Michael Schelle

Good morning, sir. Great to see you.

Yeah, well, the quanti- quality, uh, issue comes up, I guess, right? (Opens with a laugh)

But, thank you. Thank you.

Well, you really, I—I have fun. I—I just, you know, and if people like it, that's great. I've gotten in a little trouble over the years with the Exorcism piece. A few orchestras have asked if they could change the title. So, it's actually registered with BMI under two separate titles: the, uh, the more user-friendly title, and then the, uh, the original Urtext title.

Me too.

By the way, I'm—I'm really honored that—that you asked me to join you with this. I mean, I—I think, on the heels of—of recent—I mean, Jennifer Higdon and—and, and Marty Bresnick, incredible interviews. So, I'm thrilled to be in—in that company. Thank you so much.

(Sighs) I—I guess I—I'll start this way. Um, I have a piece called Samurai that I—that I—that I wrote, uh, about 20 years ago, an orchestra piece. That was dedicated to my dad. Uh, he had had a massive stroke, and he was going to be passing away pretty soon. And so, I wrote it for my dad. It's very serious, it's very heavy, uh, it's very emotional. People cry in the—in the final section. And at, uh, one of the performances—I forget which orchestra—uh, a—a a man who knew my music came back to me backstage and said, "I've never heard this kind of emotion from you. I'm always laughing with your music. And here's this piece, this other side of you." And—and I was honored, but at the same time, I was a little frightened because I thought about half of my catalog is so-called, you know, emotional and serious. I have a—a World War II, uh, remembrance piece that's very, very heavy. But I do love to have a lot of fun. A recent piece is called The Eisenstein Mummers for chamber ensemble with three accordions and a bunch of other instruments. And it's a mix-up of Sergei Eisenstein and the Mummers Parade in Philadelphia. I just love having that kind of wink of the eye, tongue in the cheek, a little bit dark humor.

I've always loved to do that. I've always loved to find a way to fuse different approaches, uh, but have it make sense rather than sound like a crazy quilt. That—that's—that's always been my goal. To find, uh, because I—I I love a diminished chord, but I also love a 12-tone chord. So, I—I I like to find ways to blend and fuse rather than mix and match. And I've been doing that really my whole career since out of—out of graduate school. One of my teachers in graduate school, um, Marty Bresnick and I have this in common, Arnold Franchetti at the Hartt School, uh, he said to me in one of our lessons, "Your—your career will be in the theater." And I said, "No, no, no, no, no, I did that already. I was a theater major, now I'm a composer." And he said, "No, no, no, your music will be in the theater." I said, "No, no, no, I don't want Broadway. I don't want—" He said, "No, no, no, no, no, your music will always be very theatrical." And that was—that was 40 years ago. And he was right, and I've really enjoyed embracing that.

I agree 100%. I feel that if I—I I have to enjoy what I'm doing first, before the possibility that somebody else can enjoy it. Uh, I—I've never—I've never been a bandwagon jumper, or trying to manipulate so I can get more money, or get more performances. Uh, that's okay for some composers. That's fine to kind of write in a formula kind of fashion, because you can guarantee some things. But um, I'm perfectly fine with, with just me being really happy about what I'm doing when I go to bed at night. And when—when I was a very young composer, uh, I—I my idealistic, uh, reaction from an audience would be, if three or four people liked my piece or got the humor, I'd be thrilled. I'm up to five or six now. If I can get five or six people, (laughs) you know, I have a little—little higher goal right now.

That's true.

I uh, uh, as—as as I've taught for many years, I've gotten a little bit more liberal in the way I deal with my students. I remember one student asked me that a few years ago: "How can I get more performances?" And I just—it blurted out, and I love this kid, but I—it just blurted out, and I said, "Write better music." Uh, so... (laughs) It's—it's, seriously—

Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you.

