Because I had never heard the sound, I mistook it for the insane barking of a huge pack of wild dogs, surging toward me through the woods. But the sound approached more rapidly than dogs can run. Eyes straining, I peered into the underbrush, expecting the first of these high-speed dogs to burst through any second. Half-panicked, I half-twisted myself around, ready to run at the sight of them.

Then something overhead caught my eye. I looked up and saw — for the first time in my life — a flock of Canada Geese flying in V-formation above the hillsides of Bellville, Ohio, where I lived at the time. I had mistaken their raucous squawking for the sound of berserk barking. It was 1976 and Canada geese, once nearly extinct, were beginning to rebound.

It’s difficult to believe today, but for the first quarter century of my life I never saw Canada geese. They did not exist in Ohio. Today, they are found wherever there is water. They’re so abundant that they present an unsavory problem. As David Letterman said, “They evacuate but they don’t leave!”

All the same, seeing them in flight is a thrill. The V-formation of geese in flight seems the very essence of The North. It’s as powerfully suggestive of the vast majesty of this continent as the canoeing song, “Our Paddles Keen and Bright,” which Frank Culp, our Scoutmaster, taught us back in my Boy Scouting days. He told us the Voyageurs had sung this song as they canoed the endless regions between the Great Lakes and Hudson’s Bay.

Years later, now an adult volunteer on a High Adventure excursion for older Scouts, I sang that song again, paddle in hand, canoeing the lakes of Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park. I was in the bow and Dick “Grippy” Ferrell, my oldest friend — he was my patrol leader when I joined Scouts in 1961 at the age of 11 — was in the stern. We sang it loudly as we splashed along by day, we sang it reverently round the campfire by night …

"Our paddles keen and bright
Flashing like sliver
Swift as the wild goose flight,
Dip, dip and swing."

My Trio #12 for clarinet, cello and piano is subtitled “Voyageurs: Homage to Canada.” The opening movement is entitled “Geese in Flight.”

It begins with a musical depiction of geese flying in V-formation. The skittery cello and raucous piano energetically declaim an E flat; the cello quickly descends, step-wise, while the piano ascends at the same pace, creating the effect of a widening V-shape.

Then comes “Our Paddles Keen and Bright,” played in the lowest register of the cello, as if the song is rising from the pure, cold depths of Algonquin's lakes.

The clarinet enters with the first three notes of Max Steiner's main theme from “How the West Was Won,” a motif that, for me, still resonates with heroism and spaciousness.

These three musical figures — the V-shape, “Our Paddles” and Steiner's three-note motif — are developed as the movement unfolds, made into little fugues, expanded, overlapped.

The V-shape is heard four times. The last time, at the end of the movement, it is played in reverse, the outer notes converging, narrowing until they reach the same E flat that began the movement, to suggest the flock disappearing in the distance.

This music has never been professionally recorded; very few have heard it. To hear Trio da Camera (clarinetist Laurel Bennett, cellist Teresa Villani and pianist Carol Alexander) performing the first movement of Trio #12,” entitled “Geese in Flight,” click on the link above.

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

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
July 19, 2015

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I hope this message finds you in a warm and pleasant place, this cold, snowy night.

About 400 pieces of music have come tumbling through me over the past fifty years. I tried to make each of them beautiful in their own way, but BEAUTY, as such, was rarely the Thing I was trying to achieve. Only three or four were written with BEAUTY as the sole intent.

One of these is linked to this message (see below) and I hope you'll listen to all 5 minutes and 16 seconds of it. It is very nearly the most beautiful music I've written, yet it has been performed only twice and never professionally recorded.

It is "Starshadows on Snow," the third movement of my Trio #12 for clarinet, cello and piano, written in 2003, subtitled "Voyageurs: Homage to Canada."

To give you an idea of the entire work, here are the titles of all four movements:
I. Geese in Flight
II. Song of the Voyageurs
III. Starshadows on Snow
IV. A Majestic Land

The third movement depicts a boreal forest on a still, clear, moonless night, the starlight sifting faintly through bare, black branches, casting delicate, blue-gray shadows on the twinkling snow.

The cello opens the movement with a tentative, rising figure; the figure ascends to the clarinet and ascends from there to those tinkling keys in the highest register of the piano. Listen for the star music there, a gentle, poignant, descending pattern.

This music always brings to mind one of Shakespeare's most beautiful lines:

"Look how the floor of Heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold!"

Then comes the tune, played by the cello. It begins with an octave leap upward, as when we turn our faces starward, then slowly, softly drifts down, like starlight blanketing a winterscape. Four times the tune is heard, each with a different texture and treatment, the last a hymn of thanksgiving. The piano, again in its highest register, whispers the final measures. It's very beautiful.

There is a minor challenge awaiting you, I regret to say. Unlike the other mp3s I've shared with you in recent weeks, this is not a professional recording. It was performed by pretty good amateur musicians in a church but recorded with only just adequate sound equipment. Please try to hear past the technical quality; it is rough in places and never great. Hearing past the technical quality is a skill unto itself, like perceiving what is good about a play despite the flaws of a particular production or savoring what is good in a novel despite a scattering of aggravating typos.

I've produced fifteen CDs of my music over the past 24 years but many fine pieces, like this one, have not yet been professionally recorded. Most likely, this will be the only opportunity you'll ever have to hear this beautiful music.

Click on the link above.

Rick Sowash
Cincinnati, OH
December, 2013

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I’m sometimes undone by the combination of solitude and the setting sun.

Camping alone, driving solo through a dreary November twilight, even sitting in our livingroom while Jo is out on an evening errand, I’ve been overtaken by melancholy, overpowered by nostalgia, overwhelmed by wistfulness.

