The charms of winter are pleasant to contemplate just after the leaves are off the trees and the first cold winds are blowing.

By late February the season has lost its appeal and winter’s end can’t come a moment too soon. At least it’s in sight.

Someone said we should change the name of the month of March and call it “Mud” instead. I can see that.

The long slog through March is before us. Ah, but after that comes blessed April.

Still, while winter is yet with us, let’s try to find something positive in it.

That’s me, in a nutshell. A jolly soul. I’m like the fellow of whom Samuel Johnson quipped, “All his life he tried to be a philosopher but cheerfulness kept breaking in."

Back in 1976 I wrote a duet for mezzo and baritone, setting to music Elizabeth Coatsworth’s adorable poem, “On a Night of Snow."

Here ’tis:

Cat, if you go outdoors, you must walk in the snow.
You will come back with little white shoes on your feet,
little white shoes of snow that have heels of sleet.
Stay by the fire, my Cat. Lie still, do not go.
See how the flames are leaping and hissing low,
I will bring you a saucer of milk like a marguerite,
so white and so smooth, so spherical and so sweet–
stay with me, Cat. Outdoors the wild winds blow.

Outdoors the wild winds blow, Mistress, and dark is the night,
strange voices cry in the trees, intoning strange lore,
and more than cats move, lit by our eyes’ green light,
on silent feet where the meadow grasses hang hoar–
Mistress, there are portents abroad of magic and might,
and things that are yet to be done. Open the door!

The song doesn’t stop there. The soprano keeps begging, “Stay with me, Cat,” while the baritone repeats “Open the door!”

I will long remember when Diane Haslam and Chris Miller performed the duet. Chris, a cat-lover, sang with his eyes as wide open as he could stretch them, assuming the feline’s mad gaze. Diane cajoled him but he wouldn’t take no for an answer and even rubbed his shoulder against hers, exactly in the way a cat will rub its owner's leg. It was a miniature musical comedy and the audience loved it.

In 2014, three friends, flutist Suzanne Bona, cellist Josh Aerie, and pianist Greg Kostraba, who subsequently formed the Sylvan Trio, convinced me to write a piece for them which could be featured on a forthcoming CD of my music.

After fifty years of tune-smithery, I had put down my composing pen. Still, I took it up again, sort of, and expanded four separate vocal works, written earlier, into a suite. I titled it “Seasonal Breezes,” as it depicts the play of the wind at various times of the year. The “Winter Breeze” movement, which closes the suite, is a re-scoring and re-imagining of the duet, “On a Night of Snow.” The flute is, more or less, the soprano, i.e., the lady in the poem and the cello is, more or less, the cat.

To hear “Winter Breeze: On a Night of Snow" from Seasonal Breezes played by the Sylvan Trio (flutist Suzanne Bona, cellist Josh Aerie, pianist Greg Kostraba), click on the link above.

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

To see a PDF of the vocal duet version, click on the link above.

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Have you read the Tao Te Ching?

(If not, I’ve included it as an attachment at the bottom of this message. Open it, download it, read it.)

81 breviloquent thoughts.

You’d think you could read this slender book in a half hour.

I’ve been reading it (and re-reading it) for thirty years and I’m nowhere near finished.

‘Reading’ is not the best verb to describe what one’s interaction with this book.

‘Pondering’ comes nearer.

‘Book’ is not the best noun to describe this entity.

‘Mirror’ comes closer.

Each of the 81 thoughts compels thinking -- long, deep, careful thinking.

I'll read one, lift my eyes, gaze at nothing, and then find that twenty minutes have passed while I’ve been thinking hard. Then I return to the text.

This ambiguous little book, written 600 years before the time of Jesus, addresses the most pressing particulars of my life at whatever moment I happen to be reading it.

Reading it clarifies my thoughts about what is going on in my life, my family, my church, my school, our country and our world.

A copy sleeps in my nightstand, patiently awaiting my next perusal. This copy has been my companion in many places and on many journeys. Its corners are dog-eared, its pages coffee-stained and thumbworn. It’s a little warped from having been dropped and quickly snatched from the water on a canoe trip.

When I was a security guard at the Cincinnati Art Museum, this copy nestled in my coat pocket. On snowy mornings or sleepy summer weekday afternoons, when the galleries were empty, I would read a few pages, pondering the thoughts anew. I especially loved to peruse 'the Tao' when I was guarding the Asian galleries. I fancied that the book felt a little more at home in those parts of the museum and would thank me for opening it there.

In my very personal copy, the margins of every page are dense with handwritten notes, my marginalia. I rarely write in books but 'the Tao' awakens the dormant marginalialist in me. It’s the result of my having thought, thought, and thought about what is being said and how each of the book's little thought-lets (or poem-kins) applies to the moment when I happen to be reading it.

(Isn’t 'poem-kins' a sweet little word? I just made it up!)

Perhaps you will welcome some examples.

Here are a few of the many lines I've pondered, long and hard:

"He who has power over others
can't empower himself." (Oh? Why not? What power do I have over others? How can I rid myself of it? If I could use power to do good, would the world’s gain warrant the concomitant loss of power I’d have over myself? Having lost power over myself, could I still perceive what is good and use my power, such as it is, to bring good into the world? Gandalf could easily have snatched the ring from Frodo and tried to use its power to do good, but he does not. Why not? Gandalf read the Tao Te Ching.)

"If you realize that you have enough,
you are truly rich." (Ah, but how much is enough? what does it mean to be 'truly rich'?)

"The more he [the Master] gives to others,
the wealthier he is." (‘giving’ in what sense? giving what? ‘wealthier' in what way?)

"Success or failure: which is more dangerous?" (what are the dangers of success? of failure?)

"Give evil nothing to oppose
and it will disappear by itself." (what about Hitler? Stalin? unopposed, would they have disappeared? would Gandhi agree? is this wisdom or naiveté?)

"Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner." (how exactly? what about family, friends? are we their prisoners?)

"Do your work. Then step back.
The only path to serenity." (what work? the task at hand? household chores? a day's work? a life's work? why is doing your work, then stepping back, the only path?)

"When her [the Master’s] work is done,
the people say, "Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!” (how can one teach students or organize a church pancake supper or lead a nation in such a way that when the work is done the people will say, “Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves!”?)

Lao Tzu, the semi-legendary author of 'the Tao,' rarely tells us what to do. He tells us what the Master does. Are we to do likewise? Do we want to be a Master? A Master of what, exactly?

Think! Think! Think! See what I mean?

I'd love to share much more about this remarkable little book ... the advice for artists ... the counsel about governance of self, family, classroom, nation ... the notion of 'action through non-action' … personal finances … home economy … the lessons water can teach us ... the glimpses into mystical experience … did the Tao influence Jesus? … plus humor, yes! 'the Tao' can be very funny in places, as for example:
"Governing a large country
is like frying a small fish.
You spoil it with too much poking."

But this email is sufficiently long.

Enough for now.

Let’s hear some music!

To hear "Spring Breeze" from Seasonal Breezes in a spirited performance by The Sylvan Trio (flutist Suzanne Bona, cellist Josh Aerie, pianist Greg Kostraba), click on the link above.

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

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Last week, a poem came to me, unbidden. I wrote out the first two quatrains immediately and I nailed the last two within the next fifteen minutes.

Mind you, I make no grand claims for this poem. If you want to read great poetry, re-read Walt Whitman’s "Song of Myself.”

Still, here is my little poem:

I’m an old-fashioned man
with an old-fashioned life.
I’ve an old-fashioned house
and an old-fashioned wife.

I like old-fashioned food
and old-fashioned books,
old-fashioned whiskers
and old-fashioned looks.

I’ll keep living this way,
as an old-fashioned man,
with my house, wife and books
for as long as I can.

And then I’ll move on
in the old-fashioned way,
serene and content
to let come what may.

Here’s why I am sharing my little poem.

If I hadn’t already told you that I wrote it last week, when would you guess that poem was written? Anytime in the last hundred years, wouldn’t you say? Everything about its form and content is ‘old-fashioned’ (rhyming couplets in four quatrains!). Yet there’s nothing to prevent it from having been written last week.

I wrote the tunes and harmonies of my ’Summer Breeze,’ the second movement of my suite “Seasonal Breezes for Flute, Cello & Piano”, in 1976 as a choral piece.

In 2014, I revised, expanded and rescored it. The new version for flute, cello and piano was recorded last year.

After listening to it (see below), consider this: If I hadn’t already told you, when would you guess that this music was written? Anytime in the last hundred years, wouldn’t you say? Everything about its form and content is ‘old-fashioned’ (it’s in Rondo form; it opens and closes with simple scales in the very old-fashioned key of C major!).

Yet there’s nothing to obviate the possibility that it was written last week.

But, could my poem and music have been written one hundred and FIFTY years ago? No. The poem is too plain-spoken to have been written during the reign of Queen Victoria, when Tennyson and Longfellow set the standards. Were I writing in 1869, my little poem would have been insufficiently florid.