The, uh, yeah. And I was just kidding about that, it would just—just blurted out. We laughed about it, and then we got to serious talk. Um, for me, the—the—the first—the number one, uh, important aspect for a young composer to start getting out there is to be a genuine person, and to be a friendly person, and to be, uh, uh, not arrogant, not full of yourself. Be humble, but don't be self-deprecating. Find that, that, that, that, that, that middle road, that—that fine line between those two things, where you can be confident, uh, but not super overconfident. Especially when you're 19-20 years old. Uh, very few of us can—can—can go back to those years and—and—and say we knew all the answers, although we did know all the answers when we were 20, right? And didn't trust anybody over 30. (Laughs) Um, so that—that's—that's the main thing. I also, uh, talk uh constantly about making contacts and making friends, and—and make sure it's genuine, that it's not just kind of, of, of, of, of, of bullying like, you know, you should play my piece, or I'm going to be friends with you, so you will play my piece, you know. Have genuine relations—like you and I have become, whether you and I promote each other's music or not, doesn't really matter to us in the long run because of our friendship. But things happen as a result, uh, so I really push that. I've had too many students that are a little too full of themselves, or, or, uh, the other side, um, they're—they're so humble that they're like, "Well, you know, would you take a look at my piece? You know, you might not like it." That—that's—that's the other side. Uh, I really urge all my students to try lots of different styles. If they think they don't like something—uh, I had a student recently hated minimalism. I said, "Why do you hate minimalism?" He said, "Well, I just—I don't like it." I said, "Have you ever written a min—" "No, no, no." So, I had the student write one, and he thought it was pretty eye-opening, that Philip Glass and Steve Reich and John Adams and Michael Nyman and all those guys, they're pretty good composers because this stuff's hard to write, to do it—to do it well. Conversely, I had a student who did nothing but minimalism. Uh, one day I said, "Why don't you try writing a piano piece with no bar lines to see where that could go?" And he's like, "Well, what do I do?" (Laughs) And fast-forward about 10 years, he's finishing up his doctorate at a very prestigious school of music, and he's writing no bar lines all the time. (Laughs) Yeah, yeah, those kinds of moments feel good.

Sure.

Me too. Me too.

And, I— and, and, and, and, and I agree with you 100%. Uh, my counterpoint teachers had studied counterpoint with Hindemith. Uh, Paul Fetler was my principal counterpoint teacher we did in—in, uh, my doctoral program. He—uh, he had us doing invertible mirror retrograde fugues, and we're all tearing our hair out, as still gone. Uh—

But the discipline and the rigor and the— uh, what you learn from working with that is so important. It's interesting, it hit me, the other day I saw, uh, during quarantine, I watch a lot of old programs on TV rather than news, I can't handle that. So, I saw an Alfred Hitchcock, uh, program that had a very famous star in it from the Shakespeare theater. I saw a Columbo episode that had Laurence Harvey in it. Now, this guy was trained in Shakespeare. The guy's an incredible actor, but he was great in Columbo, too. And I thought, that's me, and that's what I want my students to be. To have that foundation, to have that, uh— Franchetti again, and Marty, I'm sure heard this, too, Marty Bresnick: "You can't build a skyscraper on glass feet." Wow, what the hell does that mean? But it hit me what it meant: that foundation, that strong foundation. So, I'm a big, big fan of the traditional European training for, uh, for an undergrad, the counterpoint.

A lot of schools have fused it, blended it with the—with the theory sequence, so they get a little bit of it, but it's not a concentration. We do two semesters and we do an also, uh, uh, an extra semester of advanced counterpoint where we do 20th-century counterpoint on top of really complex Bach stuff.

But it's fine for undergrad. It's fine for undergrad to get started.

Wow. (Laughs) Wow.

Yeah.

Wow. Um, it's like I have two kids. Which one would I put up for people to get to know me, (laughs) on any given day?

