Steins compositions were modernist in general character, though he preferred the term pantonality. In describing his music, he tended toward the deeply American sense of
melting-pot theory:

[My music] is an inclusive idiom that combines 20th-century treatments of modality, tonality, synthetic scales, and postserial dodecaphony; uses a harmonic-contrapuntal chordal
structure of seconds and fourths as well as triads; and is indebted to this centurys emancipation of the dissonance and liberation of rhythm.

My music is generally linear, notated traditionally for traditional (acoustic) instruments, and uses forms ranging from established patterns to a free continuum of motion, density, tension, and color.

Newly-engraved 2025 edition from the editor.