Steve Reich - "Different Trains"

Steve Reich was an advocate and a master of a new style called “Minimalism” which is mostly based on repetitions and combinations of simple motifs, his approach was unique because he tried to start aside from the other composers at that time making the music in his own unique way. He got many awards for his works including the work “Different Trains” being in many ways different from the pieces he composed earlier.

“Different Trains” has left an unusual impression on me, perhaps due to the fact it includes many sensitive topics in it, one of them is presenting his childhood through his piece of work. An emotional intensity when the voices are announcing the cities he was traveling to visit his parents who were divorced gives a special feeling to the audience, making us relate to him more. Reich connected the sounds of the train with musical instruments also adding human voice which when shaped together is nothing but originality. He puts his own life into one piece, starting from the intensive motion of the train to a slower one, then again intensive one, and so on, all depending on what parts of his life he wanted to present. 

The human voice coupled with the pitch and rhythm is illustrated in such a way that evokes the power of sensation, and at the same time produces authentic pieces of art. As Steve Reich was born in a Jewish family, which later on led him to go to concentration camps during the Holocaust, he tried to include it in his composition again with the human voice pronouncing the years when that happened. In my opinion, as the writers write their autobiographies, this is one of the ways for Steve to compose his own one, as apparently he had not really easy childhood as well as adult life. Probably, for that reason, he is one of the greatest composers of his time even now. Personally, the magnitude of the piece as a whole made me not even blink as I was watching and listening to it, because he included a variety of components that are hard to follow all the time, thus simultaneously making such an impact that it won a Grammy award in 1988.