How is it possible to imagine complex musical structures and then write them down so that performers can reproduce those complex structures and make them audible? The work of a composer involves years and years of studying the scores of other composers. It involves listening to and studying a variety of music. This is what feeds a composer’s aural imagination, and this is what gives a composer the skill and craft necessary to write the music down that is taking shape inside their head. The things I am most interested in are Time, Sound, and Form. How is the piece existing in time? Form is the intersection of Time and Sound. How are the sounds combining to create an entity that exists with form and shape in time? How is the piece occupying its space? How are the sounds creating a formal structure that changes and manipulates time? I am interested in suspending the listener’s sense of external felt time so that a piece of music can create its own unique sense of time. I often compose pieces that last more than 30 minutes. I feel like I have room to explore this idea of time as a formal structure. Here is a piece of mine, composed in 2009, which explores this idea (Hypnagogia, written for and performed by the Ludovico Ensemble): Marti Epstein – Hypnagogia (2009)

“If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.” This is a quote from Arnold Schoenberg, one of my compositional heroes. I think about this idea a lot. As a composer of “post-classical 21st century avant-garde” music, I am always trying to find the path between composing the music that is the truest expression of who I am as a composer and composing music that will engage and speak to listeners, musicians and lay people alike. On one hand, I am not interested in creating art “for the people,” but on the other hand, I would like to widen my listener circle a bit.

The question is not how do we create art that people will like, but rather how do we get people to like the art we create? First, I would propose replacing the word “like” with the word “value.” Second, I would replace the word “get” with the word “invite.” How do we invite people to value art? That’s the question. Liking or not liking something is almost immaterial. Some of my most treasured artistic experiences have been when I wasn’t sure what my emotional response to something was. I only knew that I was having a profound experience that was deeply valuable to me. This is not a production issue; this is an issue of marketing and education. How can the Boston Symphony Orchestra, for example, educate their audience members about valuing the experience of hearing something new and unfamiliar?

For her high school capstone project, a young friend of mine went to the MFA and timed how long museum visitors looked at representational art versus abstract art. Amongst other things, she discovered that people tended to linger longer at the things with which they were most familiar. She suggests that the first step towards engaging observers is to encourage them to spend time looking at the unfamiliar; not just seeing, but involved looking and observing. Second, she would encourage people to describe the basic building blocks used in a work of art, and to describe how those building blocks are used similarly or differently in something that is unfamiliar. Third, she suggests that the observer be encouraged to react, to take part in the experience, to try to define what exactly it is he/she is feeling or thinking when approaching something new.

I don’t have answers. I do know that when I have been asked to give talks on my music prior to performances, the audience is much more predisposed to listening carefully to my music, to valuing the experience of hearing something new. But marketing and education need to happen before people decide to go or not to go to a concert. Somehow, the experience of hearing (or seeing, or reading, etc.) something new and unfamiliar needs to be given a context of excitement and worth — the act of original creativity is, after all, one of the things that makes us human, that makes life worth living.

Lately I have been thinking of composing and making art, in general — as a sacred act of peaceful resistance. All I want to do is put something strangely beautiful and interesting into the world and invite you in to hear it even if it is unfamiliar. Modern music can be hard to grasp. When you hear an unfamiliar piece by Haydn, for example, you know what to expect because you already know his language. The challenging thing about hearing a piece of new modern classical music is that you don’t have a pre-existing knowledge of the composer’s unique language; you don’t have a frame of reference to provide you with context. There is more terrain to cover when hearing new music if both the composer’s individual sound as well as their overall musical language are unfamiliar. Try listening for the different kinds of sounds a composer is working with. Try listening for musical materials that return. Patience and observation are of primary importance. And most important is accepting that the person who created the music you are hearing was only trying to create sonic art. They wanted to find a way to invite you into their world. They are only asking you for value and acceptance. They only want you — I want you — to pay attention.

Other (very long) pieces to listen to: In Praise of Broken Clocks, written in 2022 for soundicon: In Praise of Broken Clocks by Marti Epstein (and here is the picture I drew of the piece as a kind of map before I started composing: