Different Trains (1988) for String Quartet and tape begins a new way of composing that has its roots in my early tape pieces It’s Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966). The basic idea is that carefully chosen speech recordings generate the musical materials for musical instruments.
The concept for the piece came from my childhood. When I was one year old my parents separated. My mother moved to Los Angeles and my father stayed in New York. Since they arranged divided custody, I travelled back and forth by train frequently between New York and Los Angeles from 1939 to 1942 accompanied by my governess. While the trips were exciting and romantic at the time I now look back and think that, if I had been in Europe during this period, as a Jew I would have had to ride very different trains. With this in mind I wanted to make a piece that would accurately reflect the whole situation. In order to prepare the tape I had to do the following:
1. Record my governess Virginia, then in her seventies, reminiscing about our train trips together.
2. Record a retired Pullman porter, Lawrence Davis, then in his eighties, who used to ride lines between New York and Los Angeles, reminiscing about his life.
3. Collect recordings of Holocaust survivors Rachella, Paul and Rachel—all about my age and now living in America—speaking of their experiences.
4. Collect recorded American and European train sounds of the 1930s and ‘40s.
In order to combine the taped speech with the string instruments I selected small speech samples that are more or less clearly pitched and then notated them as accurately as possible in musical notation. For example:
The strings then literally imitate that speech melody. The speech samples as well as the train sounds were transferred to tape with the use of sampling keyboards and a computer. Kronos then made four separate string quartet recordings which were combined with the speech and train sounds to create the finished work.
Different Trains is in three movements, though that term is stretched here since tempos change frequently in each movement. They are:
America - Before the war
Europe - During the war
After the war
The piece thus presents both a documentary and a musical reality, and begins a new musical direction. It is a direction that I expect will lead to a new kind of documentary music video theater in the not too distant future.
Steve Reich
August 1988
Different Trains was commissioned by Betty Freeman for the Kronos Quartet. It was composed from January through August of 1988 and is about 27 minutes long. The transcript of the speech recordings used follows:
I: America - Before the war
"from Chicago to New York" (Virginia)
"the crack* train from New York" (Mr.Davis)
"from New York to Los Angeles"
"different trains every time" (Virginia)
"from Chicago to New York"
"in 1939"
"1939" (Mr.Davis)
"1940"
"1941"
"1941 I guess it must've been" (Virginia)
II: Europe - During the war
"1940" (Rachella)
"on my birthday"
"The Germans walked in"
"walked into Holland"
"Germans invaded Hungary" (Paul)
"I was in second grade"
"I had a teacher"
"a very tall man, his hair was concretely plastered smooth"
"He said, 'Black Crows invaded our country many years ago' "
"and he pointed right at me"
"No more school" (Rachel)
"You must go away"
"and she said 'Quick, go!" (Rachella)
"and he said, 'Don't breathe!'"
"into those cattle wagons" (Rachella)
"for 4 days and 4 nights"
"and then we went through these strange sounding names"
"Polish names"
"Lots of cattle wagons there"
"They were loaded with people"
"They shaved us"
"They tatooed a number on our arm"
"Flames going up to the sky - it was smoking"
III: After the war
"and the war was over" (Paul)
"Are you sure?" (Rachella)
"The war is over"
"going to America"
"to Los Angeles"
"to New York"
"from New York to Los Angeles" (Mr. Davis)
"one of the fastest trains (Virginia)
"but today, they're all gone" (Mr. Davis)
"There was one girl, who had a beautiful voice" (Rachella)
"and when she stopped singing they said, 'More, more' and they applauded"
* "Crack" in the older sense of "best"
Excerpts from testimonies of Holocaust survivors used by permission of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library and the Holocaust Collection of the American Jewish Committee's William E. Wiener Oral History Library. American train sounds come from recordings produced and engineered by Brad S. Miller with Colossus™, for Mobile Fidelity of Nevada, © & © all rights reserved.
European train sounds are taken from Sounds of the Steam Age recordings, "Engines with Accents" ATR 7036 and "Steam in all Directions" ATR 7012, by permission of ASV Transcord Records, 179-181 North End Road, London W12 9NL
Siren and Warning bell used by permission of Elektra Records Sound Effects.
Casio FZ-1 and FZ-10M Digital Samplers used in composing and recording Different Trains courtesy of Jerry Kovarski, Mike Taylor and Ed Ahlstrom-Casio Professional Musical Products Division.
Electric Counterpoint
In Electric Counterpoint the soloist pre-records as many as ten guitars and two electric bass parts and then plays the final 11th guitar part live against the tape. I would like to thank Pat Metheny for showing me how to improve the piece by making it more idiomatic for the guitar.
Electric Counterpoint is in three movements—fast, slow, fast—played one after the other without pause. The first movement, after an introductory pulsing section where the harmonies of the movement are stated, uses a theme derived from Central African horn music that I became aware of through the ethnomusicoiogist Simha Arom. That theme builds to an eight-voice canon; while the remaining two guitars and bass play pulsing harmonies, the soloist plays melodic patterns that result from the contrapuntal interlocking of those eight pre-recorded guitars.
The second movement cuts the tempo in half, changes key and introduces a new theme which is then slowly built up to nine guitars in canon. Once again, two other guitars and bass supply harmony while the soloist brings out melodic patterns that result from the overall contrapuntal web.
The third movement returns to the original tempo and key and introduces a new pattern in triple meter. After the establishment of a four-guitar canon, two bass guitars enter suddenly to further stress the triple meter. The soloist then introduces a new series of strummed chords that are then built up in three-guitar canon. When these are complete, the soloist returns to melodic patterns that result from the overall counterpoint. Suddenly the basses begin to change both key and meter back and forth between C minor and C minor and between 3/2 and 12/8 so that one hears first three groups of four eighth-notes and then four groups of three eighth-notes. These rhythmic and tonal changes occur more and more rapidly until, at the end, the basses slowly fade out and the ambiguities are finally resolved in 12/8 and E minor.
Electric Counterpoint (1987) was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival for guitarist Pat Metheny. It was composed during the summer of 1987. The duration is about 15 minutes. It is the third in a series of pieces (Vermont Counterpoint in 1982 for flutist Ransom Wilson followed by New York Counterpoint in 1985 for clarinetist Richard Stoltzman) dealing with soloists playing against pre-recorded tapes of themselves.
Steve Reich
September 1987
