Sad News: Martin Boykan

March 15, 2021

Dear Colleagues,

I am sad to share that Martin (Marty) Boykan, Irving G. Fine Professor of Music, emeritus, died peacefully at his home on March 6, 2021 at the age of 89. He leaves behind his wife, Susan Schwalb, and his niece Ina Pour El and her family.  His funeral took place in New York City on Monday, March 8, 2021.

Marty was born in 1931. He studied composition with Walter Piston at Harvard University, where he received his BA in 1951, and with Paul Hindemith at Yale, where Marty received his MM in 1953. He also studied composition with Aaron Copland, and  piano with Eduard Steuermann. In 1953–55 he was in Vienna on a Fulbright Fellowship, and when he returned to the US he founded the Brandeis Chamber Ensemble whose other members included Robert Koff (Juilliard Quartet), Nancy Cirillo (Wellesley), Eugene Lehner (Kolisch Quartet) and Madeline Foley (Marlborough Festival).

Marty taught at Brandeis from 1957 until his retirement in 2009. He received numerous awards and honors over the course of his career. He received the Jeunesse Musicales award for his String Quartet No.1 in 1967 and the League ISCM award for Elegy in 1982. Other awards include a Rockefeller grant, NEA award, Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright, as well as a recording award and the Walter Hinrichsen Publication Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1994 he was awarded a Senior Fulbright to Israel. He has received numerous commissions from chamber ensembles as well as commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, and the Fromm Foundation. In 2011 Marty was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Marty composed for a wide variety of instrumental combinations including 4 string quartets, a concerto for large ensemble, many trios, duos and solo works, song cycles for voice and piano as well as instrumental ensembles and choral music. His symphony for orchestra and baritone solo was premiered by the Utah Symphony in 1993, and his concerto for violin and orchestra was premiered by Curtis Macomber in 2008 with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project conducted by Gil Rose. His work is widely performed and has been presented by almost all of the current new music ensembles including the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, The New York New Music Ensemble, Speculum Musicae, the League ISCM, Earplay, Musica Viva and Collage New Music.

In addition to his compositional career, Marty was an inspirational teacher, writer, and performer. In 1964–65, he was the pianist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was Composer in Residence at the Composer's Conference in Wellesley and was the Maurice Abravanel Distinguished Visiting Composer at the University of Utah. He also held visiting professorships at Columbia University, New York University and Bar Ilan University (Israel). In 2004 a volume of essays entitled Silence and Slow Time: Studies in Musical Narrative was published by Scarecrow Press (Rowman and Littlefield). In 2011 a second volume of essays entitled The Power of the Moment was published by Pendragon Press. He had a deep love for a broad range of music that he communicated to countless students over decades of teaching including such well known composers as Steve Mackey, Peter Lieberson, Marjorie Merryman and Ross Bauer.

Of Marty’s place in Brandeis’s history, Eric Chasalow writes: “The 1950s were still early days for Brandeis, and Marty was important to the development of the music department, along with those musicians most often identified in that role, such as Irving Fine and Leonard Bernstein. Marty’s amazing musicianship and intellect were part of the reason that Brandeis quickly emerged as one of the best places to study music and remains so to this day. I remember Milton Babbitt telling me only a few years before he died that Brandeis was then one of the very few remaining schools with a truly serious commitment to the study of music. If that is indeed true, it is in no small measure due to Marty’s influence. That is his legacy and we will miss him terribly.”

I am grateful to Karen Desmond, Eric Chasalow, David Rakowski, and other members of the Music Department for their contributions to this memoriam.

Sincerely,

Carol Fierke
Provost