Steve Reich had been traveling between New York and Los Angeles during World War II, and years later he moved to Europe, considering about his race as a Jew. Therefore he wrote Different Trains for string quartet and tape, which has three movements that describes the sounds from train in different period : Before the War in America, During the War in Europe and After the War.

<Mov.1 Before the War>

: At first part, strings play simple phrase which sounds like train. After this strings play various the melody from the recording of people’s interview, playing the recording also. As playing different voice recordings, the tempo goes slow down until the middle part of music, and goes faster again in the same sequence. The mood is raised up as going the end of music with variations. 

<Mov.2 During the War>

: This movement is started with the sounds of siren, which makes audience be able to imagine the war. The method to make melodies is same with mov. 1, but they use minor key sounds which make the piece’s atmosphere become darker. The timing of the recording sounds changing is shorter and this makes audience imagine the circumstance changed rapidly during the war. 

<Mov.3 After the War>

: This movement’s speeches are from the interview of people who survived in Holocaust, so we can hear the different moods from the speech, such as hope, sadness or frustration, etc. Generally, the mood and the tensions become stabler than other two movements. Finally the piece finishes with the melodies in hopeful key, suggesting the recovery of victims from the war.

Across the three movements, it is interesting to use classical string instruments for expressing the train and the tension. And also interesting using the recording tape to play with in live. To express alteration of atmosphere during the war change the timing of recording playing or key is also interesting point to me.

I think this work focused on Texture than Gesture, which means that I could feel more sound variation than sound spatial movement. Steve Reich used strings and recored sounds for expressing trains and atmosphere, so I can not say he focused on only sounds without meaning in them, however, he used strings for describing train’s movement and it’s tempo, and I could hear it as the train not each instruments, so he used the source bonded material successively.