I'd have been a miserable voyageur.

You know about the voyageurs? Intrepid French Canadian canoers, their quest for furs drove them to the remotest regions of our continent.

I admire those ‘mountain men’ and proudly sport my red voyageur’s ‘toque’ (stocking cap) and ‘ceinture flèschée” (woven 'arrowed’ scarf / sash), Christmas gifts from my dear wife, apt ornaments for me, a North American man of French ancestry.

That’s me! C’est moi! (I’m not French Canadian, but only because my French ancestors stepped off the gangplank in Boston instead of Quebec.)

Voyageurs, deep in the wild, drew what comfort they could from their pipes, their Hudson’s Bay blankets and their music. A voyageur who could fiddle was highly respected, even prized, by his peers. Their music is what you would expect: cheerful, bumptious, hearty, repetitious.

Oddly, the music I wrote to honor the voyageurs embodies none of those traits.

In spite of the title — "Night Song of the Voyageurs" — my homage has nothing to do with their music. If a canoeful of voyageurs, shooting the Rapids of Time, were to arrive at our present day, and catch an earful of the music I want to share today, they would exchange bewildered looks.

The truth is that this movement — the second of my four-movement Trio #12 “Voyageurs: Homage to Canada” — is not about the voyageurs at all.

It’s about the feelings I know I would have if I were a solitary voyageur, far from my loved ones, wrestling with melancholy as the daylight fades and night comes on.

Since my earliest Boy Scout days, I’ve felt a little ashamed of these bouts of crepuscular dejection. Nowadays I simply admit it to myself. With age comes self-acceptance. I try to structure my life so as to avoid the dusk-y doldrums. If all else fails, I phone my daughter or son for a cheery chat.

Now that you know the truth about this music, enter it. Let me be your guide. If you want to listen while you read the following, copy and paste this link into your browser:

http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/trio_12_2.mp3

My “Night Song of the Voyageurs" opens with a long, lonely cello solo playing a tune that is both sad and lovely.

At 1:47 the cello ventures a cadenza, inviting the clarinet to take up the tune.

The clarinet obliges at 2:09, while the cello retreats to a supportive contrapuntal line in the lower octave.

Such a beautiful sound, the combination of clarinet and cello, with all the richness and depth of Canadian Grade A maple syrup.

At 4:15 it’s the clarinet’s turn to venture a cadenza, inviting the piano, which has rested silent thus far.

At 4:42 the pianist takes a turn as a soloist and, in a new and unexpected key, intones a variant of the sad and lovely tune, very high on the keyboard, with a tinkling left-hand accompaniment that evokes the stars and the Milky Way.

For me, this music recalls Shakespeare's beautiful line,

"Look how the floor of Heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold!”

At 6:30 the cello returns, as does the clarinet at 6:50 while the piano retreats, supporting their duet only with long sustained chords and a few flourishes, a few faint brush strokes.

At 8:33 all three instruments play as equals for the first time.

This is some of my most expressive music. Gloomy, yet gleaming. Sorrowful yet sparkling.

Even the darkest night ends at last. At 9:30 the piano heralds coming of dawn; at 9:49 the sun rises.

But it’s a false dawn; heavy clouds quickly set in. The movement ends with the cello plucking three grim chords on just two strings, loud and harsh.

This music has never been professionally recorded; very few have heard it. I would like to feature it on a CD someday, along with my Trios #11 and #13, also as yet unrecorded.

For now, that’s just a dream, like the pipe dream of a voyageur, alone by his campfire, warmed by his Hudson’s Bay blanket, gazing at the night sky.

To hear Trio da Camera (clarinetist Laurel Bennett, cellist Teresa Villani and pianist Carol Alexander) performing the second movement of Trio #12,” entitled “Night Song of the Voyageurs,” click on the link above.

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

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Twelve is a monumental number. Things that come in twelves tend to be things of importance. Apostles, months of the year, hours of a.m. and p.m., the chromatic scale, keys in the circle of fifths, Days of Christmas, signs of the Zodiac.

Oh! and eggs! Shall eggs be left unsung, unremembered, uncelebrated? "Shall there be no more cakes and ale?" Eggs are things of importance! You can’t make an omelet without them. Most commonly, eggs manifest themselves in twelves, dozens.

When I finished my Trio #11 for clarinet, cello and piano, I knew that if I wrote another trio, being numbered “12," it would have to be monumental, epic, vast, bold and strong!

(Similarly, I took it as a given that if I were to write a Trio #13 it would have to be dark, intense and turbulent. And it so it turned out to be! But that is another story and shall be told at another time.)

What topic, then, would befit my mandatorily monumental Trio #12?

Canada! I would write a four-movement homage to our great northern neighbor, the final movement being an evocation of the impressions the landscapes had made upon us during our visits to British Columbia, the Canadian Rockies, Algonquin Provincial Park, Montréal, Québec City, the Isle D’Orléans and up the St. Lawrence to Charlevoix, truly the gateway of North America.

With these breathtaking places in mind, I dubbed the final movement of my Trio #12, “A Majestic Land.”

The number twelve arrogated a work in four movements, scored in three flats (the key of E flat major), scored for three instruments. 4 x 3 = 12.

The piano's 88 keys endow that instrument with a range extending far below the lowest note of the cello, far above the highest note of the clarinet. Of those three instruments, the piano can make the biggest sound.

In my eleven preceding trios I had conceived of the clarinet and the cello as the leading characters, co-stars in the musical narratives, the piano mostly consigned to providing the backdrop, the set, the landscape where a "clarinet-meets-cello" story unfolded. Now, as the number twelve and the immensity of Canada's landscapes shaped my thinking, the piano became the protagonist.

