Sowash: 1st movement of “Eroica “trio, for violin, cello and piano
2016/10/17 10:37
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Sowash: 1st movement of “Eroica “trio, for violin, cello and piano.
The terrifying events of September 11, 2011, brought sudden death to innocent people, called forth great heroism and sacrifice in the community of public servants who stand ready to try to rescue the imperiled, consigned many to deep mourning in the months and years that followed, stirred dark urges for vengeance, precipitated our mad plunge into war with Iraq which in turn impelled the Middle East into ceaseless chaos, leaving hundreds of thousands of civilians dead and displacing millions more.
The president chose Cincinnati’s Museum Center as the venue to announce that America was going to war with Iraq. With a couple hundred other Cincinnatians, I stood in the street outside, a pathetic figure, a composer holding a sign, protesting. We knew it was futile. Polls at the time indicated that fully 90% of Americans were strongly in favor of invading Iraq.
I wonder if anything could have stopped it. What if John Paul II, the popular but enfeebled pope, would have come to Washington D.C., knelt on the steps of our Capital building and, with the press crowding round, prayed, begging God to sway America from the idea? Come to think of it, why didn’t he do that? I’m not Catholic but it seems like the sort of thing the pope and other major religious leaders ought to do. Where were they? I wonder if the current pope would do such a thing.
When you screw up, you find out who your friends are: they're the ones who tell you that you are screwing up.
France, our oldest ally, the only major world power against whom we’ve never gone to war, without whose support our own Revolution would have failed, sternly warned us against invading Iraq. Americans bitterly decried France for speaking up. Many demanded to know if the Frenchies had forgotten D-Day and how, at great cost to ourselves, we had liberated them from the Nazis.
Cincinnatians and Americans everywhere ceased patronizing French restaurants. The makers of French’s mustard ran TV ads, assuring viewers that French's mustard wasn’t actually French; it was "just a family name." In a bold gesture, our sagacious Congress forbade the serving of “French fries” in the Congressional cafeteria; the popular potato product was instead to be termed “Freedom fries.” That showed ‘em!
Today, most Americans admit that invading Iraq was a blunder.
“Nine Eleven” was fifteen years ago today but the miseries it precipitated continue to be suffered by ever greater numbers of people and in ever widening geographical circles. Almost every day brings staggering news of terrorist attacks and heartbreaking stories of refugees, news that is nearly unbearable to hear and see. Who knows when and how it will end?
Our pastor knew how it would end. The Sunday after the 9/11 attack, he said, “Terrorist attacks against America will cease only when we have befriended our enemies.” It sounds like something a pastor would say. Or Jesus. Or Gandhi.
You hear that, you nod your head in agreement, it seems to make sense ... and then it hits you: “How can we ever befriend such crazy people?” How indeed. That’s the question that the best among us continue to ponder. I don’t know the answer but I am certain that it’s the right question to ask.
It begs another question. Are we currently doing anything to befriend our enemies? It appears to me that our actions, since 9/11, have only served to make our enemies hate us all the more. Sigh.
All this darkness reposed, unguessable, in the not-so-distant future when, in 2000, I wrote my fifth piano trio and subtitled it “Eroica.” My fiftieth birthday arrived shortly after the millennium. With those two major milestones in mind — 50 and 2000 -- I felt prompted to try to do something lofty and grand, to write as “great” a piece of music as I could. Something Beethovenian, if possible.
I chose to try to express heroism. “Eroica” is the Latin word for “heroic” and I subtitled the trio with this word, deliberately echoing Beethoven, who had attached that same moniker to his great Third Symphony.
When I was writing my Eroica trio I could not have foreseen that it would turn out to be a piece I’d want to share on what would become a tragic anniversary, September 11.
Well, here we are, September 11, 2016 and I find myself asking you to listen to a piece of music, a scant and shallow consolation. Confronted with such Evil, what good does it do to merely listen to music? Yet how can we acknowledge or express what we feel about this dark anniversary? How shall we shape our lives in response to it, today and in the days to come?
As most of us are not artists, we turn to the arts, in the hope of finding expressions on our behalf. We know what we feel but we cannot find the words, the paint or the tunes; we cannot say it for ourselves. Yet we know it when we see it.
We can remember that we are not the first to confront the prospect of a world that is foundering. We can ponder anew the wise counsel of those who have faced such prospects before us. Their words may console us more effectively than paint or tunes.
In 1935 when the world's economy had collapsed and fascism was on the rise, Odell Shepard, an America author whose writing I admire very much, wrote these words in his forgotten little book, The Cabin Down the Glen…
"At such a time in the world’s affairs, what can a man do to help -- a man who feels, as I feel it, his incalculable debt and obligation to mankind? Shall he add his voice to the shouters? Shall he too rush here and there? Shall he get himself elected, or wealthy, or famous, so that he may increase his “influence?” Or might he do perhaps as well if he should strive not so much to do as to be something? … Better and more persuasive than anything he could say would be the example of a life lived quietly with the First Things, a life resting down upon the things found true, a life delving under and soaring over the wreck of the present to the things that everlastingly endure.”
On this September 11, I hope you find these words as comforting and inspiring as I do.
