Frank Martin (1890 – 1974) was a Swiss composer, who lived a large part of his life in the Netherlands.

Martin developed his mature style based on a very personal use of Arnold Schoenberg's twelve tone technique, having become interested in this around 1932, but did not abandon tonality. In fact his preference for lean textures and his habitual rhythmic vehemence are at the furthest possible remove from Schoenberg's hyperromanticism. Some of Martin's most inspired music comes from his eighties; he worked on his last cantata, Et la vie l'emporta, until ten days before his death. He died in Naarden, The Netherlands.

(from Wikipedia)

I've just discovered Martin. His music offers quite an eclectic blend of many influences, such as impressionism, neo-classicsim and atonalism. Very interesting, because he developed a unique style based on these. All of the works on the 2 cd set I have listened to are quite different, from the neo-classicism of the Petite symphonie concertante, to the older pre-classical style of the Mass for double choir , & to the atonalism of Polyptyque. But even these descriptions are somewhat simplistic, his music is far more complex than that...

It's a shame that he isn't that well known. Perhaps, as the cd notes suggest, it is because he was from Switzerland, a country with a relatively young classical tradition?

What are people's impressions of Frank Martin?