The music could not have been written before Debussy, who was seven years old in 1869 and would die in 1918. His ‘impressionistic’ touch, his unexpected modulations, his pianistic writing all find an echo in this music.

Yet it doesn’t sound like Debussy. It sounds American. That is another reason it could not have been written 150 years ago. Truly American-sounding classical music didn’t get heard until the 1920’s. When it did arrive, it owed a good deal to French music; Copland, Thomson, Harris, Gershwin, all had formative musical experiences in Paris.

My point is that some of the artistic expressions we encounter could have first seen the light of day on pretty much any day over quite a long stretch of time.

The more conservative, i.e., ‘old-fashioned’ the artwork is, the longer will be the stretch of time during which it might have been created.

When you hear ’Summer Breeze,’ I think you’ll agree that it doesn’t seem ‘dated.’ You probably remember the pop music of the Seventies … “Stayin’ Alive,” “YMCA”, “We’ve Only Just Begun” “What’s New, Pussycat?” — nowadays those songs are so dated, so period-specific, as to be laughable.

You might say, “But those were POP songs. Classical music is different.” There is some truth in that. Still, quite a lot of avant-garde classical music was written during the 20th century and much of it already seems just as dated as “Stayin’ Alive.” Why? Because it wasn’t conservative, wasn’t old-fashioned, tried too hard to be ‘hip’ as the term was understood and expressed musically back then.

All this is to confess my surprise at how conservative I have been, artistically. I rooted my artistic work in existing traditions that existed long before I came upon the scene.

However liberal I may be politically, I am temperamentally conservative. I’m an Eagle Scout, a former Scoutmaster, an every-Sunday church-goer, a faithful husband for 46 years, a loving father and a good teacher. I never did drugs, not even marijuana.

I can say, with Thoreau, “If i repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?’ (Of course, Henry was half-joking and so am I.)

One compensation of my loyalty to tradition has been that my work, make of it what you will, might have been written last week … a hundred years ago … or on any day in between. There’s no “shelf time,” no “sell by” a certain date on the label. No preservatives added, it stays fresh because it abides by a tradition that remains fresh for listeners.

To hear ’Summer Breeze’ from my suite “Seasonal Breezes” played by The Sylvan Trio (flutist Suzanne Bona, cellist Josh Aerie, pianist Greg Kostraba), click on the link above.

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

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The story behind this piece begins almost half a century ago.

The earliest version of this music was conceived in my college years as the final song in my cycle for soprano and viola, titled “Songs for the Seven Ages.”

A good title but not a good piece of music, I’m afraid. Schizophrenically trying to be at once true to myself and to write music that would ‘fly’ in the cloistered world of the academic avant garde, I was not up to the task of setting to music texts by Shakespeare.

The cycle was sung at a student recital. I felt sorry for the poor soprano. She did her best but most of the songs were awful. The final song, began beautifully but quickly lost its way. I had a vague notion that I would return to that song some day to extend the beauty of the opening phrases.

When I was about 28 I expanded the final song of the doomed cycle into a choral setting. There was nothing wrong with the words! The text is Prospero's great speech from The Tempest, the one that begins, "Our revels now are ended,” ending with "We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

Thhe speech is ‘framed’ by the words “ended” at the beginning and “rounded” at the end. Beautiful! Shakespeare at his deft-est!

Accordingly, the choral piece began with the chorus singing “Ended, ended, ended” before the opening seven-note tune is sung to the words “Our revels now are ended.” And that same opening chord is sung at the end as well, but this time it is sung to the word “Rounded, rounded, rounded.”

“Rounded." A beautiful word to sing.

I attempted to embue this choral piece with a radiant resignation, appropriate for the aged magus Prospero. And I nailed it, I think, in the beginning and the ending ... but I couldn't manage an effective setting of the middle part of the speech. The words are dense and gnarly in that part of the speech and not particularly singable. I was not satisfied with my attempts to score them.

Some years later, I dropped the middle part altogether and wrote another version of this music, scoring it for violin, cello and piano. Freed from the attempt to set the words of Shakespeare’s noble text, I invented a new middle section.

What had been a song, then a choral piece, now became the second movement of my two-movement Piano Trio #4.

The first movement is energetic but rough and thorny; the second movement is gorgeous and resigned. My idea was to lead musicians and listeners through a thorn bush in the first movement and then to arrive at fragrant roses in the second movement.

But no one has ever liked that first movement, not even me. Who wants to be led through a thorn bush? When Beethoven gets rough and energetic, everybody loves it. I'm not Beethoven. I can't do that sort of music effectively because it doesn't arise from my True Self.