In effect, this work is not a trio or even a chamber work; rather, it is a concerto for piano and orchestra except that the orchestra consists of only two instruments: a clarinet and a cello. In the scoring, I dispatched those two instruments to play with a philharmonic fullness and sweep; the greatness of an orchestra was thrust upon ‘em.

Unique among my works, this trio draws on the achievements of the Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius, perhaps, among the composers our culture has deemed ‘great,’ the one whom I most admire. In particular, the trio takes inspiration from Sibelius' 5th Symphony, also in E flat major.

I associate the Finnish Sibelius with Canada because he is “of the North.” As a Finn, his music stands in relation to the music of continental Europe in somewhat the same way that Canada stands in relation to the USA. Aloof from the obsessive motivic development of the Austrians, the Impressionist reveries of the French, the nationalism and exoticism of the Russians, the bucolic pensiveness of the British, Sibelius evokes the harsh beauty of Nature. His music seems to grow out of itself, just as a fern or a fox, a stream or a storm, a glacier or a mountain grow out of themselves.

As an American attempting to fashion an homage to Canada, a stylistic homage to Sibelius seemed apt.

All the same, my Trio #12 is a work of chamber music. The greatest Sibelius works — his symphonies and tone poems — are orchestral. My Trio #12 presses the bounndaries of chamber music, striving to be larger in scope than a work of chamber music can be.

It offers a challenge and raises a question: how epic? — how strong? — how bold and vast? — can a work of chamber music be? I pushed that frontier as far as I could.

Perhaps I ought to have scored this music for piano and orchestra. But if I had written a piano concerto, you would never hear it. No pianist and orchestra would ever play it unless I hired them and though I have spent a small fortune producing my CDs, I could never afford to hire a soloist, a conductor, sixty musicians, a sound crew and a concert hall to record a piano concerto.

The musicians you’ll soon hear playing “A Majestic Land" received no payment for their efforts. As has been the case with most of the musicians on my recordings, their motivation to rehearse the music and record this music was love. My gratitude, and yours, would be their only compensation. They worked very hard to master it, gave a single performance, sent me the recording.

Except for the small audience that attended that performance, you are the first to hear this music! That’s exciting, don’t you think?

I hope someday to issue the entire Trio #12 on a CD along with my other two as-yet-unrecorded trios for clarinet, cello and piano: Trio #11 “We Sang, We Danced,” and Trio #13 “Passacaglia & Fugue.” The chances are slim. CDs are awfully expensive to produce; composing is an expensive hobby!

I want to find ways to share my work but, as many of you know, with age comes parsimony; we are more inclined to conserve our resources, less inclined to expend them; we don’t know what lies ahead; the only certainty is the imminent dwindling of our resources and energy.

Happily, these days, music doesn’t HAVE to be on a CD to be heard. It can simply be sent to friends and fans, as I am doing in these emails, with links to websites where mp3s await your discovery.

Today, to hear Trio da Camera (clarinetist Laurel Bennett, cellist Teresa Villani and pianist Carol Alexander) performing the last movement of Trio #12,” entitled “A Majestic Land,” click on the link above.

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

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Until we moved to 6836 School Street last January, I never realized how much a right-feeling home can boost one’s particular quotient of Gross Personal Happiness. The months we have passed here since January have been the happiest I’ve known since “I came to man’s estate.”

Here, in the semi-countryside between Newtown and Mariemont, “Quietness keeps her dwelling and Peace descends like snow.”

The house is smallish but spacious-seeming; the exterior has the clean, Greek Revival lines in the pure Federalist style; the interior is graced with gleaming hardwood floors, built-in cabinets, amber-toned paneling, exposed beams, a window-seat and three brick-and-stone fireplaces.

Come 2030, with luck and/or the Grace of God, we will be on hand to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the construction of “The Garard-Martin House.” That is the historically accurate, albeit lackluster name of the house as designated on the metal plaque out front, indicating its inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.

Old houses often have names. Our ‘new’ house reminds us very strongly of Forge Brook Farm, which is not a farm but rather the name of the 1760 home of our friends in West Cornwall, CT. We have, with great delight, house-sat for them many times while they were traveling, for stretches of three to eight weeks. Exploring Litchfield County, we discovered that many of northwestern Connecticut's country estates have names: Stonehaven, Cream Hill, Roseland, Greenlea, Brookside.

Before the Hand of God led us to 6836 School Street, Cincinnati, OH, we sometimes fantasized about moving to Litchfield County, CT. We amused ourselves by trying to decide what name we would give to our property there.

“Puttin’ on the Grits” was Jo’s brilliant suggestion. None of the other names we considered topped that one for sheer wit. What a woman, stringing together those four words, clustering all those associations into a single phrase, mingling the accurate and the ironic, the literal and the metaphorical. My wife! I am in awe of her.

Still, that name wouldn’t apply to our home here on School Street. Truth be told, ours is a modest neighborhood. None of our neighbors could be justly satirized for ostentatiously “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”

Should we re-name our home? On line, I found a house-naming website mounted by a sign-making company. The site’s headline admonishes the visitor with sombre words of warning: “Naming your home is an important reflection of yourself so choosing the perfect name is an important and difficult job.”

Granted. Duly noted. When the word ‘important’ appears twice in the same sentence, someone really means business.

I set to work, trying to employ the hopeful tips offered on the site..

The site asked, “What plants and animals are found near your house?”

Poison ivy is a-flourish here, wherever the lawn meets the woods. I chop it up with a hoe, roots and all, as soon as I spot it. I have pledged to fight it for as long as I live here.

