Keith Burstein

Keith Burstein born 1957 as Keith Burston (the anglicised form adopted by his father of the surname, which Burstein later dropped) is an English composer, conductor and music theorist with Jewish family origins. He is noted for his fervent championing of tonal music as a valid contemporary composing style. Musical approach and philosophy (including theory of “Super Tonality”) Keith Burstein’s early musical approach was informed by the culture of atonalism in which he was educated at the Royal College of Music, and his early compositions were written in the atonal style. Burstein made a dramatic shift towards composing tonally during the late 1980s. In a 2002 interview with The Independent newspaper, he reflected “What had happened to me was a sort of Damascene conversion, I suppose. I suddenly saw that atonalism was a dead end. Once you accept that melody is everywhere, and always has been, in folk music and pop and rock, you see that it’s not reactionary to write a tune.”. He began pursuing tonal composition and reinvestigating more traditional forms such as requiems, church chorales and brass band music. Although both Burstein (and various critics) have sometimes dubbed his style