Uh, I—I think to show, I've always loved eclecticism. I've always loved exploring 20th-century arts that are not music: poetry, philosophy, um, theater, literature. Uh, so most of the pieces that I would suggest have something to do with those things. Spider Baby's a good example. Uh, it is actually a title taken from a very, very bad Lon Chaney Jr. 1960s horror movie, like a budget of $100. (Laughs)

A chamber orchestra piece, yeah. It's been done by a couple of full orchestras, but it really to me is most effective with the intimacy of the chamber orchestra. But it's while I was discovering—that piece was written in the '90s while I was discovering post-bop avant-garde jazz. And I was in falling in love with, with, uh, Ornette Coleman and, uh, Roland Kirk, and I was just finally learning about these people. And so that had an influence in the piece, and—and I wouldn't say much of my music has a jazz influence, but that piece is one where I really dug into that. My World War II piece from 2015 called Resilience, which is a double concerto for, uh, viola, cello, and orchestra. Very, very meaningful to me, um, written for the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, um, dedicated to my dad, who was in the US Navy for four years out in the Pacific theater.

So, the first movement is is is is the Eastern Europe—the the European theater. The second movement is the Pacific theater, and the third movement is called Blast of Silence. It's the bomb, basically the bomb. But it's not explosive music, it's aftermath of the bomb. That piece was to be done by three different orchestras this year to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the end—

All got canceled. (Laughs) But they said they're—we're alive, and you're alive, you're a COVID survivor. Um, and all the orchestras said we'll be doing it in '21-'22. So that'll—I'll look forward to those.

Al Capone. Put that on the list. (Laughs)

Uh, I—I received a commission to do a—an approximately 30- to 45-minute chamber opera that would be coupled with Eight Songs for a Mad King. And when I received that commission, it was very attractive, but I was scared to death. Eight Songs for a Mad King is one of the greatest masterpieces ever. I was in a performance of it at Hartt years and years and years ago.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Peter Maxwell Davies. And I—that's always been like one of my top 10 pieces of all time. And I thought, "Oh, for God's sake, I have to go in with that?" And one of the greatest compliments I received was, uh, the—the the dean of a music school came up to me after the performance and said, "You held your own with Eight Songs." And I thought, "Wow, I got a chill from that." Uh, they said you could do anything you want, um, and so I came back with some thoughts about Samuel Beckett. I've always been a huge fan of his novel Watt, and his three novellas: Malone, Molloy, uh, and his plays. And I love, uh, how he's kind of post-James Joyce rambling. And I thought, "I'm going to do an a— a half-hour chamber opera that just rambles all the time. Nonsensical." Uh, but one day, as I was starting to come up with my own script, one day I walked into my, uh, den, and for some reason staring at me from the shelf were my two Al Capone books. And on the spine of the books, it says "Capone." And I thought, I—I think I want to do something with that. And I started researching him. After he left, um, Alcatraz, he was so, um, so, um, in such bad physical shape from 25 years of untreated syphilis, he was like a Beckett novel. He just rambled and stumbled and acted like a nine-year-old. And I thought, "Oh my God, I'll put it all together: Samuel Beckett, Al Capone," and out it came. Two of my favorites. So...

That—so yeah, the—the libretto—the libretto is—is by me, uh, but it's also a collection of just, uh, uh, uh, names of people in his family, uh, things that he said while he was at Alcatraz, um, and there's a lot of muh-muh-muh-muh-muh-muh-muh, a lot of lot of lot of mumbling and, and, uh, yeah. I had a blast doing that piece. And again, that's one of those pieces, it's not going to be a top 10, it's not going to be, uh, you know, performed by every university or every opera company across the country because it's a little eccentric. It's very eccentric, but I had a blast. I had a blast writing it, and the people seem to enjoy it.

One scene, 30 minutes.

One non-stop scene, one voice: tenor.

Uh, uh, if I—it's a—it's about 10.

About 10 instruments: piano, percussion, a couple of strings, uh, two low woodwinds (bass clarinet, bari sax, tenor sax).

Uh, accordion, (laughs) a couple other things I can't remember.

Yeah, it's a hybrid ensemble.

It was—it was a lot of, um—a lot of fun. When it was done in—in Poland last year, I asked them, "Why—why are you interested in this?" And they said, "Oh, we love Al Capone in Poland." (Laughs) And while we were there in Warsaw, there's actually an Italian restaurant downtown Warsaw called Capones. (Laughs) So yeah, that was—I never saw that coming, that it would be done in Warsaw.

Uh, yeah. Some—some for friends, some that have come out of the blue from people that have gotten to know my music, but a lot for friends, especially piano. Especially piano. For my wife, and for a good friend.

(Laughs) Um... we have very little in common. Our—our age is very far apart, our culture—she's native Tokyo—our culture's completely different, our interest in food has only one intersection, that's Indian food. We both adore that. Other than that, Japanese food, it's like, "Whoa, I can't handle the raw this and the fermented soybeans." And—and likewise, she has a little trouble with bratwurst and sauerkraut. (Laughs) Or a cheeseburger. Um, but—

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

(Laughs out loud) First, um, number one will always be Bach. And whether it's because of all that counterpoint, you know, that—when I did that, um, in—in my doctoral program, when I did that triple invertible mirror fugue, it's—I was so proud, and I think I'm still more proud of that than just about anything I've done. You know, I did it. I really did it, like the—like like the—the dads in The Music Man: "That's my Billy, he really did it." Um, Bach is always number one. Believe it or not, in my top five is Tchaikovsky. The emotion just blows my mind.

And—and it pisses me off—oh, excuse me, it bothers me that he is a footnote in music history books because he doesn't quite have that academic, um, dogma or whatever. That's—that's baloney for me. I—I I've heard Nutcracker a million times. My daughter danced in it when she was nine years old.

I'm brough- brought to tears every single time.

Symphony, the Sixth Symphony, the—the the the the pathetic movement, the—the slow tragic movement.

It's unbelievable. So, I buck the academic system and have Tchaikovsky way up there for me. Way at the bottom of my list, interestingly enough, is Mahler. Uh, to me—I'm sorry—to me it feels bloated and fake. Now, taken with a grain of salt, I was in school in an era where Mahler was considered not much. So, that's kind of how I grew up. Uh, Wagner and Strauss were elevated, Mahler was put down, Bruckner elevated. Um, currently, I'm—I'm a big fan of John Adams. I think he has so many pieces that he's turned out. I— the love affair started with Harmonielehre. I think it's one of the greatest orchestra pieces of all time. Uh, talk about bringing tears to your eyes, that last movement of Harmonielehre, uh, where he's flying through the sky with his daughter, you know, holding onto his neck, and it's like, I—I I'm going to come to tears just thinking about that piece. Uh, Nixon I've seen live a couple times. Absolutely mind-blowing. Complete completely original, for me it really does it. Uh, Klinghoffer did it pretty good, uh, Doctor Atomic was not my favorite. But, um, but the Klinghoffer and—and, uh—and a lot of his more recent pieces where he's moved away from his earlier 1980s style, it's just, just, just top drawer stuff. Um... other current composers, I'm a big fan of, um, Steve Mackey, who's at Princeton. Um, every time I hear a piece, I'm just like, "Are you kidding me? This is incredible." Virtually every time. Uh, and then, I—I I I'm—I'm a big, uh, fan of film music, more than a fan. I've been involved in doing scores for some films—

And—and a book, a film music book in 2000. Um, I'm—I'm I'm incredibly impressed by a number of composers that have decided to find that career without abandoning their own integrity. Elliot Goldenthal is a—

Incredible. Don Davis, actually, who, as a Juilliard grad, Don Davis did The Matrix films.

Uh, I am in the middle of an orchestra piece, um, commissioned by a couple of different orchestras. The premiere will be with the Dayton Philharmonic. Um, the piece is called 2020: Hell on Earth.

And it is meant to be done— (laughs) Now, Dayton was one of the commissioners because a year and a half ago, I did a piece for them for their Halloween concert called Virus.

And that piece was premiered four months before COVID hit. So Neal Gittleman, the conductor there, called me up and said, "It's your fault! It's your fault!" I said, "I didn't—"

Thank you for having me, Michael. It's been a blast. We'll see you soon.