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!
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.
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.
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.
Small children all have prodigious imaginations. Observe any preschool classroom, and you will see that every child exhibits some sort of expression of wonderful and nonlinear thinking. Somewhere along the way, many adults seem to lose access to this part of themselves. I would even suggest that our country seems to be mired in a kind of Cold War, a kind of Civil War, between people who can access their imaginations and people who can’t, or won’t.
Evidence of this is the recent news about a group of straight, white men trying to organize a “Straight Pride Parade” for Boston later in the summer. This group of people looks at the LGBTQ community and wonders why they get their own parade; why can’t we straight people have one? Some of the more hilarious comments about this on Twitter and Facebook point out that every time there’s a celebratory parade for a sports championship, that is a kind of straight parade. The problem, though, is that this small group of straight white men lacks the ability to imagine why a group of people might need some sort of public celebration of who they are. The LGBTQ community has routinely been discriminated against, denied access to health care, denounced by religious institutions, etc. etc. (for a better explanation, please read ”LGBTQ Allies at Pride Need to Know These 9 Things Before They Go”: https://www.bustle.com/p/lgbtq-allies-at-pride-need-to-know-these-9-things-before-they-go-9376627). Straight people are not targeted for their sexual orientation. So, for some, it’s impossible to imagine that a group of people could be targeted for that reason. STRAIGHT PEOPLE DON’T NEED A CELEBRATION PARADE because we have nothing to celebrate that our privilege doesn’t afford us every single day. This is an example of a lack of imagination on the part of the Straight Pride organizers.
A lack of imagination, or access to imagination, is clear when you hear someone say “Black Lives Matter? ALL LIVES MATTER!” Again, people who say this are unable, or unwilling to imagine a reality that is not theirs; a reality in which you are at risk of losing your life just because of the color of your skin, or a reality in which you can’t enjoy the art at a local museum because patrons and staff assume the worst of you because of your skin color. Black Lives Matter is necessary because the default in our society is that only white lives really matter. If you are white, you don’t see the discrimination, bias, and threats that people of color experience. Again, we white people need to access our imaginations in order to see things we don’t experience.
A lack of imagination is how our country got in this particular pickle (constitutional catastrophe?) we are currently in. Too many people couldn’t imagine a woman president. Her faults were so magnified that they trumped (pun intended) the daily moral and legal transgressions committed by the person who did get elected. Women must be gold to do a bronze job, the saying goes. We have to be beyond perfect because too many people can’t imagine us in positions of authority or power.
The bias against women, the lack of imagination about who we are and can be, is deep and often not conscious. Recently I was one of 6 composers commissioned for a certain project. At the culmination of the project, checks were issued to the male composers. A check was not brought for me and I had to fight for weeks to get paid. Did the organizers say “Let’s not pay Marti because she’s a woman”? Of course not, but even more insidious is that I wasn’t even on the radar. I am often left off of email lists for groups I am in. Do people do this intentionally? I doubt it. But, once again, I am not on the radar. A former student of mine told me that she, an expert in electronic music and sound production, was not taken seriously by a sound engineer at a concert where she was trying to work on the correct levels for her piece. Every single woman professor I know has stories about the young men in their classes not taking them seriously, and often openly defying them and questioning them. Recently I was at a lecture-demonstration by Dr. Kate Biberdorf (aka Kate the Chemist at https://www.katethechemist.com/). She is amazing and brilliant AND HAS BEEN ON STEPHEN COLBERT so I asked her if she experiences this problem. Her answer? “Every. Single. Day.” What does all of this have to do with imagination? I think we all need to take it as a given that we have unconscious biases about things, and try to access our imaginations to root them out. Once we are aware of them, we are a step closer to eliminating them. Assume that you have unconscious bias about people who are not like you.
In addition to experiencing bias as a woman (and by the way, while the above examples may not seem bad to you, try to imagine them happening all day, every day- it is a death by 1000 pinpricks), I also have the apparent invisibility that comes with age, height (lack thereof), and appearance. Every day I am bumped into, ignored in restaurants, generally treated as if I weren’t there. “I didn’t see you” is not an apology. Try to imagine that there are people around you whom you don’t see at first. Look around, look up, look down. Look away from your phone. See the humans around you and celebrate their infinite variety of existence. Imagine us, and imagine our excellence. I promise you it won’t detract from your own.
Unlike most of my friends and colleagues, I was fairly sure Donald Trump would win the 2016 election (I was also sure the Cubs would win the World Series- stay tuned for a future announcement about my career change to Prognosticator). And yet, as I sat in Boston's Symphony Hall on Tuesday night, hearing about election return updates between pieces, I was still shocked.
