NewMexiKen guesses he is the last kid on his block to learn a little about the music of composer Steve Reich (I wasn’t totally ignorant, just unfamiliar), but an article in The New Yorker earlier this month got me interested. So far I’ve just been listening around the edges at the iTunes Store, but it’s fascinating.
I don’t know enough to begin to explain what Reich does. Let this paragraph from Alex Ross’ article suffice as an introduction:
In this sense, “Different Trains,” for recorded voices and string quartet, may be Reich’s most staggering achievement, even if “Music for 18” gives the purest pleasure. He wrote the piece in 1988, after recalling cross-country train trips that he had taken as a child. “As a Jew, if I had been in Europe during this period, I would have had to ride very different trains,” he has said. Recordings of his nanny reminiscing about their journeys and of an elderly man named Lawrence Davis recalling his career as a Pullman porter are juxtaposed with the testimonies of three Holocaust survivors. These voices give a picture of the dividedness of twentieth-century experience, of the irreconcilability of American idyll and European horror—and something in Mr. Davis’s weary voice also reminds us that America was never an idyll for all. The hidden melodies of the spoken material generate string writing that is rich in fragmentary modal tunes and gently pulsing rhythms.
The NPR 100 included Reich’s “Drumming” among its “100 most important American musical works of the 20th century.” Here’s that report. (RealPlayer)
Different Trains is one of the most powerful pieces I have ever experienced. I found it so compelling and absorbing that I listened to it at least 5 times the first week I owned a copy. That was about 15 years ago. It may be quite a while before I listen to it again. Although I now consciously avoid the intensity of actually listening to the entire piece, it frequently pops up in my awareness. If you fully metabolize this work, it will never leave you.