My second best passion is Literature. This love was greatly enhanced by the discovery of the writings of Gertrude Stein. Her "Three Lives" became central to my thinking so her title was used to make clear her influence. Some twenty years after her writing of this early work she discussed it in a lecture "Composition as Explanation". "In the beginning writing I wrote a book called "Three Lives" this was written in 1905. I wrote a negro story called Melanctha. In that there was a constant recurring and beginning there was a marked direction in the direction of being in the present although naturally I had been accustomed to past present and future, and why, because of the composition forming around me was a prolonged present.  The long passion play of "Melanctha" is framed by two short stories "The Good Anna" and "The Gentle Lena" producing a wonderful symmetry.  My "Three Lives" is pure music and can be so appreciated, but it would be interesting some day to comments by one familiar with the Stein.  It was premiered in the spring of 1985 by Speculum Musicae at McMillin Theater in New York.  The concert was promoted as 'three generations of twelve-tone composers' with Arnold Schoenberg's landmark "Wind Quintet" (opus 26) conducted by the legendary Jacques-Louis Monod, Donald Martino's piece for clarinet and string quartet and my octet conducted by Robert Black and featuring percussionists Joe Passaro and Gordon Gottlieb.