From: jaeger@buphy.bu.edu (Gregg Jaeger)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Steve Reich's "Different Trains"
Date: 22 Nov 92 14:29:33 GMT
Organization: Boston University Physics Department

In article <1992Nov22.011743.9194@math.ucla.edu> pugh@pico.math.ucla.edu (David Pugh) writes:
>In article <1992Nov18.174035.15561@math.ucla.edu> pugh@pico.math.ucla.edu (David Pugh) writes:

>>>Another Reich piece which I think listeners should look out for is
>>>called 'Different Trains'. To me this is the most moving piece I have
>>>heard in the last 10-15 years. Anyone else heard this piece?

Yes.

>>I sincerely intend no offense or disrespect to anyone with this response.
>>I do understand the seriousness of the subject matter of the music.  But I
>>must say that I found this piece perhaps the most insultingly self-serving
>>pieces of indulgence that has ever been at all accepted as "classical" or
>>"serious" music...
>>  But this
>>is one of the very rare pieces that I don't like and *do* feel I understand
>>enough to pass judgement: crap.

>First of all, you are of course entitled to think what you like. If you
>don't like this piece, it is your loss, not mine, just as me not caring
>much for Haydn or early Mozart is my loss, not someone elses.

>The fact remains that whenever I listen to this piece I am always very
>moved by it. I have listened to a huge amount of music in just about every
>style imaginable. 'Different trains' is one of about 10 pieces that has
>left me transfixed at the end. It isn't something easily described in
>words but I know that 'crap' is not capable of doing this.

I must definitely agree that the piece is _not_ "crap" unless by the
poster's definition of "crap" "crap" is synomymous with "minimalism".


> I think it is
>probably Steve Reich's most personal and serious piece yet (the Desert
>Music coming a close second).

Most personal maybe, but I find "Tehillim" a very serious piece of
work and he best.

> The piece is about two parallel
>situations. The first is Reich shuttling back and forth between LA and
>New York during the war by train; the second is the Jews led to their
>deaths on different trains (hence the title of the piece). Reich noted that
>had he been in Europe at the time, being Jewish, he may very have been on
>one of those different trains.

Right. I think the "different" the title "Different Trains" refers to
the fact that _Reich_ was on a _different_ train from those on their
way to concentration camps. He is just expressing how _lucky_ he was
to be on a different train.

It's truly amazing the way luck plays a part in life. For example, my
(Arab) wife was lucky enough to be on the last British Airways flight
out of Kuwait before the Iraqi invasion. One half hour after her plane
took off the runway her plane took was bombed out of existence. Coming
to terms psychologically with such luck is a very strange thing. 

Music written around personal themes is very important and Reich is
obviously not the first person to have written such music. I think
that "Different Trains" benefitted very much from the closeness of
the theme to Reich -- it certainly would have been a less moving piece
without this personal aspect.


Gregg




-- 
Gregg Jaeger (jaeger@buphy)  Dept. of Physics (and Philosophy), Boston Univ.
"You see, the quantum mechanical description is in terms of knowledge" -Peierls
"One can _not_ put the psi-function... in place of the... thing" -Schroedinger
                "You may _not_ touch my monkey" -Dieter
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical