What is Different Trains by Steve Reich about?
In Different Trains (1988), Steve Reich presents a semi-autobiographical account of the Holocaust that electronically mixes his memories of being a Jewish child in the 1940s with those of child-survivors of the Holocaust who later recorded their testimonies.
Why did Steve Reich write different trains?
The ‘Different Trains’ theme originates from Reich’s childhood, several wartime years spent travelling with his governess between his estranged parents, his mother in Los Angeles and his father in New York.
What influenced Steve Reich?
Before he met Terry Riley in 1964 and began working with tapes and tape loops, Reich claimed three major influences on his music: Bach, Stravinsky, and jazz.
How many types of trains are there in Japan?
five types
Overall, there are five types of trains in Japan: Shinkansen (the superior of them all), limited express trains, express trains, rapid trains, and local trains. The limited express trains are not as fast as their Shinkansen brothers in arms, but they cover more destinations to compensate for the slower travel times.
What instruments was different trains written for?
This realization was the inspiration for Different Trains, written in 1988 for string quartet and tape.
What two types of music did Steve Reich study?
Reich drew additional inspiration from American vernacular music, especially jazz, as well as ethnic and ancient musics; he studied African drumming in Ghana (1970), Balinese gamelan music in Seattle and Berkeley, California (1973–74), and Middle Eastern chanting in New York City and Jerusalem (1976–77).
What is different trains by Robert Reich about?
Though it is centered by a string quartet piece, “Different Trains” is, in many ways, aligned with Reich‘s early, experimental work, both in its political theme and its grand scale. In 1964, as a young man during the civil rights era, Reich composed his watershed piece “Come Out.”
What is Steve Reich’s background?
Steve Reich, one of the world’s greatest living composers, was born in 1936 to a Jewish family. When he was 1, his parents divorced. His father stayed put in New York and his mother moved to Los Angeles. As a child, he would travel between the two cities by train.
How did Reich push the boundaries of minimalist music?
Again, with Different Trains Reich pushed the boundaries of minimalist music and what was known and accepted, by using recorded speech as his melodies, and then adapting the parts of the strings to fit around the speech, a technique which hadn’t been used previously.
What makes Steve Reich’s music so beautiful?
So much of Reich’s music is marked by big sounds buoying big ideas—the gorgeousness of a wave cresting then hitting the shore, the miracle of nature ad infinitum. But there’s nothing beautiful here; it’s as much terror as it is music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTnLwpLUf48