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Listening Report 4 Steve Reich – Different Trains (1988)

 

Maria Alighourchi

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The Future of American Music

 

Listening Report 4

Steve Reich – Different Trains (1988)

 

Different Trains (1988) by Steve Reich is an emotional roller-coaster, having the background and history in mind. But before getting into this work in particular, his music style should be explained. Reich composes his music with the focus on the music’s process. He gives the example of  someone watching minutes going by on a watch. The process of watching time go by can be compared to listing to one of his compositions. Generally, his compositions are over ten minutes long, containing snippets of voice recordings which is separated in pieces that are played in multiple constellations over and over again. Thus, he establishes a process of music; the process of the recorded audio. This style is quite fascinating since all of his special compositions deliver one unique emotion. On top of that, the listeners cannot stop listening, even if one feels overstimulated (which I experienced in a few of his compositions) because the process does not stop until the end. One can wait until it is over but there is no way of fleeing. There is no real pause in his works – there is before the process and after, which makes them even more fascinating.

The 27-minutes composition, which even includes visuals, carries an utterly sentimental and tragic emotion with it. With Different Trains, Reich paints the process of the terrible travel with trains to the Concentration Camps in Germany during the second World War. Through this listening and visual experience, he relives this scenario, including his audience to get a glimpse of this cruel experience. Although, he himself never went to Auschwitz (being a Jew in America not in Germany) he shares the experience he read about and imagined himself in that situation. Through sharing this special composition with the world, he turns horrible into art, as true artists do, making the ride a timeless monumental.

The music itself is quite mysterious, leaving me wondering where the train ride will take me. The instruments are very comforting to listen to, I can imagine myself listening while on a train ride; it certainly carries the feeling of a voyage in a dream. However, the recorded audio voices push me back into reality, leaving the dream voyage, every time. Hence, the ride becomes rather stressful and claustrophobic. Towards the end, even the instruments have a slightly creepy undertone which eliminates the comfortability they conveyed in the beginning.

Another experience I could decipher in Different Trains, is the train ride to death. That this composition would be the voyage to nowhere, to utter blackness, with death as your companion, sitting next to you in the train, sipping black coffee. I do not feel completely alone, I feel comforted with my companion, but the audio voice interrupts and suddenly I know where I am going. The fact that the overplaying audio voice changes the mood completely (at least for me) proves how crucial they are for the whole composition, how this is the focus. Through this focus, Reich’s style is identified again – the process of the audio-voiced sentence combined with the ride on a train, which’s time is even realistic, conveys the process of a train ride. To nowhere and to everywhere.

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