Canada geese fly in and evacuate abundantly in these parts. You have to watch where you step. “Wild Goose Chase” seems an authentic name for the house, indigenously derived. But is it? Most of the geese just fly overhead; they don’t actually live here.

Squirrels and moles, on the other hand, are so profuse that a passerby might conclude that we are operating a sanctuary for these little furry creatures. “Squirrel Sanctum” would be an apt name except that it suggests that we provide hospice care, mortuary rituals plus interment or cremation for these agile ‘tree rats.’ We do not. We do, however, lavish upon them a great deal of bird seed, purchased at a considerable cost.

In “The Wind in the Willows” the character “Mole” calls his home “Mole End.” That brings to mind other literary house-names: “Howard’s End,” “Bag End” and elfin names like “Journey’s End,” “Vagabond’s Rest” and “Wanderer’s Repose.” Please.

“Sowash End” conjures discomfiting images. What “end” (or whose) are we being asked to cleanse? The same would hold true for other potential but vaguely unsavory names such as “Raw End” or “Butt End.”

“Which End?” or “To What End?” come to mind but unless there is some uncertainty about the title-deed one doesn’t want a question mark at the end of a house name.

“Happy Ending”? Uh, no. It’s too fey, too close akin to saccharine house names like Dunroamin, Welcombe Hombe and The Crofties.

Our handyman says we are living in “Baby Monticello.” What would that be in Italian? “Monticellini?” Sounds like Mussolini’s favorite pasta. Won’t do.

Symmetrically posted on our front porch pillars are two flags: that of France and that of the good ole U.S. of A. “Two Flags Over Sowash” comes to mind but it’s too close to “Six Flags Over Texas.”

“Peace of Mind” has some appeal but it’s too close to giving someone “A Piece of My Mind.”

We recently put a new roof on the house -- Hunter Green shingles that match the shutters and flower boxes. Remembering “Anne of Green Gables,” perhaps the house should be named “Green Shingles.” Jo could pass herself off as “Jo of Green Shingles.” But there’s an echo of disease there; it brings to mind an attack of the varicella-zoster virus that has manifested itself, for some arcane reason, with a painful skin rash that is green instead of the customary pink. Shingles, as experienced by The Incredible Hulk (who is all-green) or anyone else, is / are no joke.

Then again, seeing as how Jo and I, in Ovid’s felicitous phrase, "form a multitude,” maybe our house name should arise from our having remained a couple for nearly half a century.

We are a happy duo, all told, but the combination of our given names is not. “Rickjo” sounds like a mispronunciation of “rickshaw” and “Jorick” evokes Hamlet pondering the skull of that “fellow of infinite jest,” the court jester he remembers from his boyhood. Drivers-by, seeing the sign out front, would burst out with, “Alas, poor Jorick, I knew him, Horatio.”

“The Gruesome Twosome” would be fun during the Halloween season but a dud and a downer during the rest of the year.

Beyond our names and the fact of our couple-hood, how might we be described? What word or phrase summarizes the character of our long mutual adventure?

Jo’s term -- “Independently Foolish” -- nails it and might almost serve as a house name.

Or my term, simply: “Harrumph.”

Just kidding. Both come close, but neither warrants a cigar as house names go.

Setting aside the current occupants (us), what word describes this place? It’s a house, nothing more. But ‘house’ is disappointing, a flat and boring word. Some combination of squirrels or poison ivy with a coy synonym for ‘house’ (such as chalet, shanty, bungalow, cottage, lodge, hall or ‘My Blue Heaven’) might work for some. Not us. ‘House’ may be boring; at least it’s not pretentious.

Still, if we use the word ‘house,’ then “The House of Sowash” comes too close to “The House of Usher,” which is to be avoided for its dark associations.

“The House of Something or Other” seems pleasantly whimsical to me but Jo is not amused.

Might the word “house” have distant cousins that could serve?

“Sowashes’ Keep.” (Sowashes keepers, losers weepers, right?)

“Sowashes’ Roost.” (What are we, chickens?)

“Sowash Knob.” (A chore for the cleaning lady.)

“Sowash Rise.” (Sounds like Proctor & Gamble’s newest laundry detergent.)

“Sowashstead” is as close to the name of an English manor house as we’re likely to come. Alas, we are neither English nor “to the manor born.”

Since 6836 School Street is, for us, our ‘new’ house, how about “Sowash New”? Nope. Bad pun.

Erroll Flynn would approve, I think, of “Sowashbuckler’s Retreat” but even the cleverest puns leave me a little nauseous.

Still, I think I could make an exception for a punning house name that picks up on my French heritage and the on-going comic entertainment of which my life is largely comprised: “Cirque de Sowash.”

You’ve got to admit it is a nimble name for a house. It might just do.

Now if only I can convince Jo.

* * *
Naming a house is easy compared to naming certain pieces of music.

Settling on a suitable title can sometimes be the most difficult part of composing. The tunes tumble out, but how shall we "name the baby”? Of my 400+ works, the title over which I struggled most was “Starshadows on Snow” from my trio #12 for clarinet, cello and piano, “Homage to Canada.”

One wouldn’t think it would be so difficult to name the phenomenon of starlight glaring faintly behind bare tree limbs to create stark, indigo-blue silhouettes on twinkling, silvery snow. To compress all of that into three words was, with me, the work of a month or more. “Starshadows on Snow” was the best I could do. Even now I’m not completely satisfied with it. At a certain point, you just have to let it go.

A clever title can’t save weak music; beautiful music is rendered no less beautiful by a merely adequate title.

The title “Starshadows on Snow" will serve and the music is gorgeous, if I’m allowed to say so. It’s one of my prettiest pieces.

