Michael Schelle - Professor, Music
Professor of Music and composer-in-residence Michael Schelle
didn't realize music composition was his calling until his junior
year at Villanova University. After years of piano lessons and
playing in rock bands, one night he took a date to a concert with
the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormandy, and, by
the end of the evening he found himself much more interested in the
music than the girl.
"They played Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Debussy's
La Mer, incredibly powerful and exciting music brand new
to me," Schelle remembers. "And a living composer had written a new
piece for the orchestra, and he was there and I thought, 'Man, this
is it!' This is what I want to do." Until that point, Schelle,
who'd grown up in the shadows of New York City, was always very
involved in music but medicine appeared to be his destiny. His
mother was an R.N, both sisters became nurses and his brother was a
thoracic surgeon. Michael had gone to Villanova to study medicine
but quickly decided it wasn't for him and changed his major to
theatre, with a philosophy minor. With his sights now set on
playwriting, he also wrote the original incidental music score for
some of Villanova's avant garde theatre productions, an eye-opening
experience which finally put him on the road to becoming a
professional composer.
Schelle's father was transferred to Indianapolis in 1971 and,
after a year in New York City, Michael decided to follow his family
to this brave new world, this dangerous unknown hinter-region known
as the Midwest.
"In Indianapolis, I stumbled across this little school called
Butler University and I noticed they had music composition
courses," he says. Next thing he knew, he had a 2nd bachelor's
degree and was prepared to continue on for a master's (Hartt School
of Music, in Connecticut) and doctorate (University of Minnesota)
in music composition. He has been on the faculty of Butler
University since 1980.
Schelle has two children, a daughter who works for a prestigious
graphic design firm in New Haven, Connecticut and a son who's
studying Social Work at the University of Hartford. Schelle's
music, which has been commissioned and performed by major
orchestras and professional chamber ensembles across the US and
abroad, mixes the influences Jimi Hendrix with Stravinsky and J. S.
Bach, the expressive chromaticism of Wagner and Mahler, "And the
big umbrella over everything is the experimental aesthetic of
Charles Ives, John Cage, and post-Bop jazz pioneers like Lennie
Tristano and Ornette Coleman, which is: Who cares? If that's the
thing we want to do, that's what we're going to do. I love that
'devil-may-care', 'spit in your eye', 'break the rules' spirit. I
love to try things. Still today, every piece is like a kid in a
candy store - sure, let's try that."
View Michael Schelle's campus
directory information.