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Volume CXXXIII, Number 2 |
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Professor Profiles
ADAM BABER
ORIENT STAFF
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| Professor Shende of the music department helps student Andrew King '04. (Nancy Van Dyke, Bowdoin Orient) |
Brian will often call up Shende, a composer, pretending to be the manager of some far-off opera company or orchestra and offering him a major commission for a new piece. So when a man with a heavy German accent called up in February of 2002 and said that the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) was interested in commissioning him, he was a bit skeptical.
"It soon became apparent, though, that this guy knew far more about the NSO than Brian would have," Shende remembers with a hearty laugh. It turned out that the heavily-accented voice on the line was indeed with the NSO, and by the end of the conversation, Shende had scored his biggest success so far as a young composer.
Having recently won the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) Young Composers Award for his piece "Snarl," Shende's music caught the ear of renowned conductor and NSO director Leonard Slatkin, who asked him to compose a short piece for the orchestra's final season concert this past June.
Shende's piece, titled "Razzle," was to follow two works by giants of the twentieth-century classical music world: Prokofiev and Bartok. While "Razzle" was commissioned as a lighter "encore" to these works, Shende still sought to do what every young artist wants to do-"say something."
He drew his inspiration from national and world events at the time-specifically what he called a tendency of the Bush administration and, to an extent, American society as a whole, to paint issues in "big brushstrokes and ignore or deny problematic points." This lack of nuance is apparent from the start of the piece, which opens with a big, brash, in-your-face fanfare. The climax of the piece features a tortured quote from Shostakovich which is transformed into a more palatable Gershwin tune. The multi-faceted nuance of the Shostakovich tune is ultimately trampled by the fanfare's untimely return.
The piece was met with wild applause at its first performance, and received a very favorable review in the Washington Post. This pleased Shende, as he aspires to make his music accessible to a broad audience. While he says that music should "mean something on many levels," he still feels a need to grab the audience-possibly a product of his early fascination with the visceral energy of rock music.
Shende came to classical music not in spite of his love of rock and roll, but because of it. After hearing a concert by one of his favorite groups, "Yes," a teenage Shende investigated Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite," the finale of the opening number of the band's set. On the other side of the record was Stravinsky's ground-breaking "Rite of Spring," a ballet depicting pagan ritual using the instruments of the orchestra and manipulating the basic foundations of Western music in a way that changed the course of 20th century music. Shende was hooked. "Stravinsky rocked out harder than anyone else," he remembers with a smile.
While the encounter with Stravinsky had opened Shende's eyes to a completely new genre, he wasn't about to devote his life to classical music just yet. He entered Grinnell College-"surrounded by cornfields an hour from the metropolis of Des Moines"-planning to major in physics.
But those pesky 20th century composers had other plans. After singing some Benjamin Britten in the choir and analyzing some Mahler in theory class, Shende switched to music and never looked back. He earned his Master's from Butler University and his Doctor of Musical Arts from Cornell. A grant from the Mellon Foundation took him back to Grinnell to teach and compose for two years, after which he came to Bowdoin.
The liberal arts environment appeals to Shende. Having students with such diverse majors as math, history, and chemistry allows for varying and cross-pollinating interpretations of music. Personally, though, Shende sees himself in a position of "huge responsibility, realizing that in many cases the first contact that students will have with these important and beautiful pieces that we study will be through me."
Success for him is when his students have made a personal investment in the music they're examining or playing. His classes, like his music, are built out of material that, when properly understood, jumps out and grabs the student. One may find him teaching complex composition techniques using the theme from The Simpsons or having half his class sing "My Country 'Tis of Thee" while the other half sings "Happy Birthday" to illustrate polymeter.
"There are things that really move me about music," he says,
"and if I can convey them to the students and see in their eyes that
they too are experiencing a personal resonance with the material, then
I've accomplished my mission." It's not an easy mission, and one
that demands more than a little nuance.
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