“Speak Gently, Spring” is the name of the middle movement of my suite for cello and piano, “Dark Forest.”

The title of the suite comes from the Russian proverb:
“The heart of another is a dark forest.”

The title of the second movement comes from the opening of Lew Sarrett’s heartbreaking poem, Four Little Foxes:

Speak gently, Spring, and make no sudden sound
for in my windy valley yesterday I found
New born foxes squirming on the ground
Speak gently.

The poem is beautiful but too sad to quote in its entirety on a sunny Sunday morning. Though never employing the word “sorry,” the poem expresses the deepest apologies all right-thinking people yearn to make to all the random victims — plants, animals, humans -- for all the random violence that is visited upon all things that live.

An apology requires language; music cannot apologize. I know of no piece of music that says, “I’m sorry.”

(The humorist in me can’t help but chuckle: imagine a classical music radio announcer smoothly intoning, “And now we turn to the “Apologia #4 for Alp Horn, Sackbutt and Accordion” by Sir Lemuel Gudalphus Primrose, dedicated to Queen Victoria as an act of penitence for the composer’s having inadvertently belched within earshot of Her Majesty. She was not amused.")

Music can evoke the emotions that come with the act of apologizing:
the tender sadness of regret,
the healthy despair of humbling oneself,
the tenuous hope of forgiveness,
the resolve that, beginning now, we will try to ’speak gently.’

Unfortunately, I have a lot of experience in the making of apologies. Me and my big mouth. I squirm when I think how often I’ve managed to say “The Wrong Thing,” even to people I deeply love and esteem, only to realize, later, with intense regret, that I blundered, that the mistake cannot be undone, that all I can do is apologize.

Apologizing often, I have acquired a few skills which might be worth sharing.

— Ask the ‘apologizee’ if now is a time when you might have a quick word.

— Position yourself so that your face is level with theirs or, better yet, lower than theirs. When I had to apologize to two students at my school, “Leaves of Learning,” I found them sitting on the floor in the hallway, eating their lunch; I sat down on the floor right in front of them. If they had been standing, I’d have tried to sit in a nearby chair or if no chair was handy, I’d have stood, slumping my shoulders a little. This might seem more like acting than apologizing, but body language and spatial integrity are important. If your apology is sincere, considering how to position yourself is not acting; it’s effective communication.

— Say “I’m sorry for what I said or did.” Spell it out. Be specific about the thing you said or did which you now sorely regret.

— Avoid saying, “I’m sorry if you…” It’s not about how the apologizee might have misunderstood you or how they might have been too sensitive, too quick to take offense or less than reasonable in some way. It’s about YOU acknowledging that YOU know that YOU blundered. It’s about YOU owning up.

— Do not make excuses for yourself, such as, “I was having a bad day” or “I’m going through a difficult time right now” or “I had such a lot else on my mind that day.” What’s the point? At that precise moment, who cares?

— Important: When you’ve made your apology, ask if the apologizee forgives you. Give them the chance to put it into words. Ask them: “Do you forgive me?” or “Can you forgive me?” Then fall silent. Listen. This is the crucial moment. You are humbling yourself before them and rendering yourself vulnerable to their judgment. You may need to wait for their response.

— If they nod or say yes, say, “Thank you. This means so much to me. Ever since I said or did that stupid thing, I’ve felt just awful. But now I’m starting to feel a little better. Thank you.”

— Tell them that you have learned from this go-round and that you promise that you’ll try your best not to make the same type of mistake again.

— Unless they want to say something more, let it rest there. I’ve found that the apologizees are as eager to put the matter behind them as I am. As a way of concluding the matter, they’re likely to say, “Oh, it wasn’t that big of a deal” — even though you both know that it was. If they say that, don’t argue the point. Let it be.

— One last important tip: when you see the apologies again, a day or two later, whisper in their ear, “Thank you for forgiving me.” And then move on quickly to whatever else is at hand. No reply is needed or expected.

A wise friend of mine says: "I have sometimes thought that a relationship really becomes solid and authentic when there has been some rift that has been healed, after there have been apologies and reconciliation and things go on with a new and more solid grounding."

To hear "Speak Gently, Spring” from Dark Forest performed by cellist Josh Aerie and pianist Greg Kostraba, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click 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
May 5, 2019

P.S. Please help me raise money for “Leaves of Learning,” the non-profit school where I teach.
Buy, directly from me, my new book “What Book Next? Practical and Inspiring Insights for Readers.”
ALL PROFITS will be donated to the school.
Just 100 pages long, it explores many delightful ways of deciding what book we will read next.
Cost: $10. Free shipping. (Contribute more, if you wish, by paying more than $10.) To make an on-line payment, use Paypal here: PayPal.Me/whatbooknext

Or mail a check payable to Rick Sowash to:
Rick Sowash
6836 School Street
Cincinnati, OH 45244
Thanks!

