21 October 2006

Trains

Started re-listening to Reich's Different Trains. I had the Kronos recording when it came out (1986?) and it was required listening in my collection but, as is often the case especially with books, was loaned out because of its importance and is now lost to history. The work probably reasserted itself in my head from all of the brouhaha over Reich's b-day, but every couple of years I think about it and pine after the CD. And, it's another train-related coincidence, what with me reading Colson Whitehead's John Henry Days.

I've been trying to come up with a sonata framework for the piece: fast-slow-fast. It doesn't quite work, but there's such a three-movement completeness (not to state the obvious) that it feels like it has a link to the past. And I'm reminded of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. New, but old.

[ posted by sstrader on 21 October 2006 at 10:26:01 AM in Music ]