To hear "Starshadows on Snow” from my Trio #12 for Clarinet, Cello & Piano, “Homage to Canada,” played by the Trio da Camera ((clarinetist Laurel Bennett, cellist Teresa Villani and pianist Carol Alexander), click on the link above.

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

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Read Yo-Yo Ma’s explanation of what music does for us, part of an interview with David Marchese published in the NYTimes on Nov. 20, 2020:

“What the pandemic has crystallized in my mind is that we need music because it helps us to get to very specific states of mind. … Everybody wants to get to certain states of mind during the day, during the cycle of the seasons. And during a pandemic, with the alienation of not having social contact, music is the energy [for that]. … We need music to make us feel at equilibrium through hard times and good times.”

I love how he puts it: music takes us to certain very specific states of mind.

When I have an hour of cooking ahead of me, or a half-hour of dishwashing after supper, I often listen, while I’m working, to music that brings me to certain states of mind. The adagio of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony #2. Gerald Finzi’s Eclogue and the Andante Quieto movement from his cello concerto. Richard Rodney Bennett’s suite from the film “Enchanted April.” The slow movement of Ravel’s piano concerto.

I don’t listen to my own music at such times; it is too distracting. My own music takes me to states of mind in which I recall the setting where I wrote the music, the issues in my life at that time, the people I knew and hoped to touch back then, many of whom are gone now. It’s too much to deal with when one is sautèe-ing minced shallots in olive oil, tossing in a pinch of this, a dash of that and a tablespoon of what-have-you.

Music prompts a state of mind, yes, but the reverse is also true; a state of mind can prompt music. A tune can sometimes emerge from and express a very specific state of mind. I recall one such tune; it came to me at just this time of year, when autumn gives way to winter. It came to me in G minor, a very particular and key, peculiar in that it is the brightest of the minor keys and has both sharps and flats.

The tune seemed to call out: “Sing me! SING me! I must be SUNG!”

“Yes, OK, gladly,” I replied to the tune. “But you have no lyrics.”

“You must invent them,” said the tune.

“Me? I’m a writer of sorts, but not a poet. Oh, I wrote a few poems when I was a college student but they weren’t good. Just thinking about them now embarrasses me.”

The tune wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Invent the lyrics,” it repeated. “If you don’t, who will? No one. Sadly, I shall forever remain a song without words.”

A week or two after this curious conversation, I had to make the tedious five-hour drive, solo, from Cincinnati to Cleveland. The landscape is almost featureless between those two cities. Remember, it was early December. Rural Ohio at its bleakest.

I get through long drives by listening to NPR or classical music radio stations. This time, I did something else. I brought along a clipboard, paper and a pencil. I resolved not to turn on the radio until I had invented the lyrics for this G minor tune.

First, I had to find my way back to the “very specific state of mind” from which the tune had emerged. The bleak landscape helped, as did the key of G minor. I set my cruise control for 72 mph, and despite tail-gating semi-trucks, sociopaths roaring past at 100 mph and the crass enticements of billboards, I jotted words as they came to me.

I scratched out some, tried again, singing the while, casting about for rhymes and words with round, singable vowels, writing “blind” because my eyes were on the road ahead of me. It was difficult both physically and mentally, but intriguing, like solving a puzzle.

When I reached the outskirts of Cleveland, the task was completed.

That was the only time I have written lyrics for one of my own tunes. It required a certain kind of self-discipline and focus to which I have not returned.

The poem that sprang from my efforts is respectable. Not great, but not bad either, in my opinion. Judge for yourself:

Now gone are the autumn leaves,
to cold earth they have fled,
and all of the trees seem dreary now
that once were yellow and red.

Now over us cold winds are blowing,
mourning the passing of fall,
reminding us of the truth immutable:
death comes to us all.

Such words we cannot gainsay.
This truth to all is known,
and we feel it most keenly this time of year,
when autumn colors have flown.

Yet look again at field and forest,
study the stubble and twig:
a hint of color foretells a blossom
will bloom forth from each sprig.

So friends, let us gather now
and sing Life's Oldest Song,
reminding ourselves to love that well
which we must leave ere long,

Consoling one another's sorrows,
raising our voices high
and living life more fully knowing
that, like leaves, we must fly.

I scored the music for SATB chorus and piano. Chris Miller led our church choir’s rendition of the piece as an anthem in an Advent service at Mt. Auburn Presbyterian.

Later I rescored the tune, wordless, for clarinet, cello and piano, expanding it considerably into the slow movement of my Trio #12 for those instruments, titled “Night Song of the Voyageurs.”

My chamber works have often first seen the light of day as a song, later expanded into an instrumental work. That much of my chamber music can be described as “lyrica” is not surprising that considering that many of the tunes began as vocal works, i.e., works with words.

Thus, music and lyrics can both arise from and evoke what Yo-Yo Ma calls “a very specific state of mind.” And when that is music played, listeners are drawn into the very state of mind in which the composer discovered the tune and invented, at least in this one case, for me, the lyrics.

To hear Trio da Camera (clarinetist Laurel Bennett, cellist Teresa Villani and pianist Carol Alexander) performing the second movement of Trio #12,” entitled “Night Song of the Voyageurs,” click on the link above.

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

“There are no ambulances in Nature’s realm.” Thus spake Mr. Ferrell.

We arrived bright and early at the last outpost of civilization, the outfitter’s dock on the southern shore of Lake Opeongo in Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park. A dozen older Scouts and six adults, of which I was one, aged 39.

Our leader was Scoutmaster Dick “Grippy” Ferrell, my good friend ever since I joined Boy Scout Troop 152 of Lexington, Ohio in 1961. Dick was the Patrol Leader of the Red Fox Patrol, to which I was assigned. Through our teens we were together on many scouting adventures — hiking, camping, competing in First Aid and woodcraft skills, cooking and telling stories, singing songs, yelling cheers and performing skits ‘round the campfire. Two years older than I, he was my leader and I looked up to him. Still do. We were awarded our Eagle badges at the same Court of Honor in 1966.

