Michael Schelle

Aria, Canon and Fugazi  (2025)

- for two pianos, four hands


Written for Kate Boyd and Miho Sasaki


Urban Dictionary:
 “fugazi” is an acronym along the lines of “fubar,” or 
“f—ed up beyond all recognition.” “Fugazi” reportedly 
stands for “f—ed up, got ambushed, zipped in” (referring 
to getting zipped in a body bag).


 - also: "fugazi" : hypocritical, broken beyond repair :)

website:  schellemusic.com
 

Duration:  ca. 12 minutes 

Aria, Canon and Fugazi

Michael Schelle

THE CASE OF THE SENTIMENTAL PSYCHOPATH  (2025)
-  for chamber orchestra

Program Note:  Inspired by film noir, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock,
Quentin Tarantino and Russ Meyer (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!), this 
is a piece written for someone you know ... or, perhaps, for yourself ....

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The Case of the Sentimental Psychopath (2025)

Michael Schelle

EXIST (2024)
- for string orchestra, harp and percussion

After decades of writing mostly wild, edgy, eccentric, violent, agressive 'modernist' music (and enjoying every minute of it!) -  for ex. "The End of Al Capone" (opera), wind ensemble pieces such as "Guttersnipe", "When Hell Freezes Over", "Seven Steps from Hell", "The End of the World", "Hangover Hotel", "Bullet Train to Hell"  ...  orchestra pieces such as "Virus", "Trapped Like Rats", "The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse", "Escape from Xishuangbanna","Extraction on No. 8", "Ear Infection", "Summit at San Quentin", and chamber pieces such as "JUKAI: The Mt. Fuji Suicide Forest", "Kingfish Levinsky", "Cut and Run", "Rosemary's Baby's Accordions", "Bury the Hatchet", "Switchblade Stockhausen" and "The Eisenstein Mummers", I just really wanted to write a simple, engaging - with just a touch of nostalgia and caution - string orchestra piece.  

Although there are brief moments of gentle reflection in many of my pieces, and extended peaceful moments of hope and resolution in "Resilience" (2015, double concerto for viola, cello and orchestra - on the 70th anniversary of the end of WW2, Mvmt. 3: Blast of Silence), and in Mvmt. 3 (After Afterlife) of "The End of the World" (2011), my last completely "nice" piece was "Prayer" (2004), for cello, chamber winds, piano, harp and percussion.

While this is certainly no Barber, Britten or Tchaikovsky string piece (altho Tchaik 6 IS briefly referenced near the end - long story!), for me, this is all quite illuminating, cleansing, resolving 
and affirming - at long last, a piece that doesn't cause fear, anxiety and emotional paralysis :)

"EXIST" was was written for my dear friend - and decades-long champion of my music - Maestro Neal Gittleman (30-year music director of the spectacular Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra) for his 2025/26  "farewell" DPO concert. i.e. EXI(S)T.

Neal has programmed many of my big, aggressive pieces in the past, so this time I wanted to close our decades of collaboration and friendship with music of genuine respect, sincere gratitude, deep affection, cautious optimism, nostalgic reflection, resolution and peace.

n.b.: the "theatre" at the end (m. 196-217) is optional

Duration:  ca. 8 minutes



www.schellemusic.com/1.html

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EXIST (2024)

UMMG

Commemorating my trip to Belize a few years ago I wrote a song for them. Beautiful people there.

To Belize

Michael Schelle

Swanwhite  (1981)

Dana Zenobi, soprano
Amanda Hopson, piano
Indianapolis - January 2023

Program listing:

Swanwhite (1981)
    Prayer
1. Roses
2. Midsummer Child
3. Beautiful
4. Discipline
5. Peace

"Swanwhite" (1901) is a play written by Swedish playwright August Strindberg (1849-1912)

Written as a vehicle for his new love, the 19-year old Norwegian actress Harriet Bosse, this is Strindberg's only play of love, romance, roses and dreams. "Swanwhite" was Strindberg's gift to Harriet on their wedding day in 1901 (there was a 31 year age difference between them)

The text(s) of the songs herein come from a collection of letters / correspondences between Strindberg and Harriet, written after their parting in 1902. The Prayer is by Strindberg, the remaining texts are from Harriet's letters.

Considered the "father" of Swedish modernism, Strindberg's destructive, schizophrenic, neurotic, paranoid personality - and love / hate relationships with women - took its toll as their marriage feel within weeks to a bitter parting of the ways. Harriet, however, was already expecting their child. 


The photo is Harriet with 3-month old Anna Marie Strindberg.


n.b.:  the majority of these songs are quite intimate in nature - reflective, personal, sometimes violent, sometimes nostalgic, etc. rather than traditionally dramatic - less vibrato the better.

P.S. :  as a B.A. theatre major at Villanova Univeristy (Philadelphia), and long after I was attracted to - and studied - his life and works (plays, fiction, criticisms, paintings, politics, etc.), I discovered we shared birthdays, 22 January, exactly 101 years apart.  This realization gave me chills and I knew destiny would call to write music for him. Swanwhite is the last of my three "Strindberg" pieces, the other two are "Music for the Last Days of Strindberg" (1980) for large chamber ensemble, and "The Red Room" (1979) for solo piano.

www.schellemusic.com

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SWANWHITE (1981) - soprano and  piano

Sabertooth is a short, fast, and loud piece for two pianos that was a bit of a departure from my previous methods of sketching out and planning my compositions. I focused on motivic gestures and syncopations, and used a series of 12-note all-interval vertical sonorities, (specifically, I used 'Link chords,' or chords that contain the all-trichord-hexachord as a discrete hexachord and were discovered by theorist John Link,) to guide my pitch content and orchestrations.

This premier performance was given by John Orfe and Chee Hyeon Choi for Bradley University's new music concert Peoria Lunaire, on April 22nd, 2015.

Sabertooth

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