Program Notes

'DIFFERENT TRAINS' FOR STRING QUARTET AND ELECTRONIC TAPE 
Composer's Notes  

'Different
Trains' for String Quartet and pre-recorded
performance tape (1988) 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
idea 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 did 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 then living in America—speaking of their experiences.
4.     Collect
recorded American and European train sounds of the ‘30s 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. 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. Three
separate string quartets are also added to the pre-recorded tape and the final
live quartet part is added in performance.

'Different
Trains is in three movements (played without
pause), although that term is stretched here since tempos change frequently in
each movement. They are:

1.    
America—Before the war

2.    
Europe—During the war

3.    
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 theatre in the not too distant future.

 -Steve
Reich

Movement 1
America - Before the War

 "from
Chicago to New York" (Virginia Mitchell)

"one
of the fastest trains"

"the
crack train from New York" (Lawrence Davis)

"from
New York to Los Angeles"

"different
trains every time" (Virginia Mitchell)

"from
Chicago to New York"

"in
1939"

"1939"
(Lawrence Davis)

"1940"
"1941"
"1941
I guess it must've been (Virginia Mitchell)

Movement 2
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 completely 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 way"

"and
she said 'Quick, go!'" (Rachella)

"and
he said: 'Don't breathe!'"

"into
those cattle wagons" (Rachella)

"four
days and four nights"

"and
the we went through these strange-sounding names"

"Polish
names"

"Lots
of cattle wagons there"

"They
were loaded with people"

"They
shaved us"

"They
tattooed a number on our arm"

"Flames
going up to the sky - it was smoking"
 

Movement 3
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
they loved to listen to the singing, the Germans"

"and
when she stopped singing they said, 'More, more' and they applauded"