You Got It All Planned Out?

Listening to Three Tales by Steve Reich

We are sort of alive. This gives me Pause. Must post! Must Post!

Three Tales is a Reichian Opera based on three events from the last century. Firstly, you get a spooky recreation of the crash of the Hindenburg, with dramatic newsreel style voiceovers. In the next tale, the newsreel talk becomes more light-hearted despite the fact that the subject is the use of Pacific islands for atomic bomb tests. Finally, we have Richard Dawkins raving manically with others about the intelligence of robots and cloning (especially that of Dolly). I have so say that it is the typical Steve Reich cut-up-and-paste style which makes Dawkins sound as if he is raving – Are machines – are machines – are machines – are machines – are ………..

You might lump Three Tales together with The Cave and Different Trains though I have to say that Different Trains is far ahead of the other two in both concept and pure technical excellence. Different Trains is a contrast between the trains across the United States on which Reich travelled with his nanny, shuttling back and forth between his estranged parents, and the cattle-trucks used by the Germans to transport Jews to concentration camps. It has three sections - before the war in America, during the war in Europe and after the war. All the way through it has a pounding and clanging rhythm, helped along by recordings of real trains and whistles. The conclusion has a sense of humanity dragging itself up from as deep as it can be and starting over, a powerful obscene gesture at the black heart of the worst depths of what people can do to other people. The strange thing is that is has a rocky feel, even in the Europe section; it drives forward creating a conflict between the enjoyment of something which ostensibly is not there to be enjoyed. Maybe you could take this to be an affirmation of the future over the past. Did I not say that this is performed by a String Quartet (The Kronos Quartet in my version) playing against two recording of itself?