In our thirties, as adult scouters, we led the troop’s annual ‘high adventure’ canoe trips to Algonquin Provincial Park, a wilderness where we saw bears, minks and loons and where we had what Dick termed “Close Encounters of the Moose Kind.” We heard wolves howl, the most thrilling sound I will ever hear.

On balance, we also encountered no end of fearsome mosquitos, escaping them only when near the flame of a campfire or in a canoe on a windy lake.

Algonquin is beautiful and menacing.

A water taxi ferried us, our gear, paddles and canoes across the lake. There were cabins and docks visible on the shores and a few sailboats on the water. As we were taxied north, these gradually fell away leaving us in a realm devoid of human presence.

We were deposited on the north shore. As the taxi pulled away the roar of its engines faded. We were enveloped by a stillness and a silence so profound as to be unsettling. We felt we were being watched.

Mr. Ferrell, as the boys appropriately called him, made a speech about the risks of the wilderness. He said that an injury would be a life-and-death matter. “There are no ambulances in Nature’s realm.” In an emergency, how would we contact anyone who might help us? Cell phones weren’t invented yet. Even if we could send for help, a helicopter rescue would be extremely difficult. “So,” he said, “no funny stuff.”

We were sobered by his words. Subdued, yet energized, we set to work. We ‘portaged,’ carrying our canoes and paddles, our tents and sleeping bags, our personal gear and eight days’ worth of food on a quarter-mile path to the nearest lake. Then we shoved off, solemnly, into the silence, eighteen good men and true.

Like the French Canadian ‘voyageurs’ of old, we paddled and portaged from lake to lake. Clear skies above, clean water below. We made our way through water-lily marshes where densely tangled masses of plant growth, just beneath the surface, tugged at our paddles. Dick called the stuff “Swamp Soogus.” I thought it must be a First Nation word he had somehow learned. On further reflection, I think he invented it. He’s a poet and poets do stuff like that.

We paddled and portaged the rest of that day and most of the next. Wind and waves, rocks and pines; that was our world.

About noon on the second day we saw, on a faraway hilltop, a tower from which park rangers could scan the horizon, keeping watch for the telltale smoke of an incipient forest fire. It was the only human-made thing we’d seen in two days. We thought, “What a view there must be from up there!”

At length, we reached Big Crow Lake and set up our base camp at a campsite near the shore.

In the days that followed, most of the adults and some of the boys passed the time fishing from the shores near the base camp. Not me. A few of the more adventurous boys and I set out exploring in a different direction each morning, paddling until noon, eating lunch, then paddling back to Big Crow.

After spotting the Tim River on the map, we determined to ‘discover’ it and made our way due north. We thought the river would be an escape from the Swamp Soogus, broad and open to the sky, like the rivers we knew back in Ohio, the Mohican, the Kokosing or the Tuscarawas. It wasn’t. I never saw a narrower river, so-called. Disappointed, we laughed it off. Dick had come along on that excursion and has teased me ever since about the hopes we cherished for what he afterwards called, ‘the mighty River Tim.”

The next morning Dick went back to fishing while I headed west with the boys that were willing to give exploring another try. After three hours, the firetower came into sight. One thought seized us: we’d head for it, secure our canoes on the shore, hike to the top of the hill and climb the tower. A magnificent view awaited us!

When we reached the clearing at the top of the hill, our hearts sank. The tower was in disuse, the lower half of its metal ladder removed. We stared up at the four legs of the tower and the stabilizing X-beams that criss-crossed between them. Shinnying up was impossible. We sighed.

I assessed the situation. The lowest rung of what remained of the ladder was twenty-five feet above us. If we could reach that rung, an easy climb up another twenty-feet would bring us to the square opening in the floor of the little cabin atop the tower, five stories above. We only needed to figure out how to ascend those first twenty-five feet.

I said, “We’re scouts. We can do this. We’ll construct a ladder and lash it to one of the legs of the tower.”

“What are we gonna build a ladder out of?”

“Branches and sticks from the woods.”

“What’s gonna hold it together?”

“The tie ropes from the canoes and our belts. If necessary, our shoelaces.”

The boys shouted, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” and swung into action.

Our ladder quickly took shape. Our Senior Patrol Leader climbed up the first six feet, his sidekick right behind him, and we handed up branches, sticks and roping. Soon there were three scouts on the ladder, then four, then five. A team, we built the ladder while clinging to it, rung by rung.

It was thrilling. And a little scary. Mr. Ferrell’s words came back to me: “No ambulances in Nature’s realm.” I began to worry. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. But the boys were so excited, so exuberant, that I hesitated to stop them. Had I insisted, they would have stopped and a gray cast would fall over the day, an air of defeat in place of what seemed an easy victory. Uneasy, I watched in silence.

When the ladder was complete, we ascended. The view did not disappoint. The boys were joyful. If they had reached the summit of the Matterhorn, they’d have felt no less buoyant.

I descended first. Going up had been easier. If our makeshift ladder had given way beneath my weight and I had fallen and been injured, I don’t know how the rest of the gang would have gotten down. But our ladder held.

When we were all down, safe and sound once more on the bosom of Mother Earth, I was greatly relieved. We disassembled the ladder. It was either that or leave behind our belts and shoelaces. That would not do. You don’t want to be without belts and shoelaces in the wilds of Canada.

