Sowash: ‘Nocturne’ for clarinet, cello, piano.

Tonight the moon is full, a good reason for sharing a Nocturne.

A nocturne?  Most of my music is sunny.  I cant help it.  I’m like the fellow Samuel Johnson described, who "tried all his life to be a philosopher but cheerfulness kept breaking in."

I have written a few darker pieces.  A handful are sad and a few are mysterious.  These are not often heard because classical music radio stations rarely broadcast them and musicians shy away from performing such music for audiences.  Its understandable.

Except at funerals and commemorative events, we rarely welcome sad music.  I love Puccini’s saddest music; it makes me weep big, salty, cathartic tears.  But generally I avoid sad music.  If I turn on the radio and find myself in the middle of the last movement of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony, I switch to NPR.  Life is sufficiently difficult without having to endure that master’s final, despairing utterance yet again.

Mysterious music isnt so offputting, though … when the full moon illuminates our familiar surroundings with a strange, silvery luster, mysterious music might be just what we want.

The Nocturne from my Trio #6 for clarinet, cello and piano, subtitled "Goddess of the Moon," is my attempt to evoke the mystery, beauty and a little of the madness we associate with the moon, moonlight and Diana, the ancient Greek goddess of the moon.

Think of this music as a love duet, sung by a mezzo and a baritone in a moonlit landscape, a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, taking place simultaneously in ancient Greece and rural England.

Think of the clarinet as the mezzo and the cello as the baritone.  Think of the piano as the moonlit landscape, its white keys gleaming through the gloom of the black keys, like the full moon glimmering through a criss-cross of black branches.

That’s a pretty thought.  Strangely, what I most want to say about this music must remain unsaid for lack of a suitable word.

For all its richness, this language we’ve borrowed from the English and adapted to meet the needs of the New World, occasionally abandons us, leaving us hobbled and halting.  At such moments we’re made to know that this glorious vehicle of expression, the language of Shakespeare, is ramshackle after all.

The word that’s missing is an adjective that would refer directly to the moon, to its unique character.  The same holds true for the sun.  Consider that the sun crosses our sky every day and the moon, too, most nights.  Odd, no?, this paucity of pertinent verbiage?

I suppose every language has these curious gaps, these voids that leave writers grasping and speakers gasping.

We have perfectly good words for the heavenly bodies themselves:  the moon, the sun.  But scarcely any adjectives.

We use “moony” to refer to someone who seems dreamy, unaware of their surroundings, disconnected from reality (usually because they are in love) but we never use the word to refer to the moon itself.  We never say, “That Nocturne is distinctly moony.”  Or “Last seemed moonier than usual, didn’t you think?”  Or “Tonight marks the mooniest night this month."

Dare we improvise? … venturing something like “moonish?” or “moon-ique?” "moonistic?” or “moon-esque?”  “moon-icious?”    Yikes!

Our sole recourse is the Latinate word “lunar.”  It serves us well enough for scientific stuff. We speak of lunar landings or the lunar calendar of ancient Babylon.  But if I were to assert that, in this movement, I had attempted to write lunar music, you’d smile.  Moony music?  You’d chuckle.  Moonish music?  You’d sniff and roll your eyes.  Moonistic music?  Please.

It’s the same with the sun.  True, we have the word ’sunny’ but, like ‘moony, it has a special, homespun meaning.  We speak of a sunny smile, a sunny disposition.  I said above that most of my music is sunny.  But who speaks of the planets in the sunny system?’  Again, for scientific things, we use ’solar.’  Jo and I will soon have solar panels (not ‘sunny’ panels) on our rooftop.  But a solar smile?  a solar disposition?  solar music?  We speak of solar rays, but never of solar days.

Curious, isn’t it?  that an English-speaking composer is thus forestalled.  A fissure in our linguistic landscape, a crevasse too wide for leaping, precludes the expression of a simple, obvious aspect of this music — and its something that I really want to get said!

I’ll try one more time:  I wanted to fashion a music that would be …. what ... ‘moon-image-derived?’

Whoa.  That’s hideous.  As my friend Chris Miller would say, “Jeezle Peets!"

Then again, if its obvious to listeners that the music is “moon-image-derived,” then it doesn’t need to be stated in words.  The music will express the notion musically.  See what you think.

To hear my Nocturne played with dark, beautiful passion by clarinetist Joe Rosen and some friends of his (Joe recorded it in his living room some years ago and can no longer recall which of his many musical friends were playing the cello and the piano on that occasion), click here:
http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/trio_6_nocturne.mp3

To see a PDF of the score, click here:
http://www.sowash.com/recordings/mp3/trio_6_nocturne.pdf