Steve Reich Different Trains Analysis

When first considering topics for this essay, I thought about the dance project because it sounded exotic and fun or maybe the interview project because of simplicity. However, I ended up choosing music review because I thought it would be the easiest and fastest. Little did I know how much I would learn from this assignment. Music affects people in a wide variety of ways, and it has done so for centuries. Different pieces leave different marks on their viewers sometimes a deeper, new found understanding of the world- either ripping off the rose-colored glasses or bringing light to the goodness of the world- and other times only leaving behind a handful of emotions or wisps of thought. An example of such a work can be found in Steve Reich’s Different Trains, written in 1988 and presented by the Kronos Quartet to Queen …show more content…
Much like any other work which serves to make art from others’ suffering, Different Trains is fraught with danger, yet Reich courts this danger with his decision to attempt a sort of resolution within the piece. The New York Times says it best: Different Trains is “a work of such astonishing originality that breakthrough seems the only possible description…..possesses an absolutely harrowing emotional impact” (Filreis). This piece transports the listener to two completely different settings and still again combines elements of the first two settings into a third movement. With the use of varying dynamics, tempos, rhythms, melodic contour, and instruments of varying timbre, several vivid pictures are painted, sweeping whoever is in the vicinity away into a whole new time and place. The emotional attachment gained from the viewers further drives home the moral of this