Building that ladder, the boys had unleashed their ingenuity and discovered their ability to make things happen, to give shape to ideas. Canoeing back to Big Crow Lake, a stiff wind rising behind us, they hatched the notion of building a sailboat and talked of little else.

I thought it might be ‘just talk,’ but the next morning they set to work, all on their own. They lashed two canoes together and erected a slender log they had found in the woods to serve as a mast. They took down two tents and tied them together to serve as a large sail.

Excited, they launched the boat too soon. A strong breeze sped the boat, with its helpless crew of two, across the lake like a hocky puck sliding on ice. Without a keel or a rudder, the boat could not be steered. Getting the craft back to base camp was no small trick; the rest of the gang had to cross the lake in canoes and tow it back against a head-wind.

Undaunted, they lowered paddles into the water between the two canoes and lashed them together to form a keel. Another paddle, roped into place at the stern, became a rudder.

Boat building! They were getting the hang of it! With a keel and a rudder, they could steer, and the wind, thus conquered, became their servant.

After the sailboat capsized several times, they added a third canoe to serve as an outrigger. They made a crude deck out of yet more sticks and added a hammock for effect, using a ground cloth. They adorned the mast with a t-shirt-flag. Dashing to the far shore of Big Crow Lake and back, they felt like commanders of the Seven Seas.

Their self-confidence was boundless. Their attempts to fashion a wind-surfer out of a canoe and a tent were less successful but they kept trying and, given a few more days, they’d have figured that out, too -- then held competitive races.

Mr. Ferrell’s response to the boys’ account of their ascent of the firetower was a mingling of consternation and mild horror. Out of the boys’ earshot, he quietly asked me if I was crazy. “When I said, “No funny stuff,” I thought I was talking to the boys, not the leaders.”

He had a point. What if one of us had fallen from that flimsy ladder? Being scouts, we’d have adminstered First Aid. We knew how to devise a splint and a stretcher. We would have transported the injured party down the hill and back to the base camp, but then what? One broken arm or leg -- or a worse injury -- would have wrecked the whole adventure for all of us. And whose fault would it have been? Mine.

Three times older than the boys, I hadn’t thought it through any more than they had. It had been risky. We had been lucky. My suggestion that we build that ladder may have marked the last moment of my Youth.

On the other hand, the resulting impulse to build a working sailboat had sharpened their wits and kept them happy and busy for the rest of our eight-day stay on Big Crow Lake. It had been a blossoming of boyish enthusiasm and energy, a source of great satisfaction for them, an exercise in self-confidence and teamwork -- and a whole lot of fun.

So … did I make the right call?

- - - - - -

Those ‘high adventure’ scout trips to Algonquin plus other trips Jo and I have made to Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia, inspired my Trio #12, “Voyageurs: Homage to Canada,” the final movement of which is titled, “A Majestic Land.”

Today, to hear Trio da Camera (clarinetist Laurel Bennett, cellist Teresa Villani and pianist Carol Alexander) performing “A Majestic Land,” click on the link above.

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

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Today, a peek into “Voyageurs,” the new CD of my music that will be released in April.

But first, a ‘back story.’

Camping alone or driving solo through a dreary twilight, I have sometimes been overtaken by melancholy, overpowered by nostalgia, overwhelmed by wistfulness. Sometimes, alone in our living room while Jo is out on an evening errand, I become homesick -- even though I AM at home!

I'd have been a miserable voyageur.

You know about the voyageurs? Intrepid French Canadian canoeists, their quest for beaver pelts led them to the remotest corners of Canada. They reached the Pacific TWELVE years before Lewis & Clark! They befriended the First Nations peoples, intermarrying and fathering the ‘Métis,’ a uniquely Canadian subculture.

Voyageurs, deep in the wild, drew what comfort they could from their pipes, their Hudson’s Bay blankets and their music. A voyageur who could play a fiddle was highly respected, even prized, by his peers. Their music is often cheerful, bumptious, hearty, repetitive. But they are also credited with “Shenandoah,” a song with fathomless depths of melancholy.

Oddly, the piece I want to share today, the music I wrote to honor the voyageurs -- "Night Song of the Voyageurs" — expresses the feelings I would have as a solitary voyageur, far from loved ones, wrestling with melancholy as the daylight fades and night comes on.

Let me guide you through this music.

My “Night Song of the Voyageurs" opens with a long, lonely cello solo playing a tune that is both sad and lovely.

At 1:23 the cello ventures a cadenza, inviting the clarinet to take up the tune.

The clarinet obliges at 1:45, while the cello retreats to a supportive contrapuntal line.

Such a beautiful sound, the combination of clarinet and cello, with all the richness and depth of Canadian Grade A maple syrup.

At 3:04 it’s the clarinet’s turn to venture a cadenza, inviting the piano to join in.

At 3:26 the pianist takes a turn as a soloist and, in a new and unexpected key, intones a variant of the sad and lovely tune, very high on the keyboard, with a tinkling left-hand accompaniment that, for me, evokes the stars and the Milky Way.

For me, this music recalls Shakespeare's beautiful line,

"Look how the floor of Heaven is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold!”

At 4:50 the cello returns, as does the clarinet at 5:00 while the piano retreats, supporting their duet only with long sustained chords and a few flourishes, a few faint brush strokes.

At 6:06 the three instruments play as equals for the first time.

This is one of my most expressive pieces. Gloomy, yet gleaming. Sorrowful yet sparkling.

Even the darkest night ends at last. At 6:47 the piano heralds the coming of dawn. At 7:01 the sun rises.

But the dawn quickly “goes down to day;” heavy clouds set in. The movement ends with the cello plucking three grim chords on just two strings, loud and harsh.

