What about this phrase “the Fine Arts?”

Fine arts as opposed to what?

The Crude and Clumsy Arts?

Same with “Classical Music.”

What? Do we mean to imply that other kinds of music “ain’t got no class?"

For some, the very notions of “Fine arts” and “Classical music” ring false. Folk art and popular music can sometimes be very fine indeed.

Take dear old Grandma Moses. Was she not a fine artist?

Think of Stephen Foster, J.P. Sousa, Scott Joplin, Louis Armstrong, Jerome Kern, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Pete Seeger, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon. Their best works are classics …. and classy, too!

Oh, I know the definitions of these terms. If “Fine” and “Classical” imply exclusivity, it’s an accident of semantics. Still, I wish we could come up with a better term for what we call “classical” music. I’ve tried and failed. Seemingly, no one else has succeeded either. We suspect the term puts off potential listeners, but we’re stuck with it, I fear.

There is a legitimate warning here: When we narrow our sensibilities, as when we categorize some things “classical” or “fine," we imperil our openness to and understanding of expressions that we can’t readily categorize.

A cultivated friend, aware of this danger, told me, “If ever I write my autobiography, I am going to title it: 'Impaired by Snobbery.’”

Ha! The reason that’s funny is because we know that my friend “isn’t the only sucker in town.” We’re all hobbled by snobbery, one way or t’other. It’s comes with being human.

The Tao Te Ching warns against this, implicitly urging us to see through the fallacies we erect.

"When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.”

We instinctively organize everything into opposites. Beautiful vs. ugly. Good vs. bad. Right vs. Left. To name a few. It’s useful, short-term, but it’s a childish way of looking at the world.

One of my oldest friends, Dick Ferrell, whom I’ve known since I was eleven years old, wrote a delightful little poem satirizing our tendency to reduce everything to opposites, coaxing us to move beyond that way of thinking … simply by hiking.

Hither and Yon

I've been to Hither many a time,
But I've never been to Yon.
I think I'll travel there sometime.
I'll wake up with the dawn.
I'll lace my boots,
And grab my hat,
I'll put my backpack on
And prob'ly be 'bout halfway there
Before they know I'm gone.

Have you ever wanted to visit a place
With a name like To or Fro?
Or If or When, or This or That,
Or maybe High or Low?
Or These or Those,
Or Now or Then
Or maybe Fast or Slow?
It's such an easy thing to do.
Just get up and go.

Listening to music, we’ve often ‘hiked' through and beyond the opposites of that art form ... loud-soft, fast-slow, major-minor, high pitch-low pitch. These examples are purely musical, but music is also rich with stylistic opposites. “Classical” vs. “Popular,” for instance.

In my music I often attempt a reconciliation of musical opposites, but also of stylistic opposites, seeing what happens when the gestures of disparate genres, such as “Classical” and “Popular” are juxtaposed.

American composers have a knack for this. It is one of the blessings of living in a democracy, but no one, to my knowledge, explored that set of possibilities before Charles Ives (1874-1954). Ives pioneered the reconciliation of popular music and classical music by mixing Civil War songs, hymns, band music and ragtime into his symphonies and sonatas. That’s partly why Ives, for my money, is our greatest American composer and one of my heroes.

Others pushed further yet, exploring this impulse to reconcile musical gestures that had seemed hopelessly disparate; Gershwin blended elements of jazz into a rhapsody, a concerto and a tone poem; Copland built two of his ballets on cowboy songs and, in another, rendered world-famous the Shaker folk-hymn “Simple Gifts.” Another example is Bernstein’s orchestral suite of the music he wrote for the Broadway musical, “West Side Story.”

In the music of those composers, the Popular and the Classical are presented simultaneously, each enriching the other, as opposites do when skillfully and satisfyingly reconciled.

Which brings me — at last! -- to the music I want to share with you today, my Variations on a Hiking Song for solo piano. The theme is the well-known tune, “The Happy Wanderer.” You know it, don’t you? The chorus goes: "Val-de-ree, val-de-rah!”

But the variations are not exactly on “The Happy Wanderer.” In fact, that tune is never actually heard, as such. Instead the piece begins (and ends) with the bare, skeletal outline of the tune. It’s pared down so much that it’s almost unrecognizable. You’ll have to listen carefully to realize that the source of the lean, spare theme that opens the piece is “The Happy Wanderer.”

My idea was to reduce the tune to its barest minimum at the beginning, and again in the final variation, and then, in between, to ‘flesh out’ the skeletal tune through variations that alternate, more or less, between the Popular style and the Classical style.

The music swings back and forth between those two supposedly opposing styles, even going to extremes, invoking the clichés of Popular music in one variation followed by an elegant “Classical” expression in the next.

The distinctions between the two stylistic worlds are increasingly blurred as the piece goes on; gradually the music becomes ambiguous. Are the later variations intended to be Popular or Classical? ironic or sincere? a parody or an homage?