It seems clear to me that, if you view the two candidates equally, the one who actually treats human beings as if they were less so, the one who seems to have the World's Shortest Attention Span coupled with the World's Thinnest Skin, the one who has no idea what's in the U.S. Consitution, the one who doesn't have any idea how government works, is NOT the one who should be elected leader of the free world. I am tired of hearing "Yeah, but Hillary's a crook" or "You should see what's in those emails". Frankly, I Don't Care. From what I've seen, all politicians have an interesting grasp on what it means to tell the truth- even my beloved Barack Obama- so a candidate's propensity for veracity is hardly a factor for me. We have elected a man who has normalized vitriol against non-Christians. We have elected a man who doesn't recognize that this country was built on immigrants (Donald, don't forget Melania). We have elected a man who views women as a commodity- and THIS is the spawning ground for sexual harassment and discrimination. This is the man- if he can even keep his mind on the job- we have elected to lead our country.
I could spend the rest of this post explaining that since only approximately half of all registered voters actually voted, and because of the intricacies of the electoral college, he was NOT elected by a majority of Americans. His election is NOT a mandate. BUT, instead, I'd like to go back to Tuesday night in Symphony Hall. My friend Maria and I were there to hear a premiere of a work by Eric Nathan, Brahms' Piano Concerto no. 1, and Brahms' First Symphony. It was during the symphony that the full import of the experience hit me: Andris Nelsons, a cherished immigrant from Latvia, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra were giving us the most treasured gift. It was a gift of the most sublime presentation of some of the most sublime music- music that has existed since it was composed and will always exist. All the art and music that has been created and that WILL be created will always exist. It transcends the immediate sadness and angst. It is there for all time to uplift and comfort. It is our spirituality, it is what makes us uniquely human. It cannot be taken away by anyone. It is what makes our lives worth living.
So, it is time for me to stop crying- if I can- and resume creating and teaching others to do so. It is our most powerful weapon, and we must always wield it with wisdom, imagination, wonder and awe. It cannot be taken away from us.
I think it's strange that Morton Feldman had such a low opinion of Beethoven. Convinced that Beethoven's music was structured solely according to functional tonal harmony, Feldman missed the most important aspect of Beethoven's work- a deeply organic expression of form, proportion, and scale; an aspect that Feldman's music shares.
While Beethoven's music in many ways exemplifies Common Practice tonality, the paths he takes to move from key area to key area show that, for him, balance and proportion are paramount. My favorite examples of this are in the first movement of the Waldstein sonata. Instead of stating the second theme in the key of the dominant (G major in this case), Beethoven finds his way to E major- not one, but four sharps away. What key, then, should the second theme be in when it's restated in the Recapitulation? It's supposed to be in the home key of C major, but Beethoven understood that the strangeness of the key area for this theme in the Exposition required a corresponding key of balance in the Recap. Since E major is the major version of the mediant, it would be satisfying to balance it with A major, the major version of the submediant- and that is exactly what Beethoven does.
The end of the Development section has another example of Beethoven's attention to proportion and balance. In order to prepare the listener for the return of the original key and first theme, it was customary for a composer to state thematic material on the dominant chord at the end of the Development section- the Dominant Pedal. In the Waldstein Development section, Beethoven never stays in one key for more than a few measures- usually just one or two. By the time we get to the end of the Development section, we have no idea where we are harmonically; we need a dominant pedal to make the arrival in the home key of C major satisfying and inevitable- Beethoven achieves this with a dominant pedal that lasts an entire page. (I love to point this out to my music theory students in order to show them that harmonic rhythm is often more important than harmonic progression). The longer this passage goes on, the more we crave the resolution.
The Development section itself has a counterpart that shows Beethoven's awareness of the importance of balance. The Development section is so long that it requires another slightly shorter development section at the end of the piece- more typically known as the Coda. There are examples of this- Coda-as-Balancing-2nd-Development- in many of Beethoven's pieces; it is a hallmark of his works in Sonata form. It's a product of his keen architectural awareness.
Morton Feldman was as keenly aware of architectural structures in his own music. He was a composer who was able to conceive of vast musical expanses of time and to create coherence and structural beauty within those expanses of time. Only a composer who had a deep sense of proportion and scale could compose pieces that last 4 hours (or more). Each gesture spins organically to the next in a way that always keeps one engaged; to my ears, not different from the way Beethoven, or Mahler, or Sibelius constructed their large-scale forms.
One of the most profound expressions of musical proportion and balance is in Hans Abrahamsen's Schnee. Schnee , for large ensemble, is made of 5 pairs of canons with three interludes. Each pair of canons gets shorter and shorter so that the piece seems at once like it's staying completely still while at the same time rushing towards an end point in the horizon. The interludes exist to achieve retunings within the ensemble. Abrahamsen has talked about trying to replicate the Doppler effect in this piece, both with the telescoping form as well as with the retunings in the Interludes. The lengths of the movements create a perfect sense of balance and scale, one that at the same time creates a profound sense of nostalgia and loss. (And, I think the one lone tam-tam strike happens at the Golden Section!)
I believe that the formal shape- the proportional map of the piece- is more important than any other aspect. The most beautiful or interesting sounds mean less without a clear, artistically meaningful container to put them in. In Beethoven, Feldman, Abrahamsen- just to mention a few- the brilliant attention to structure and shape is what makes the music so moving, so meaningful.