While Shepard’s words are still ringing in your consciousness, I invite you to listen to the opening movement of my Eroica trio, performed with passion and grace by my friends violinist Laura Bossert, cellist Terry King and pianist Phil Amalong. Click here:
http://www.sowash.com/
To see a PDF of the score, click here:
http://www.sowash.com/
The terrifying events of September 11, 2011, brought sudden death to innocent people, called forth great heroism and sacrifice in the community of public servants who stand ready to try to rescue the imperiled, consigned many to deep mourning in the months and years that followed, stirred dark urges for vengeance, precipitated our mad plunge into war with Iraq which in turn impelled the Middle East into ceaseless chaos, leaving hundreds of thousands of civilians dead and displacing millions more.
The president chose Cincinnati’s Museum Center as the venue to announce that America was going to war with Iraq. With a couple hundred other Cincinnatians, I stood in the street outside, a pathetic figure, a composer holding a sign, protesting. We knew it was futile. Polls at the time indicated that fully 90% of Americans were strongly in favor of invading Iraq.
I wonder if anything could have stopped it. What if John Paul II, the popular but enfeebled pope, would have come to Washington D.C., knelt on the steps of our Capital building and, with the press crowding round, prayed, begging God to sway America from the idea? Come to think of it, why didn’t he do that? I’m not Catholic but it seems like the sort of thing the pope and other major religious leaders ought to do. Where were they? I wonder if the current pope would do such a thing.
When you screw up, you find out who your friends are: they're the ones who tell you that you are screwing up.
France, our oldest ally, the only major world power against whom we’ve never gone to war, without whose support our own Revolution would have failed, sternly warned us against invading Iraq. Americans bitterly decried France for speaking up. Many demanded to know if the Frenchies had forgotten D-Day and how, at great cost to ourselves, we had liberated them from the Nazis.
Cincinnatians and Americans everywhere ceased patronizing French restaurants. The makers of French’s mustard ran TV ads, assuring viewers that French's mustard wasn’t actually French; it was "just a family name." In a bold gesture, our sagacious Congress forbade the serving of “French fries” in the Congressional cafeteria; the popular potato product was instead to be termed “Freedom fries.” That showed ‘em!
Today, most Americans admit that invading Iraq was a blunder.
“Nine Eleven” was fifteen years ago today but the miseries it precipitated continue to be suffered by ever greater numbers of people and in ever widening geographical circles. Almost every day brings staggering news of terrorist attacks and heartbreaking stories of refugees, news that is nearly unbearable to hear and see. Who knows when and how it will end?
Our pastor knew how it would end. The Sunday after the 9/11 attack, he said, “Terrorist attacks against America will cease only when we have befriended our enemies.” It sounds like something a pastor would say. Or Jesus. Or Gandhi.
You hear that, you nod your head in agreement, it seems to make sense ... and then it hits you: “How can we ever befriend such crazy people?” How indeed. That’s the question that the best among us continue to ponder. I don’t know the answer but I am certain that it’s the right question to ask.
It begs another question. Are we currently doing anything to befriend our enemies? It appears to me that our actions, since 9/11, have only served to make our enemies hate us all the more. Sigh.
All this darkness reposed, unguessable, in the not-so-distant future when, in 2000, I wrote my fifth piano trio and subtitled it “Eroica.” My fiftieth birthday arrived shortly after the millennium. With those two major milestones in mind — 50 and 2000 -- I felt prompted to try to do something lofty and grand, to write as “great” a piece of music as I could. Something Beethovenian, if possible.
I chose to try to express heroism. “Eroica” is the Latin word for “heroic” and I subtitled the trio with this word, deliberately echoing Beethoven, who had attached that same moniker to his great Third Symphony.
When I was writing my Eroica trio I could not have foreseen that it would turn out to be a piece I’d want to share on what would become a tragic anniversary, September 11.
Well, here we are, September 11, 2016 and I find myself asking you to listen to a piece of music, a scant and shallow consolation. Confronted with such Evil, what good does it do to merely listen to music? Yet how can we acknowledge or express what we feel about this dark anniversary? How shall we shape our lives in response to it, today and in the days to come?
As most of us are not artists, we turn to the arts, in the hope of finding expressions on our behalf. We know what we feel but we cannot find the words, the paint or the tunes; we cannot say it for ourselves. Yet we know it when we see it.
We can remember that we are not the first to confront the prospect of a world that is foundering. We can ponder anew the wise counsel of those who have faced such prospects before us. Their words may console us more effectively than paint or tunes.
In 1935 when the world's economy had collapsed and fascism was on the rise, Odell Shepard, an America author whose writing I admire very much, wrote these words in his forgotten little book, The Cabin Down the Glen…
"At such a time in the world’s affairs, what can a man do to help -- a man who feels, as I feel it, his incalculable debt and obligation to mankind? Shall he add his voice to the shouters? Shall he too rush here and there? Shall he get himself elected, or wealthy, or famous, so that he may increase his “influence?” Or might he do perhaps as well if he should strive not so much to do as to be something? … Better and more persuasive than anything he could say would be the example of a life lived quietly with the First Things, a life resting down upon the things found true, a life delving under and soaring over the wreck of the present to the things that everlastingly endure.”
On this September 11, I hope you find these words as comforting and inspiring as I do.
While Shepard’s words are still ringing in your consciousness, I invite you to listen to the opening movement of my Eroica trio, performed with passion and grace by my friends violinist Laura Bossert, cellist Terry King and pianist Phil Amalong. Click here:
http://www.sowash.com/
To see a PDF of the score, click here:
http://www.sowash.com/
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