What's more, I blundered badly in scoring the second movement. I took the cello way, way up high ... so high that it is freakish. When the Mirecourt Trio recorded the work, the cellist Terry King, a superb musician in every sense of the word, had to do more than sixty takes of that high part before he finally got one that satisfied him.

Now, that was the composer's fault, not Terry's. I was there for the recording session, enduring my punishment. It is an agony to hear one's music butchered two or three times, but sixty times is almost beyond bearing, believe me. The anxiety was intense; I struggled to remain in the studio.

I hated that experience so much that I have done my best to avoid being in that situation again. As far as possible, without being rude, I refuse to be present at sessions where my music is being recorded.

I wrote the cello part that high because I gathered that cellists love to play up high. There was no great difficulty for a cellist in ascending but the descent that followed proved almost impossible to play.

The unfortunate result of my blunder is that, because the cello part is so high and because the first movement is so unpleasant, this trio has almost never been performed.

The trio is on my CD "Four Piano Trios" which, as with all my CDs, I sent to America's classical music radio stations. The result? The OTHER three trios get broadcast, but NEVER my Trio #4. Another punishment. Broadcasters know, and rightly, that listeners aren't going to welcome that thorny first movement. When music like that comes on, listeners will change the channel. Or turn off the radio. I know i would. Who needs it?

Thus, the music of the second movement, so beautiful, so lovely, so radiantly resigned, having come so far, remaied imprisoned in an unplayable work, bound forever to an ugly first movement.

I think of Andromeda, chained to a rock and guarded by a hideous sea serpent, waiting to be rescued by Perseus.

I mourned this music for many years, an unhealed wound.

Then, about five years ago, cellist Josh Aerie pressed me to write a work for flute, cello and piano, to be featured on a new CD of my music.

I had an idea that I could re-score this music, yet again, this time for flute, cello and piano, making it part of a four-movement work that would also feature rescorings and expansions of some songs I'd written for voice and piano.

At last I could liberate the beautiful music that was trapped, unheard, in my Piano Trio #4. Perseus to the rescue!

I scored the troublous high cello passage for the FLUTE this time, for which high notes sound entirely natural. The piano opens with the chords that were once scored for a chorus singing: “ended, ended, ended.”

When the cello enters it ‘sings’ “Our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air….”

The movement ends with the chords that were sung: “rounded, rounded, rounded with a sleep."

I named the newly assembled work "Seasonal Breezes." Because this movement has the radiant resignation associated with Prospero. Because Prospero is an autumnal character, and because "The Tempest" is Shakespeare's last play, his farewell to the theatre, written in the autumn of his years, I named the movement "Autumn Breeze."

At last, Andromeda has been freed. As I hear this music, I see her, languid and lovely, improvising a fluid dance of quiet joy.

Life rarely affords us the opportunity to undo our earlier mistakes. This movement, and the Sylvan Trio’s gorgeous recording of it, undoes a few mistakes I made many, many years ago.

Would that all our regrets could be thus healed.

An autumnal thought, suited to late October.

To hear ’Summer Breeze’ from my suite “Seasonal Breezes” played by The Sylvan Trio (flutist Suzanne Bona, cellist Josh Aerie, pianist Greg Kostraba), click on the link above.

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

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

Has the season readied you for a “winter’s tale”? I’ve got a good one.

Live chickens are not permitted within the corporation limits of Bellville, Ohio, but when a tornado blew a big black hen from who-knows-where into our neighbor Charley’s yard, he took it as a sign -- of what, he didn’t say -- and kept her as a pet.

A year later, after Death blew Charley who-knows-where, his widow, Francine, became the sole caregiver for the hen, a cherished memento of her late husband.

Jo and I were sitting down to sup on potato soup one winter night when there came a knock upon the front door. It was Francine, distraught. She said that our Thurber had “got Charley’s chicken.” She said she had seen Thurber dragging the carcass back and forth between our snow-covered yards, even tossing it into the air.

I apologized, said this wasn’t like Thurber, that he usually only chased squirrels. Francine and I searched both our yards in the dark, expecting to find blood-spattered snow and tattered remains. We found not so much as a black feather.

Francine, unconvinced, returned to her home and I to my potato soup. Just as I lifted a spoonful to my lips, Thurber scratched on our back door. I got up, let him in. The old black yarn stocking cap that had seen long service as Thurber’s wrestling partner and opposing tug-of-warrior had somehow gotten hooked onto the ‘belt buckle’ of his collar.

As I untangled it, I suddenly saw how Francine had arrived at her accusation: looking out a window, she had seen Thurber in the dim twilight, dragging his black stocking cap alongside; she mistook the cap for Charley’s chicken. The chicken herself was, no doubt, snug and safe in her coop, sound in body and mind. Francine had not thought to look for her there.

