Music Composition: Different Trains by Steve Reich

Explore the story behind Steve Reich's Different Trains. Different Trains is a three-movement piece for string quartet and tape written in 1988.The groundbreaking work, written for Kronos Quartet and first recorded on Nonesuch. The New York Times declared Different Trains "a work of such originality that 'breakthrough' seems the only possible description." Pitchfork called it a "late-career masterpiece" and placed the album among the 200 Best of the 1980s. Video by Robert Edridge-Waks 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. Different Trains is made up of three movements, which bear the following titles: America – Before the War Europe – During the War After the War