It’s been twenty years since I wrote this piece. Getting this music professionally recorded was for me, for a very long time, only a dream, like the pipe dream of a voyageur, alone by his campfire, gazing at the night sky. Now, at last, the dream is realized.

The recording is now available from Kickshaw Records. To purchase the CD go to this website:

https://kickshawrecords.com/shop/

To hear, at no charge, the Upland Trio (clarinetist Christopher Bade, cellist Josh Aerie and pianist Greg Kostraba) performing “Night Song of the Voyageurs,” the second movement of my Trio #12,” (subtitled “Voyageurs: An Homage to Canada”), click on the link above.

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

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
Feb. 25, 2024

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The email I sent last week elicited some rich responses from “y’all,” “you’uns,” “youse guys”, i.e., my dear friends and beloved fans.

You found beauty in the music I shared last week, “Night Song of the Voyageurs.” Several of you wrote to tell me that you had found “depth of soul” and expressions of pain and sorrow, more deeply felt and powerfully expressed than was to be expected following my opening verbiage.

Your responses raised questions for me and, with those questions in mind, I listened again, for perhaps the twentieth time, to this new CD on which the “Night Song” is Track #6.

As I listen to the new CD I feel that I am hearing someone else’s work, that I am in the presence of an artist who is in touch with his emotions — the darker ones as well as the lighter — who has given expression to pain and sorrow as well as hope … who is intensely alive to Beauty … and, in so far as he has succeeded in giving expression to such things, must have experienced all these feelings profoundly; life has left him sad, wise and joyful, all at once. I picture him smiling through his tears.

The curious thing is that I don’t recognize him.

Who IS this man? What must he be like? If I met him, what would I see in his eyes? Every morning I see his face in the mirror. I don’t see much that’s worth mentioning. He doesn’t look profound, only sleepy and tousled.

My sense of myself often seems to be at odds with the person I tried to describe above. I think of myself as affable, smiling, gregarious, joking. An extrovert, an optimist and something of a clown. A person who, in conversation, is rarely serious.

Mind you, I like being that way. I like myself just as I am.

I think, however, that when musicians and listeners like yourself discover “depth of the soul" in my work, there must be an element of surprise as they try to conceive that THIS music came from THAT fellow whom many of you encounter in church and around town here in Cincinnati.

What is the explanation?

I think that all of us are a different sort when we are alone than we are when we are rubbing elbows and slapping backs with ‘the public.’ Too, we upper Midwesterners are reared to be optimistic, smiling, friendly. The expression “Minnesota nice” does not apply only to Minnesotans.

In my culture, it’s considered impolite to be moody, gloomy and to articulate pain and sorrow. Unless we’re at a funeral.

But composers, when at work, do not ‘rub elbows’ with the public. Composing is done in solitude; it has to be. It may be true for all of us, not just composers, that when we are solitary, we are a little more in touch with our own depths than when we are alone.

There is pain and sorrow in Track #5 of this new CD -- which was last week’s music -- but it is followed by the extravagantly beautiful Track #6, poetically titled “Starshadows on the Snow.”

It is the third movement of my clarinet trio #12, an homage to Canada. This music in Track #6 depicts a boreal forest on a still, clear, moonless night, the starlight sifting faintly through bare, black branches, casting delicate, blue-gray shadows on snow embossed with brilliant sparkles of light.

The cello opens the movement with a tentative, rising figure; the figure ascends to the clarinet and ascends from there to the tinkling keys in the highest register of the piano. Listen for the star music there, a gently poignant, descending pattern.

This music always brings to mind one of Shakespeare's beautiful lines:

"Look how the floor of Heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold!"

Then comes the tune, played by the cello. It begins with an octave leap upward, as when we turn our faces starward, then slowly, softly drifts down, like starlight blanketing a winterscape. Four times the tune is heard, each with a different texture and treatment; the last is like a hymn of thanksgiving. The piano, again in its highest register, whispers the final phrase. It's very beautiful.

I am the guy who wrote that music? It doesn’t seem possible.

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I love Canada, with whom our country shares the longest border between any two countries in the world, a border without a military guard.

I’m an Ohioan. I think of the Perry Monument on the Lake Erie island known as Put In Bay, which I have visited several times. It is the world’s tallest Doric column, constructed in 1915 “to inculcate the lessons of international peace by arbitration and disarmament.”

The vast country just to the north might seem like an unlikely subject for chamber music, but in fact, my Trio #12 for Clarinet, Cello and Piano is subtitled “Voyageurs: Homage to Canada.” The music I hope to share with you today is the trio’s final movement, titled “A Majestic Land.”

When I wrote it, back in 2003, I had in mind the landscapes I visited on multiple trips ‘north of the border.’ Foremost for me were the two ‘high adventure’ canoe trips I made with the Boy Scouts to Algonquin Provincial Park in central Ontario.

Also, I recalled the trips Jo and I have made to Quebec, Banff and Vancouver.

Upon my return to the US from all of these trips, I have raved to my friends about what I had seen and experienced:

The wildlife and immense silence of Algonquin.

The charm of Quebec City, the most beautifully situated city in North America.

The massive mountains of Banff, surprisingly different from the Rockies which are not all that far to the south. (The American Rockies are mostly pointy, while the Canadian Rockies are mostly wall-like.)

The magnificent scenery just beyond the city limits of Vancouver, harmonizing mountain ranges with seascapes.

Plus, I am a long time fan of “Anne of Green Gables.”

Does that qualify me for designation as an honorary Canadian?

To hear The Upland Trio (clarinetist Christopher Bade, cellist Josh Aerie and pianist Greg Kostraba) performing “A Majestic Land,” from my Trio #12 “Homage to Canada,” click on the link above.

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

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
March 9, 2025
Cincinnati OH