A simple explanation would set matters straight, restoring our good name as well as Thurber’s.

I took the raggedy cap over to Francine’s house and rang the doorbell. When she opened the door, I joyfully displayed it, holding it aloft in my left hand and pointing to it with my right. With a big, confident, Midwestern smile, I announced, “Look what I found!”

She gave me the look Perseus used to get when he went around carrying, by her horrible hair, the severed head of Medusa.

Except in the movies, I’d never seen anyone faint. I caught Francine on her way to the floor. Too late, holding her in my arms, lowering her gently to the carpet, desperate to explain, I cried, “It’s a stocking cap! A stocking cap!”

“It’s a stocking cap,” I said again as she came to. “It wasn’t your chicken … ”

When I got home I told Jo what had happened. As I once again sat down to supper, she observed, “It’s a good thing, when Francine came over, that we were having potato soup instead of chicken soup.”

To hear “On a Night of Snow" from Seasonal Breezes played with spirit by the Sylvan Trio (flutist Suzanne Bona, cellist Josh Aerie, pianist Greg Kostraba), click on the link above.

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

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

-- Odell Shepherd, the opening paragraph of the final chapter of “The Cabin Down the Glen”

Truly, literature and music are twins. They both convey images, narratives, metaphors of our human experience. The former does it with carefully chosen phrases, carefully crafted sentences, carefully organized paragraphs.

Phrases like “leaves sidling down.”

Sentences of simple truth and beauty: “No cricket sings.”

Paragraphs with opening and closings that are connected: “The frost walked last night … and I must soon be going.”

Music does it with carefully selected intervals, chords, melodies and choice of instruments.

The thoughts and feelings expressed in that lyrical and wistful paragraph are precisely the same as those I tried to express in my piece, “Autumn Breeze.”

To hear ’Autumn Breeze’ from my suite “Seasonal Breezes” played by The Sylvan Trio (flutist Suzanne Bona, cellist Josh Aerie, pianist Greg Kostraba), click on the link above.

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

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Almost all of my music has been written in response to requests from friends.

When the three musicians who call themselves ‘the Sylvan Trio’ were casting about for a name for their ensemble, they asked me how I would feel if they called themselves ‘the Sowash Trio.’

I thanked them for the honor but I told them that I didn’t think it would be a good name for a chamber ensemble. “It would make people think of doing the laundry or the dishes,” I told them. “They would picture the three of you being compelled to scrub pots and pans. So? Wash!!”

I told them the story of my strange name: an Americanization of the name of my French ancestors, “Sauvage.” I went on to tell them that the French word means “wild” or “natural” and that it originates from the Latin word “sylva,” meaning “forest.” We have an echo of that Latin word in our word “sylvan” which I see in realtor’s descriptions of property: “a sylvan setting.”

That’s when it struck me! Name the ensemble “the Sylvan Trio.”

They liked it and embraced it as the name for their ensemble.

Then they got down to business and asked me to write something for them. That was the impetus for my having composed my Trio #1 for flute, cello and piano, subtitled “Seasonal Breezes.”

I want to share the “Spring Breeze” movement with you today.

The connection between composing and friendship continues to flourish. Lately I have written a lot of music for flute, oboe and cello. Why? Because I have three friends who love to play together and who sometimes play in our services at Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church. I adore the sound of those three instruments playing together but if I had lacked friends who could play the piece, I doubt I would have hit upon the notion of writing music for such an ensemble.

But I did! A whole suite of movements, seven in all. I’m calling it “Bird’s Eye Suite”, inviting listeners to ponder what it would be like to look through the eyes of a bird in flight, seeing the ground far below but also the distant hills and clouds. Think how wonderful that would be.

Walt Whitman pondered that notion and wrote one his best short poems, “The Man O’ War Bird.” He addresses the bird, saying, “Hadst thou my soul, what joys were thine!”

The sensation of flight is also expressed in the “Spring Breeze” movement which I want you to hear today. It’s not a long flight though, like that of the Man O’War bird who could cross oceans and seas.

“Spring Breeze” is less than two minutes long but it is nevertheless jam-packed with ideas.

I wrote this trio in 2014. In the last two years I have written four more numbered trios for this combination of instruments. These have not yet been recorded but the Sylvan Trio is making plans to do so.

To hear "Spring Breeze" from Seasonal Breezes in a spirited performance by The Sylvan Trio (flutist Suzanne Bona, cellist Josh Aerie, pianist Greg Kostraba), click on the link above.

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