I Am A Classical Composer

For years I have been thinking what to call myself and the many, many other composers who are alive today creating new works of concert music. I often find it challenging to describe to non-musicians what I do. I usually end up saying something glib like “I am just like Beethoven with better hearing and hygiene.”

I have now come down firmly on the side of embracing the designation of “classical composer”. “Modern classical composer” or “contemporary classical composer” work as well. This involves a more precise definition of what “classical” means.

First, and most importantly, it is NOT a style or genre description. Many, many styles and genres exist within this broad definition. Instead, it is a description of how the music is conceived and executed. Classical music, then is: music imagined and written down by one person for the purposes of being performed in a concert (or concert-like setting in the case of music written for the church or other similar situations). While small instances of improvisation can and do occur, the majority of the piece is imagined and notated by one person. And this means that the entirety of the piece- this is where my attempts to describe what I do to people who don’t already know can fall short- is imagined and written down by a person. If I write an orchestra piece, through years and years of training, I can imagine all the parts and how they interact with each other. I know how to write them down so that the performers can realize my aural vision.

I like this because it can include Machaut’s Notre Dame Mass and Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians in one definition. It can include Cage’s 4’33” (my conviction that this is a composed piece of music will be topic for another blog post), Mahler 9, and Saariaho’s Lichtbogen. It can include opera and ballet. It includes everything written by a human for consumption by an audience of humans whose task it is to be present and listen.

So when you ask me what I do, I will tell you “I am a classical composer whose music is reflective of the time in which I live.”

Marti's 2025 Performances

On Wednesday, November 19 at 8 p.m. in Boston Conservatory’s 31 Hemenway Building, 4th floor, the fantastic violin and cimbalom duo, Lamnth, will present a portrait concert of my music. Lamnthis Lilit Hartunian, violin, and Nick Tolle, cimbalom. Lilit will present the premiere of A Terrarium for Lilit, a new piece I write for her. Nick and guest mezzo-soprano Carrie Cheron will perform my Mary Magdalen, and Lilit and Nick will perform Inflorescence, the piece I composed for their inaugural concert.

Marti's Winter Concerts

January 28, 2025: pianist Yuseok Seol will perform my etude, Hummingbirds as part of the Berklee Faculty Composers Concert. 8 pm, Seully Hall, 8 The Fenway, Boston.

February 2, 2025: pianist Jack Yarbrough will premiere the piece I wrote for him, For Jack, as part of the Boston Conservatory New Music Festival. 8 p.m. Seully Hall, 8 The Fenway, Boston.

March 2, 2025: New England Philharmonic will perform my orchestra piece, Celestial Navigation. 3 p.m. Tsai Performance Center at Boston University: https://patch.com/massachusetts/boston/calendar/event/20250302/7bfa6970-c299-41d4-9e09-5a36139ee339/new-music-new-england

Welcome to Marti's Website

Welcome to my website! I have often used this homepage to host blog posts; if you are interested, you can scroll through to find various musings on topics from baseball to Sibelius to grief to being a parent (and more).

If you would like to explore my music, the navigation bar is at the bottom of the screen.

NOTE: Please contact me at either marti@martiepstein.com or martiepstein@gmail.com about score purchase, or just to say hi!

Recent Interviews

Collage New Music: The Composer Speaks

Reflections on Music and Nature

1 Track Podcast

They Do Exist

The Process

I Care if You Listen Interview

WICN Radio interview

Sounds of Berklee interview

Musica Kaleidoscopea interview

WRUU interview

on "Classical" music

Random thoughts on this unwieldy thing we inadequately call "Classical Music":

I have been listening to Joshua Weilerstein's Sticky Notes podcast. He repeatedly reminds us that "Classical Music is NOT supposed to be relaxing". So very true. This music has the power to transform us, to move us, to anger us, to frighten us, to fill us with joy- and all those things simultaneously, within one piece. I have been watching Simon Rattle's Sibelius cycle with Berlin, and in the middle of the 7th symphony (which really only makes sense as an interrupted coda to the 6th, the way Rattle does it), the camera showed a woman, sitting in those seats behind the orchestra, discreetly but openly weeping. Yes, this is what "Classical Music" can do if we listen carefully in a deep engaged way.

Beethoven the Radical: a Modest Proposal

Lately I have been seeing lots of suggestions on Social Media about how to celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday this year. Many of these offer the idea that, because LVB’s music is already so ubiquitous, all celebrations should involve vows to not program any of his music at all this year. Some of these are said in jest, and ALL of them come from a very real place of anger at the lack of imaginative programming on the part of orchestras and other music organizations.

