ROBERT KARLEN'S 43 YEARS at Augsburg include teaching and research spanning the globe from Scandinavia to Greece and Turkey and China. As he retires from the College, he leaves a legacy that includes close connections to a Chinese conservatory of music and its faculty, an archive of original music from Scandinavia, and influences from these experiences that impacted the education of many, many music students he has taught.

Over a decade's time, Karlen taught four semesters at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music in Chengdu, China, initiated by an invitation from the United Board of Christian Higher Education in Asia. What he found there was a dearth of Western music—resulting from the purges of Mao's Cultural Revolution—and during his teaching sojourns there was able to re-introduce music of the classics and his own to the Chinese students.

On one trip Karlen arranged for a visit of Augsburg Concert Band director Robert Stacke to join Karlen as a guest conductor. This led to a year-long residency at Augsburg by the conservatory's band director, Sun Jin. Upon returning to China, Sun started a non-military community band in Chengdu.

Karlen's career at Augsburg has also included exploration of Nordic music. As an American Scandinavian Foundation Fellow, he spent a year visiting the five Nordic countries to meet composers, collect scores, and learn.

Augsburg then became a logical recipient of a unique collection of Scandinavian music scores, recordings, and books that has recently been catalogued in Lindell Library. (See Augsburg Now, spring 2000 story.)

Karlen came to Augsburg in 1959, initially through a commission for incidental music for a play, Christ in the Concrete City, directed by arts professor Ailene Cole. He was attracted to Augsburg by music chair Leland Sateren, and chuckles in recalling the early days when they shared an office and between the two of them taught almost all the music students. In fact, current music department chair Bob Stacke, as well as faculty members Merilee Klemp, Peter Hendrickson, Gabe Gabrielsen, and Trudi Anderson all studied with Karlen during their student days at Augsburg.

Karlen comments on the openness for collaboration and experimentation as one of the most rewarding aspects of his career here—something not as possible at larger, performance-based music programs where each faculty member is a specialist.

An early project brought Karlen and art professor Phil Thompson together for a series of six TV programs describing similarities in visual arts and music. For another, Karlen collaborated with English professor John Mitchell on a unique short film where each frame was hand-etched by Mitchell and for which Karlen created an electronic music score.

Among his honors and commissions, Karlen created a composition, For the Birds, based on the play by Aristophanes, for the opening concert of the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts

Karlen looks forward to retirement as a time to complete some unfinished projects. One is a musical composition that was requested by the Havana Clarinet Quintet, a group whom he happened to meet when they performed in China. Karlen would most enjoy a trip to Cuba for a premiere of this composition.

A scholarship honoring Robert Karlen was established by his friends, family, and alumni in recognition of his musical accomplishments and long service to Augsburg.