To give you a notion of what the book has to offer, here is how Pat Marriott’s Foreword begins:

At the very moment Rick Sowash, friend and fellow professional, asked me to write a foreword for What Book Next?, my eye landed on a bookmark on my desk, captioned “Life Is a Treasure Hunt – You Just Need to Know Where to Look.”
It’s hard to encapsulate this superb little book any better.

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When our son Chapman was a little boy, we called him Chappy. He was a bright little guy, very verbal and always desperately hungry for a story.

He would say, “Tell me a LONG story!" So I would start off with something or other and go on for 15 or 20 minutes, fashioning what I thought was a long story, making it up as I went along. If you’ve done this, you know that it is mentally draining, even exhausting after awhile. When my capacity to invent and develop threads of a story wore thin, I would bring it to an end.

I quickly discovered that ending a story left him angry and crest-fallen.

“That wasn’t a LONG story!” Chappy would cry, greatly disappointed. “I wanted to hear a LONG story!”

I finally realized that what he wanted was a “chapter” with an open ending, "to be continued.” He hated it when characters solved all their problems and lived happily ever after. He hated THE END. What he wanted a serial.

So, when I grew weary, or had to see to my chores, I would leave the story hanging, with an enemy ship on the horizon or a mysterious voice coming from the attic or an ominous hint that Fate was devising its next booby trap … whatever … and then we would pick up the story from there another time.

That satisfied him. He didn’t mind a story stopping, he just didn’t want it to END.

Storytelling and composing are very closely related. First cousins, really. Both art forms pull listeners through a stretch of time. Both art forms present, develop and recapitulate ideas. We demand that both art forms conform to an inner logic. When they do end, however long it takes, they must deliver a satisfying sense of closure.

There are some parallels between chapters and movements, but they diverge as regards closure. Like Chappy, we adore a 'cliff-hanger' at the end of a chapter but we expect a symphonic movement, when it ends, to feel complete, even when we know, from the program, that another movement will follow.

This begs the question, ‘How long should a given piece of music be?’ The length of a Bach fugue seems immutable, like the shape of a fern. But remember, it could have been almost any length the composer deigned to give it.

One of Beethoven’s piano bagatelles is 19 seconds long. Some of Mahler’s symphonic movements go on for half an hour or more. What is the right length for a piece of music? It depends upon the content and the point at which we’re satisfied that the ideas have been sufficiently developed, recapitulated and concluded.

The best music-making, whether in composing or performing, delivers a musical experience that is precisely long enough to feel ‘just right’ for all concerned.

Music that is not well written or well performed can seem painfully long.

Listen to P.G. Wodehouse’s character Bertie Wooster recounting his experience of enduring a violin solo in an amateur talent show:

"I cannot say whether La Pulbrook's violin solo was or was not a credit to the accomplices who taught her the use of the instrument. It was loud in spots and less loud in other spots, and had the strange quality that I've noticed in all violin solos of seeming to go on much longer than it actually did.”

ha, ha. That makes me laugh. There is no one like Wodehouse.

Somewhere between the domains of storytelling and music lies the shady glen where Poetry keeps her dwelling.

How long should a poem be? Precisely as long as it needs to be, no more, no less.

Consider this perfect and perfectly delightful poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

Silver bark of beech, and sallow
Bark of yellow birch and yellow
Twig of willow.

Stripe of green in moosewood maple,
Colour seen in leaf of apple,
Bark of popple.

Wood of popple pale as moonbeam,
Wood of oak for yoke and barn-beam,
Wood of hornbeam.

Silver bark of beech, and hollow
Stem of elder, tall and yellow
Twig of willow.

It is neither too long nor too short. A single syllable, added or deleted, would undo its perfection.

Yet, what does this poem mean? What story does it tell? These are the wrong questions. What does a piece of music mean? What story music tell? Wrong questions. The poem pulls us along in much the same way that music pulls us when well written and performed, largely by the sounds it makes.

The poem’s closure is achieved structurally, not as the result of meaning or a narrative that ties up loose ends. The close similarity of the first and last verses gives us the recapitulation and completion we ask from a poem (or a story or a piece of music).

