Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint
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DIFFERENT TRAINS
Different Trains is a three-movement piece for string quartet and tape written by Steve Reich in 1988. During World War II, Reich made train journeys between New York and Los Angeles to visit his parents, who had separated. Years later, he pondered the fact that, as a Jew, had he been in Europe instead of the United States at that time, he might have been traveling in Holocaust trains. 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.
ELECTRIC COUNTERPOINT
Different Trains is made up of three movements, which bear the following titles:
I: America – Before the War
II: Europe – During the War
III: After the War
In each part, melodies are introduced, usually by a single instrument (viola for women and cello for men), a recording 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 recording of the phrase or part of the phrase. The music for the strings makes extensive use of paradiddle rhythms, with alternating pitches instead of alternating drum sticking. In addition to speech, the piece includes recordings of train sounds, as well as of sirens and warning bells, and prerecorded multiple lines by the string quartet, thus effectively creating four quartets out of one, reflective of three Counterpoint pieces that preceded it: Vermont Counterpoint for multiple multitracked flutes, New York Counterpoint for multiple multitracked clarinets, and Electric Counterpoint for multiple multitracked electric guitars.
The recorded version on this album lasts for approximately 27 minutes.
The recorded speech that forms the basis for Different Trains 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, Reich's governess Virginia and Lawrence Davis, a Pullman porter, reminisce about train travel in the U.S. while American train sounds are heard in the background. In the second movement, Europe — During the War, three Holocaust survivors (identified by Reich as Paul, Rachel, and Rachella) speak about their experiences in Europe during the war, including their train trips to concentration camps. European train sounds and sirens are heard in this movement. The American train whistles are long perfect intervals of ninths and fifths, while the European train whistles are mostly short triadic shrieks. The third movement, After the War, features the Holocaust survivors talking about the years immediately following World War II, along with recordings of Davis and Virginia. There is a return to the American train sounds from the first movement.
Reich developed his "speech melody" work further with projects such as The Cave (1993) and City Life (1995). The technique also appears in WTC 9/11 (2011), a similar work dealing with human tragedy juxtaposed with everyday life and responses to it.
Reich created these works by transferring his speech recordings into a digital sampling keyboard (a Casio FZ-1). City Life used sampling keyboards in performance (rather than using a backing tape) and the samples are notated and played in exactly the same way as the conventional instruments.
The world premiere was performed by the Kronos Quartet at the First Presbyterian Church in Miami, during the 1988 New Music America festival.
Its original recording, also performed by the Kronos Quartet, won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition in 1989.
ELECTRIC COUNTERPOINT
Electric Counterpoint is a minimalist composition by the American composer Steve Reich. The piece consists of three movements, "Fast," "Slow", and "Fast". Reich has offered two versions of the piece: one for electric guitar and tape (the tape part featuring two electric bass guitars and up to ten electric guitars), the other for an ensemble of guitars. The work shares similarities with Reich's New York Counterpoint. It was first recorded in 1987 by guitarist Pat Metheny, who made extensive use of overdubbing, and was released along with Reich's Different Trains, performed by the Kronos Quartet, on Nonesuch Records (catalogue number 979 176-2). Guitarists wishing to perform the piece may use Metheny's pre-recorded ensemble part or opt to record their own, adding the 13th guitar part in live performance. In 2007, the guitar ensemble Forestare made the first recording of the lesser known second version, on ATMA Classique. The original recording, as included in the Works 1965–1995 box set, lasts slightly under fifteen minutes.
As with other pieces by Reich, Electric Counterpoint has influenced many modern artists, such as the Orb, who sampled the third movement of the Pat Metheny recording as one of the hooks of "Little Fluffy Clouds," and RJD2, who sampled the piece's opening for his song "The Proxy" from his first release, Deadringer. In 2008 Joby Burgess' Powerplant arranged the work for Xylosynth, taking influence from Metheny and the Orb. Röyksopp released two remixes of the third movement in 2010 for free, one which follows Reich's original closely and another reinterpretation titled "Milde Salve". Since 2012, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood has performed the piece at several festivals and at concerts featuring the London Contemporary Orchestra; he recorded the piece for a Nonesuch album of Reich works titled Radio Rewrite released that same year, the title piece of which was inspired by two Radiohead songs.
The third movement was included in the Edexcel GCSE Anthology of Music, in the second area of study, "Music in the 20th Century". It was included in the video game Civilization V as one of the "great works of music" and was performed by during the Bluecoats Drum and Bugle Corps 2015 production "Kinetic Noise".
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“Different Trains is Mr. Reich’s most affecting, emotional work since his anti-nuclear manifesto The Desert Music… The real drama is in Mr. Reich’s music. In the first movement, ‘America—Before the War,’ the chunky, chugging figuration so typical of Mr. Reich’s music is used to fine effect in bringing alive the locomotive cadences. But as this gives way to the central movement, ‘Europe—During the War,’ timbres darken and Mr. Reich paints a nightmarish maelstrom in music more graphic than he has attempted before. In the finale, ‘After the War,’ he finds his way to brighter textures, but takes his time getting there. Along the way, his quartet writing brushes against both Bartok and Dvorak.”
1990 Grammy Award – Best Contemporary Composition (awarded to composer Steve Reich for Different Trains)
New Music America Best New Music Award
From Steve Reich’s liner notes: “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 traveled 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.”
Kronos’ David Harrington on Different Trains: “Because Different Trains is performed in concert by a live quartet with three additional quartets on tape, we had to record Different Trains before we could ever play it in performance. Every other piece that we had recorded up until then we had performed and practiced for a long time. Different Trains was different. And everything about Different Trains—its boldness, its subject matter, its sound requirements—has pushed Kronos and our music into many new directions. We thank Steve for writing this masterpiece for Kronos, which has altered our work forever and has helped to reinvigorate our entire musical form. To my ears, Different Trains sounds as fresh, disturbing, and personal as it did when it was written.”
Nonesuch: "Nonesuch Records' 1989 recording of Steve Reich's Different Trains, the Grammy Award winner for Best Contemporary Composition that year, and Electric Counterpoint has returned on vinyl for the first time in more than twenty-five years. The album features the first recordings of the two pieces, performed by Kronos Quartet and Pat Metheny, respectively. The vinyl edition—mastered by Robert C. Ludwig at Gateway Mastering in Portland, Maine, with lacquers cut by Bernie Grundman, and pressed on 140-gram vinyl at Record Industry in the Netherlands—is out today, the 30th anniversary of Kronos Quartet's world premiere performance of Different Trains at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. To pick up a copy of Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint on vinyl, stop by your local record shop or visit the Nonesuch Store now. On Different Trains, which combines string quartet with taped speech, Reich evokes his American childhood during World War II while also addressing the Holocaust. The New York Times declared it "a work of such originality that 'breakthrough' seems the only possible description."
Earlier this year, Pitchfork placed Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint at No. 93 on its list of the 200 Best Albums of the 1980s. It's a "late-career masterpiece" for the composer, wrote Pitchfork's Jazz Monroe of Different Trains. "The piece found a new tenor for Reich—clear-eyed, anguished, searching—that suited him. He wasn’t a minimalist upstart anymore; he was a moral conscience, albeit as earthbound and lost as the rest of us."
Electric Counterpoint was written for Pat Metheny, who gave the world premiere performance of the piece at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in November 1987. The guitarist performs against multiple pre-recorded tape of himself—and "splendidly," said the New York Times. The piece is "filled with jazz and funk-inflected rhythms, reveling in the spirit of American vernacular culture ... [and] finds Mr. Reich capitalizing on his strengths. Here, at the point furthest removed from convention, is where his creative juices flow most freely.""
SELECT CREDITS
MUSICIANS
Kronos Quartet (1-3):
David Harrington, violin
John Sherba, violin
Hank Dutt, viola
Joan Jeanrenaud, cello
Pat Metheny, electric guitar (4-6)
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Produced by Judith Sherman
Tracks 1-3 recorded August 31-September 9, 1988 at Russian Hill Recording, San Francisco
Engineer: Les Brockman
Assistant engineer: Michael Ahearn
Mixing engineer: Rob Eaton
Assistant mixing engineer: Ben Fowler
Tracks 4-6 recorded September 26-October 1, 1987, at Power Station, New York City
Engineer: Rob Eaton
Assistant engineer: Gary Solomon
Production assistant: David Oakes
Production coordinator: Jennifer Keats
Mastering: Robert C. Ludwig
Art direction and design: Frank Olinsky
Cover photography: Karl Steinbrenner
Executive Producer: Robert Hurwitz
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