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



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EXIST (2024)

Commissioned by The Walden School Faculty Commissioning Project for performance by Friction Quartet

Premiered by Friction Quartet
Louise Shonk Kelly Recital Hall, Dublin, NH, 12 July 2024


says the almanac, for string quartet (2024)

Matthew Saunders (trombone) and Megan Denman (piano)
West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, Rocky River, OH

Verbs of Perception, for trombone and piano (2024)

While I often struggle to compose, this piece simply arrived and showed itself while sitting at the desk in February.  It is loosely based on an Venezuelan pasaje rhythm.  This work was written for the International Saito Conducting Workshop in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, and was premiered at the final performance on July 26, 2025.

Ayre, for string orchestra

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.

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SWANWHITE (1981) - soprano and  piano

SAMMLUNG for 6 voices, ensemble & electronic

SAMMLUNG -1rst Part (2025)

Title: sculpture viii | kerf study
Year: 2025
Performers: longleash (Pala Garcia, John Popham, Mika Sasaki)

sculpture viii | kerf study [piano trio]

Title: echontologies
Year: 2025
Performers: Jeffrey Zeigler (cello), James May (voice, electronics)

echontologies [voice, cello, electronics]

University of Oregon Campus Orchestra
Evan Harger, conductor

Beall Concert Hall, Eugene, OR
26 April 2016

Out of stone, for string orchestra (2016)

The music of Cara Haxo juxtaposes delicate, sparkly textures with the gritty and the grotesque. Haxo is the winner of the 2022 NWMF Emerging Women Composers Competition. Other awards include the IAWM Libby Larsen and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Prizes and the NFMC Young Composers Award. She has received commissions from the May Festival Youth Chorus, Quince Ensemble, and Splinter Reeds. Haxo is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at The College of Wooster and an Academic Dean and faculty member for The Walden School Young Musicians Program.