In my piece, “Twig of Willow” for cello and piano, the cello simply articulates the notes one might sing if one were vocalizing the words of Edna's poem. If you follow the poem as you listen, I think you’ll hear this. And I think you’ll agree that the duration of the piece of music is just as perfectly right as the duration of the poem.

To hear “Twig of Willow” from the suite Dark Forest wonderfully performed by cellist Josh Aerie 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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A Chinese restaurant in Washington D.C. has the best name any restaurant could possibly have, ever, anywhere.

Our daughter lives there -- not in the restaurant, in the city -- and, when visiting, we’ve sometimes driven past this restaurant.

I have never dined there. I hope the owner never reads this but, in truth, it’s just one of those greasy, tired, hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurants, with three tables, six chairs, a counter and up high on the wall behind the counter a row of badly faded color photos of a half dozen clichéd Chinese dishes, Kung Pao, Moo goo gai pan, Chow Mein, Wing Tip Shu, Long Thyme Fan, what have you.

HOWEVER!

The NAME of the establishment encapsulates, astonishingly, in SEVEN letters all that we could desire from any restaurant.

The name of the restaurant is …. “FULLYUM”

Full. Yum. Satiation plus gustatory delight.

What more could anyone ask? Understanding “full” and “yum” in the broadest sense, what more does any right-minded person desire from Life?

Naming a restaurant is tricky. Same with babies and new pieces of music.

For several weeks I’ve been at work on an exciting and beautiful new piece for cello and piano. It’s very nearly finished. Now I have to give it a title.

Sometimes the form generates the title. The form of this piece is simple: A B A1. The A section is marked “ruvido,” meaning “rough,” because the music tries for that dark, rhythmic energy we associate with Beethoven. The B section is marked “teneremente,” meaning tender. The A1 section combines elements of the A and B sections, an old composer’s trick, a reconciliation of musical opposites.

The A section is dense and thorny, like a briar patch. The B section is soaring and heady like the fragrance of flowers.

I could title it “Ruvido e Teneremente,” i.e., Italian for “rough and tender.” But I’m not Italian. Using the English words as a title -- “Rough and Tender” -- would be unseemly, unsavory, salacious. No, thank you.

I’ve considered the title, “Briars and Blossoms.” I like the alliteration and the images those words convey. But briars and blossoms are static. They just sit there. My “dense and thorny” A section bristles with energy. The word “briar” does not express energy. Neither does “blossoms.” Flowers are lovely but they don’t soar.

The combining of “briars” and “blossoms” recalled to my mind a tiny poem, one of “Three Sayings from Highlands, North Carolina” collected by Johnathan Williams and attributed to Doris Talley, Housewife & Gardener:

but pretty though as
roses is
you can put up with
the thorns

As with “Fullyum,” this little poem can be understood as a reflection on Life.

Might Doris’ proverb provide another possible title for my piece?

“Pretty Though As Roses Is”

I don’t know. In the poem, the bad grammar makes it seem genuine. It’s cute. But as a title for a serious piece of music for cello and piano the faulty grammar seems too … what is the word? fey? precious? dear? twee?

How about “Fullyum” as a title for the piece? Nah. That’s just silly.

I wish you could hear this piece and give me your ideas for a title. But it isn’t finished, let alone recorded. So I can’t share it yet.

Instead, I will share another cello-piano piece, one with an excellent title, “Twig of Willow.”

It’s the title of a perfect little poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

Silver bark of beech, and sallow
Bark of yellow birch and yellow
Twig of willow.

Stripe of green in moosewood maple,
Colour seen in leaf of apple,
Bark of popple.

Wood of popple pale as moonbeam,
Wood of oak for yoke and barn-beam,
Wood of hornbeam.

Silver bark of beech, and hollow
Stem of elder, tall and yellow
Twig of willow.

Neither too long nor too short. A single syllable, added or deleted, would undo its perfection.

Yet, what does this poem mean? What story does it tell? What wisdom does it impart? Like music, it simply means itself. It pulls us along in much the same way that music pulls us, by virtue of the sounds it makes.

The poem’s closure is achieved structurally, not like a moral at the end of a fable or the final paragraph of a narrative tying up loose ends. The similarity of the first and last verses gives us recapitulation and a sense of completion, mission accomplished. Somehow the phrase “twig of willow” at the end of the poem seems older and wiser than the one at the beginning.

In my piece, “Twig of Willow,” the cello simply articulates the notes one might sing if one were vocalizing Edna's words.

To hear “Twig of Willow” from the suite Dark Forest wonderfully performed by cellist Josh Aerie and pianist Greg Kostraba -- the two fine musicians to whom I’ve dedicated this new, as yet un-named piece -- click on the link above.

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