Different Trains Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Different Trains is a famous three-movement piece for string quartet and tape written by Steve Reich in 1988. It won a Grammy Award in 1989 for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.Steve Reich's earlier work had frequently used tape, looped and played back at different speeds; however, Different Trains was a novel experiment, using recorded speech as a source for melodies. After each melody in the piece is introduced, usually by a single instrument, a tape of the spoken phrase from which the melody derives is played. The melody is then developed for a while, with the instruments playing along with the tape of the phrase or part of the phrase. In addition to speech, the piece calls for recordings of train sirens.
Much of the recorded speech that forms the basis for Different Trains is among the first recordings made on magnetic tape. It is taken from interviews with people in the United States and Europe about the years leading up to, during, and immediately after World War II. In the first movement, America – Before the War, Americans speak about train travel in the US. American train sirens are heard in the background. In the second movement, Europe – During the War, Europeans, many being Holocaust survivors, speak about the conditions in Europe during the war, in particular how trains were used to transport millions of civilians to concentration camps, and the sirens used are European train sirens. The third movement, America – After the War, features people talking about the years immediately following World War II, and a return to the American train sirens from the first movement.
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