Richard Chaplain Brodhead – 50th Reunion Essay

Richard Chaplain Brodhead

1586 Ulster Terrace

West Chester, PA 19380

brodhead@temple.edu

Spouse(s): Joellen A. Meglin (2002)

Education: BA, Yale 1969; A.M. University of Pennsylvania 1977

Career: concert music composer; secondary school taecher, Chestnut Hill Academy (3 years) and The Independent Day School (3 years); Haverford College, faculty (3 years); New School of Music, faculty and Dean (4 years), Acting President (2 years); Temple University, faculty (26 years), with several administrative positions during that time. Retired from teaching 2013.

College: Pierson

During my four undergraduate years, Yale gave me many gifts. I benefited from superb teaching, wonderful courses, important opportunities, good friends and good fellowship—for which I am very grateful. But from the vantage point of 50 years later, I see that, at the time and for some years thereafter, I did not recognize Yale’s greatest gift to me.

In 1965, I began my freshman year with the unquestioned goal of studying music composition and making it the center of my professional life; and, because of formative experiences with inspiring secondary school teachers, I saw teaching as an integral part of my life as a concert music composer. For me, composition and teaching were, and still are, two sides of the same coin.

My CV shows that I reached those goals: I have composed for over 50 years, and since my retirement from secondary school and university teaching, I now compose full-time. It looks from the outside like a straight, clear path—easily traveled—from youthful interest and ambition to adult fulfillment.

I have often wished it could be so. As a lived experience, traveling that path was often halting and difficult, the path itself neither straight nor clear. In opening me up to a far wider and more turbulent world than I had known previously, Yale brought me face-to-face, for the first time, with unasked and unanswered questions about myself, and inevitably with unexamined anxieties, self-doubts, and fears. That began a search to build a meaningful, contributing life that recognizes both abilities and limitations, both strengths and weaknesses.

There have been times, during my Yale years and after, when the “demons” have exacted their toll. But Yale started me on a continuing journey, and now the path is far less tortuous, and the search a rewarding exploration, leading me to what might have been impossible otherwise: to a good and nourishing marriage, to work in which I find meaning and enjoyment, to a greater understanding of what is important and what is not, and to a liberating acceptance that things don’t have to be perfect to be good.

As the years go on, T.S. Eliot’s oft-quoted words grow in meaning for me:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Yale’s greatest gift to me was to start me on my journey of exploration, and I am deeply grateful.