different trains – Reich / Bach
“Saint-Lazare Gare, Normandy Train“ (1887)
________
since I’m on the subject of trains, let me
once again highlight a piece that, to my
mind, is one of the most significant
works of the 20th Century, Steve Reich’s
“Different Trains“, an extraordinary
homage to the victims of the Holocaust
it is in three movements, “America –
Before the War”, “Europe – During the
War“, and “After the War“, Reich
recounts his impressions of train trips
that marked him throughout, therefore
this is an autobiographical work, as
well as being an historical document,
and add to that a profoundly moving
musical meditation on a pivotal
moment in our history
I used to say that if you’re going to
open your mouth, you should be
either entertaining or informative,
preferably both, otherwise keep
your mouth shut, many took
offense, I must’ve been
insufferable
but, I would opine, life is short,
you’ll have to, I’m afraid, deal
with your own shortcomings
Reich here has no shortcomings,
though at first you think this might
be a long trip, with so many
repeated musical clusters, not to
mention the strident atonality, it
soon becomes evident that this
piece is amazing, a personal and
powerful evocation of a particular
transformational event seen
through the eyes of an innocent,
an American child, a poet,
experiencing, however
metaphorically, the horror of this
defining moment
style and content, information and
entertainment, indissolubly gel to
deliver an unforgettable experience,
my own such pivotal moment
would’ve been the Cold War air raid
shelters, the nuclear threat
Reich holds on to Classical
conditions by a mere thread, tempo,
however variable, is solid throughout
as a rock, dictated by the prepared
tape that the instrumentalists must
follow rhythmically like a clock
another divergence from the
Classical model is that tonality
and recapitulation, apart from the
repetition of musical clusters, is
entirely jettisoned
note, however, the same use of
repeated clusters in Bach, to
simulate propulsion, the
minimalism of the 20th Century is
already prefigured in Bach’s stuff
plus ça change, as we say in French,
there is nothing really new, in other
words, under the sun
in the spirit of juxtaposing items
to discover much more than the
sum of their parts, listen to Bach’s
Second Suite, in D minor, for
inspirational clarification
R ! chard
psst: there were no trains at the time
of Bach, I should note, they were
a product of the later 19th-Century,
its Industrial Revolution, see, for
instance, here, or above
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