But there is no doubt at the end. The final variation, a Requiem, is heartfelt, touching and sincere. It’s like a benediction; it brings closure to the piece.

Why did I end a delightful piece with a Requiem? Because the piece was composed in 1992, in memory of my father, Richard Sowash, who died in 1991.

To hear my friend Phil Amalong give a marvelous rendition of my Variations on a Hiking Song, click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
July 17, 2016

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

At our peril, we categorize some music as “classical” and some arts as “fine," hobbling our openness to expressions that we can’t readily categorize. We are discomfited when music or art that is new to us fails to fall into place among the usual categories.

The Tao Te Ching warns us about this, implicitly urging us to see past the boundaries we erect.

"When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.”

We instinctively organize everything into opposites. Right vs. left. In vs. out. Beautiful vs. ugly. Good vs. bad. Useful in the short-term, it’s a child’s view of the world.

One of my oldest friends, Dick Ferrell, whom we lost the day after last Christmas, left behind a delightful little poem satirizing our tendency to reduce everything to opposites, coaxing us to move beyond that way of thinking … by going out for a hike, literally and figuratively.

Hither and Yon

I've been to Hither many a time,
But I've never been to Yon.
I think I'll travel there sometime.
I'll wake up with the dawn.
I'll lace my boots,
And grab my hat,
I'll put my backpack on
And probably be about halfway there
Before they know I'm gone.

Have you ever wanted to visit a place
With a name like To or Fro?
Or If or When, or This or That,
Or maybe High or Low?
Or These or Those,
Or Now or Then
Or maybe Fast or Slow?
It's such an easy thing to do.
Just get up and go.

Listening to music, we’ve often ‘hiked' through and beyond the opposites inherent the musical materials: loud-soft, fast-slow, major-minor, high pitch-low pitch. These examples are purely musical, but we’ve also created opposing styles of music. “Classical” vs. “Popular,” for instance.

Dolly Parton had some self-deprecating fun with this notion when she said that she performed BOTH kinds of music: “Country AND Western.”

In my music I often attempt a reconciliation of musical opposites, but also of stylistic opposites, seeing what happens when the gestures of disparate genres, such as “Classical” and “Popular” are juxtaposed.

American composers have a knack for this. It is one of the blessings a democracy provides. No one explored these possibilities more extensively than Charles Ives (1874-1954).

Ives pioneered the reconciliation of popular and classical music, mixing Civil War songs, hymns, band music and ragtime -- the popular music of his day -- into his symphonies and sonatas. That’s partly why Ives, for my money, is our greatest American composer and one of my heroes. His portrait hangs on the wall in my cubbyhole, next to Henry Thoreau, Theodore Roosevelt and Odell Shepard.

Gershwin did this too when he blended elements of jazz into a rhapsody, a concerto and a tone poem; Bernstein did a similar thing in his score for “West Side Story.” Copland’s populist ballets are based on cowboy songs and the Shaker folk-hymn “Simple Gifts.”

In the music of those composers, the Popular and the Classical are presented simultaneously, each enriching the other, as opposites do when skillfully aligned.

For music to sound authentically American, it must give expression to the cultural diversity of this ‘melting pot’ in which we live as well as the wide open spaces of the continent. The American composers must ask themselves, “How am I going to do this? What musical materials among I going to use?”

Which brings me — at last! -- to the music I want to share with you today, my Variations on a Hiking Song for solo piano. The theme is the well-known tune, “The Happy Wanderer.” You know it, don’t you? The chorus goes: "Val-de-ree, val-de-rah!”

But the variations do not grow out of “The Happy Wanderer” in its familiar form. In fact, in the piece that tune is never actually stated, as such. Instead the piece begins (and ends) with the bare, skeletal outline of the tune. It’s pared down so much that it’s almost unrecognizable. “Thrift, Horatio! Thrift!” You’ll have to listen carefully to realize that the source of the lean, spare opening theme is “The Happy Wanderer.”

The tune is reduced to its barest minimum at the beginning, and again in the final variation. In between, the skeleton of the tune is “fleshed out” in variations alternating, more or less, between Popular and Classical styles.

The music swings back and forth between those two supposedly opposing styles, even going to extremes, invoking the clichés of Popular music in one variation followed by those elegant “Classical” expression in the next.

The distinctions between the two stylistic worlds are increasingly blurred as the piece goes on; gradually the music becomes ambiguous. Are the later variations intended to be Popular or Classical? ironic or sincere? a parody or an homage?

But there is no doubt at the end. The final variation, a Requiem, is heartfelt. A benediction, it brings closure to the piece.

Why did I end an otherwise lighthearted piece with a Requiem? Because the piece was composed in 1992, in memory of my father, Richard Sowash, who died in 1991.

To hear my friend Phil Amalong’s marvelous rendition of my Variations on a Hiking Song, click on the link above.

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