I have a different idea. First, it isn’t Beethoven’s fault his music is overplayed. During his lifetime, music of the past was rarely performed. Each concert was a celebration of the next new piece by living composers, Beethoven in particular. He was not composing for posterity; he was composing for next week’s concert. He was just doing his job. On many levels, I am grateful that we know his music and can learn from it (more on that in a bit), but the disdain many people, especially today’s living composers, have for his music is a perfect example of Familiarity Breeding Contempt. Every time his 5th Symphony is programmed, a little more of its breathtaking weirdness gets rubbed off. It makes perfect sense that one could feel weary of hearing his music and come to dread the prospect of a whole year of MORE BEETHOVEN. Also, to be perfectly honest, not every thing he wrote was genius. If I never hear the Choral Fantasy again, I will be able soldier on.

Here’s what we forget about Beethoven when he gets overplayed. He was a radical modernist. His sense of architecture and structure and proportion in music has not been seen/heard in any previous composer (with the exception of Bach, but he is another story). His awareness of the large, overarching scale in music is something that all composers can- and should- learn from. His harmonic explorations set the stage for the end of tonality. And, his interest in texture and the sounds themselves (Waldstein sonata opening) were so strange and fresh that his peers thought he had lost the ability to compose when he lost his hearing. In fact, I believe the opposite is true; when he lost his hearing, and had to rely solely on his inner ear, he became much more experimental and wonderfully strange.

The prospect of a year of Beethoven when many music organizations show little interest in composers of the 20th and 21st centuries feels unconscionable. This results in less of an interest in or awareness of non-white and/or non-male composers. Beethoven’s music is criticized for being such an integral part of the Canon of Classical Music-but the canon is not made of stone. It has infinite room. Adding people will not bump Beethoven, or Brahms, or anyone else. There is room for everyone.

So- here’s my proposal. To celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday, program his music. Program the best of it. Celebrate him. BUT- make a pledge that, starting this year and continuing in to perpetuity, EVERY TIME a Beethoven piece is programmed on a concert, it will always be paired with a piece by a living composer, whether a pre-existing piece or a new commission. And, I have the perfect place to start. Jonathan Bailey Holland, a fine ALIVE composer, has composed a companion piece to LVB 9- a brilliant piece for chorus and orchestra called Ode. That would be a perfect place to start.

شعر فارسی مارتی

۱   من و تو (برای ر ش)

بین ما، بندی پنهان است که ما را وصل می کند

بند پنهان و غیب است

اما می توانم آن را ببینم

بند، طناب سیرک است

اگر یک طرف بیفتم

از تو نفرت دارم

اگر طرف دیگر بیفتم

دلم برای عشق تو آماده است

تو می گویی که عاشقم هستی

اما من را نمی بینی

در دست چپ توست

که تو یک انتهای بند را نگه می‌داری

در دست راست من است

که من انتهای دیگر بند را نگه می‌دارم

فقط تو می‌توانی بند را قطع کنی

بند را قطع کن

۲    دل ناهماهنگ من (برای گ ک)

دو شخص

یک زن بیرون است

یک زن داخل است 

زن بیرون پیرتر و پیرتر می‌شود

خاکستری، خسته، غیب، کوچک

زن داخل دختری جوان است

زنده، قشنگ، جالب، قابل توجه

اینجا پسری هم هست 

هم کودکی خردسال هم مردی تازه 

پسر خواهد رفت

آزادیِ غمگین

دلِ ناهماهنگ من

۳     هنوز تولدی دیگر (برای فروغ)

زندگی شاید

عکسی از او باشد

دستها، مثل پرنده ها

انگشت شصت

چسبیده به هم

انگشت دیگر لرزیده با هم

زندگی شاید

پسری محبوب باشد

که قربانی هنر شود

پسری دیگر محبوب باشد

که نزدیک است

زندگی شاید

تنهایی زنانه باشد

در اتاق پر از مرد

رندگی شاید

عشقی باشد کی آزاد نیست

هم با هم هستیم هم با هم نیستیم

زندگی شاید

سکه ی باشد

یک زن و یک زن دیگر

دو روی سکه

۴  غنچه پنهان (برای م س)

عشق من به تو نامرئی است

هیچ کس نمی تواند آن را ببیند

حتی تو نمی توانی ان را ببینی

در یک فضای تاریک ساکت پرکشش پنهان شده است

وقتی کنار من می‌نشینی

 برقی بین ما می‌لرزد و می‌درخشد

تو به سمت من خم می‌شوی

برقی میان ما جرقه می‌زند

عشق من به تو مثل یک غنچه پنهان است

در انتظار شکوفه دادن

۵. گیجی  (برای م س)

وقتی به من نگاه می‌کنی

اسمم را فراموش می‌کنم

نمی‌توانم صحبت کنم

قشنگی تو حواسِ من را پرت می‌کند.