Terry Schlenker: Behind the Composition
When did your love of music begin?
As long as I have memory! We had a piano in the house from the time that I was about a year old. In fact, when we sold my parent's house, my dad still had the receipt for the new Baldwin piano they had purchased 60 years earlier. In rural North Dakota, there was only one art form that existed, and that was music. There was nothing of architectural significance, and we never had a single visual art course in school. But music! Music was rooted in the church, most people were quite devout, and that was true of my parents and extended family, as well.
Though far from accomplished, my mother had been a church organist, and my father would noodle around on the piano and play the harmonica. Back then, you weren’t given piano lessons until you were eight. I was ready when I was four. I was the youngest of three, so I coaxed my sister, seven years my senior, to teach me. I eventually took piano lessons from every teacher (four) in my little town (Ashley, ND). My last teacher was the pianist at the Baptist church, and was very adept at the improvisation of hymns. I worked with her on improvisation, but at that point, I had far surpassed my teachers, so she would schedule me last in the day so that she could just hear me play, sometimes for hours.
Though my school was tiny (I graduated in a class of 39), we had a powerhouse music program. We had many exceptional musicians in the band and always had a very dedicated music teacher. He often drove us to neighboring towns for private lessons on weekends with other band teachers who played our specific instruments. We had clarinetists playing von Weber concertos and Hindemith Sonatas! The wife of the newspaper owner had been an alto soloist at St. Olaf College...I’d call her for lessons. One of our church minister’s daughters was getting her doctorate in piano performance. When she was home for the weekend, I’d ask her for a lesson. I did what I could to get a musical education in a rural farming community!
When did you begin composing?
What North Dakota farm kid is writing music at age 12? Weird! I didn’t know of anyone who composed music. I have no idea what compelled me to do this! I have always been an improvisor, so I guess I wanted to create my own unique sounds. I really didn’t get more serious about it until I had graduated from college. I took a job in Grand Forks, ND, the location of the University of North Dakota. As I was working as a clinical laboratory scientist, I took some music classes at the university. They offered only one composition class, which I took. The teacher was an organ professor (Robert Wharton), and not a composer. He was a great teacher, however, and I asked if I could study composition privately with him. I actually wrote some amazing piano music during that period of time. This ultimately led to the decision to move to Denver to enter graduate school to study composition at the Lamont School of Music at DU.
What does the process look like for you, and how long does it take to complete a work?
I think every composer has their unique process. As I mentioned earlier, I have always been an improviser, and I write at the piano. I begin with sketches, which are in my own form of shorthand. Unfortunately, nobody would be able to read this but me! Once I have completed my sketches, I transfer this to a handwritten full score. This is usually the most time-consuming process. Once the full score is completed, the piece will be engraved into its final form.
The older I get, the quicker I write. I am an emotional composer, so I write based on a feeling. I try to capture the feeling while it is in me, or often the writing of the piece will heal the feeling. In my younger days, I would agonize over a piece for months. In the last few decades, I have sometimes written pieces in a day. In fact, the Credo of my Mass for Double Choir was written in 24 hours. However, it's more normal to write a piece in a month or so.
What inspired your Mass for Double Choir?
In the late 1990s, my sister gave me a CD of the Dale Warland Singers performing the Mass for Double Choir by Frank Martin. I had never heard it before, and I was exceptionally taken by this piece (and still am). I must have listened to it hundreds of times. Then...I lost the CD (this was before streaming). I hadn’t heard it in a number of years, but it was in my memory. In 2002, I decided to write a Mass for Double Choir of my own. Because it had been so long since I had heard the Martin, I feel I certainly was inspired by it, but no longer influenced by it. I wanted to write a major work for choir, and for me, a Mass is like a symphony for choir. I am a spiritual, but not traditionally religious person, and I also wanted to write a piece to express my deepest spiritual self. I love the pure vowel sounds of latin, so essentially I am expressing my spiritual self through sound. For example, the Gloria is glorifying my connection with my source through sound, and the Credo is expressing my personal belief system through sound. In my opinion, music is the deepest language, and can express things that traditional language cannot begin to.
What should the listener expect? What might they listen for?
My musical style is a little difficult to describe. I am not exceptionally prolific, primarily because this is an intense hobby and not a profession for me. I am not pumping out work to pay next month’s rent; so I feel that each piece of mine is perhaps more unique from others I have written. The Mass is in a style that I might refer to as extended tonality. There are movements in which there are rapid key changes or tonal centers. Others, not as much. There is also somewhat of an ethereal quality to parts of it. This is challenging work, and I respect Joel and Kantorei for taking it on. In my opinion, it is totally worth the effort, and I hope they believe the same after performing it! It is my hope that the audience and the choir will make their own connection with the spiritual through this performance.
Do you have any new works in progress now?
I have just completed a commission from Ars Nova Singers for their 40th anniversary. It is my understanding that they plan to bring Kantorei, St. Martin’s Chamber Choir, and Ars Nova Singers together for a single concert. Each choir will perform a portion of the concert with new music they have recently performed. The concert will end with the three choirs singing the commission that I wrote. I am exceptionally excited about this performance since I have a connection with all three groups. I am perhaps the only person who has sung with all three and has had my compositions performed by all three. I believe the concert will be scheduled sometime in May of 2026.
