Sowash: “Katahdin” from  “Four Places on the Appalachian Trail"  for French horn, violin and cello

Ah, the French horn.

That noble, expansive, majestic, tender sound, so suggestive of distance and thus, of mountains.

I’ve written only one work featuring the instrument, my 1992 suite for French horn, violin, cello and piano entitled, “Four Places on the Appalachian Trail.”

I tried to find musical gestures that would evoke my feelings about four specific sites on the trail.  I’ve hiked to the places depicted in the first three movements — but as for Katahdin, “The Greatest Mountain,” the northern terminus of the A.T. and the fourth of the Four Places depicted in the suite, I’ve never climbed it.

And I never will.  A few years ago, Jo and I climbed Old Rag in our beloved Shenandoah National Park.  It just about did us in.  And Old Rag ain’t nothin’, a pipsqueak compared to Katahdin.  Some things are beyond one’s reach.  Many.  Most.  I say, be at peace and enjoy thinking about them.  For me, Katahdin is and will remain a shining emblem of The Unattainable.

I once dreamt of hiking the entire A.T.  I’ll never do that either.  I've hiked about 250 miles of it though, in GA, NC, VA, CT, MA and VT.  And I served as a trail-worker for two ten-day stints at Konnarock, the A.T. volunteer basecamp in Virginia.  I also produced a CD, “Music for the Appalachian Trail," a portion of the profits were donated to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the group that oversees and protects the trail.  I’ve done my part for this great American resource.

Writing this suite took about as long as a thru-hike would take — four months — and I fancied, as I was writing it, that I was making the journey.  The four places are depicted in the order a thru-hiker would encounter them:  Amicalola Falls in GA, where the trail begins, Dragon’s Tooth in VA, Sage’s Ravine in CT and finally, the goal from the start, Katahdin.

Grand vistas are suggested often in this music, the big views the hiker comes upon at certain points, but I also included many quieter, more intimate, delicate passages, to express those moments when a hiker stops to gaze in wonder at the saffron-colored lichen on the rocks or a glistening spider's web or a host of ferns, their fronds dripping buttery dew in the yellow, slanting morning light.

I’ve seen these things, up close, but Katahdin I have only viewed from afar.  I tried to present Katahdin simultaneously as a distant ideal and as the rough and rugged reality it is for the proverbial "ragged rascals" who climb it.  The music is meant to sound steep, rocky and harsh at times.  Parts of it have a weight and solidity, like great boulders.  Not boulders tumbling in an avalanche; I mean boulders just sitting there, “active” in their unique, inert way.

“From stones and poets you may know,
Nothing more active is than that which least seems so.”

(I sometimes quote that annoying couplet when asked why I am not getting off my duff and pitching in.)

The music of my Katahdin isn’t all rough and harsh; I think you’ll find moments of great beauty in it.  The music reconciles those opposites, as does the mountain.

The very end of the Katahdin movement combines all the motives of the whole 35-minute suite into one grand final gesture.  It has, I hope, the feeling of tremendous closure that comes to thru-hikers when they look out from atop Katahdin, and look inward, too, nourished by the memories of what they have experienced and realizing that they have been transformed.

To hear “Katahdin,” from my “Four Places on the Appalachian Trail," beautifully performed by violinist Cheryl Trace, French hornist Robert Garcia, cellist Robert Clemens and pianist Greg Kostraba, click here:
http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/katahdin.mp3

To see a PDF of the score, click here:
http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/katahdin.pdf