trite. But if we do not relish what is obvious, commonplace and local, what is left? Only what is remote, inaccessible and blandly international.

Thornton Wilder cautioned: "If we shrink from platitudes, platitudes will shrink from us."

He also said, “Literature is the orchestration of the obvious.”

Let’s orchestrate the obvious, as beautifully as we can, rejoicing in what is right in front of us.

To hear the incomparable Mirecourt Trio (violinist Ken Goldsmith, cellist Terry King, pianist John Jensen) play "Autumn" movement from my Piano Trio #1, “Four Seasons in Bellville,” click on the link above.

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

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Some dislike January. Cold days, gray days, snowy days.

Me, I love January. It is the quietest month. The weather imposes stasis upon our feverish tendency toward hyperactivity. Tranquility is the order of the day in January, whether we like it or not. It is a 31-day opportunity for thoughtful reading and creative work. I’m writing a string quartet!

What’s more, my birthday arrives right in the middle of the month! I turned 75 last Thursday!

Every day is a bonus. I am in excellent health, for which I thank God. I expect to continue composing, teaching at OLLI, singing in the church choir, riding the bike trail, doing my chores and eliciting smiles one way or another. Oh, and writing these weekly emails to you for many years to come. Spreading sweetness and light!

Meanwhile, I am showered with appreciation and, yes, even money. The birthday gift contributions I recently asked of you, my “friends and fans,” have been flowing in abundantly. Thank you!

(If you want to chip in, read the P.S. at the end of this message.)

I greatly appreciate the checks that are arriving in the mail and the notices from Paypal and Venmo appearing in my inbox. I will spend the money producing recordings of my new works, all of which I will share with you in these emails in years to come -- whether or not you contributed. This past Friday we recorded one of my new string trios.

There is generosity … and then there is parsimony.

Have you noticed that sardines are no longer packed as tightly as they once used to be? It was a cliché: “packed in like sardines.” No more. I opened a tin yesterday and found only THREE sardines inside. They were bathing in olive oil, as the label promised, but with plenty of elbow room. (Do sardines have elbows?)

Someone figured out that sardine-lovers cannot examine the contents of a tin of sardines until the tin is purchased, taken home and opened. Only then will the hapless buyer discover that the sardines are no longer “packed in like sardines.” Oh well.

Deep winter has been the season of some of my happiest memories. Winter camping in the early ‘60’s, as a Boy Scout, for instance. One time I slept in a tiny igloo that I constructed for myself; it was just big enough to contain me, warm and snug inside.

Sardines were on the menu that weekend. When contents of the tins froze solid, we knew what to do. We would put the frozen sardine tin inside our long johns, just above the belt, a very cold rectangle against our belly; our body heat thawed the tin. Then we’d wolf down the sardines with saltines we’d brought along. Sardines freeze, saltines don’t. You learn things like this in Boy Scouts!

(What is the thirteenth Scout Law? Do you know? “A Scout is hungry!”)

Here’s another vivid memory, this one from the winter of 1976. The scene was Bellville, Ohio, where Jo and I passed the first dozen years of our long and happy marriage. I was alone, at home, in ‘the Little Yellow House,’ as we called our first home. It was late afternoon on a wintry day; the snow was falling, fast and thick. Jo was due back from her classes at the nearby technical college where she was pursuing her R.N. degree. I was stirring soup and "playing a record," as we used to say, a Brandenburg Concerto.

Still stirring, I looked up from the soup and perceived that outside, a few feet away, on the other side of the kitchen window, as the snowflakes fell -- they ALIGNED! In the chill, windless air the flakes fell in uniform patterns, each one descending with a stately step, a choreography precisely matched to Bach’s perfect music.

That’s when it struck me. The dancing snow, the music, the fragrant steam of the soup rising to my nostrils, anticipating that the Love of my Life would soon be home … at that moment I realized that I was as happy as it is possible for anyone to be.

To be happy and to KNOW that you are happy, that is a great thing.

I hope today’s music makes you happy. If you’ve sent a contribution my way, I hope it makes you happy to know that you are helping me record my music and that I will be sharing these recordings with you in future Sunday morning emails.

You can hear the Mirecourt Trio perform the "Winter" movement from my “Piano Trio #1: Four Seasons in Bellville,” one of my best works, by clicking on the link above.

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

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

As always, feel free to forward this message to friends who might enjoy it.

Anyone can be on my little list of recipients for these mpFrees (as I call these musical emails). To sign up, people can email me at rick@sowash.com, sending just one word: "Yes." I'll know what it means.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
Jan. 19, 2025

P.S. Please consider sending a contribution to assist me in funding the recordings of my many of the 130 works I’ve written in the past three years. I give away my work for free to anyone who is interested in discovering it but recording is expensive and your help will be appreciated.

For Paypal, use my email address: rick@sowash.com. For Venmo, my username is: @rick-sowash. Or send a good old check to me at 6836 School Street, Cincinnati, OH 45244. Thank you!