6. New Works

RK: What are you currently working on?

SR: I'm working on the next collaboration with Beryl Korot, the video artist, after "The Cave." And after "The Cave" I did "City Life" and I did "Nagoya Marimbas" and "Proverb." And now I'm working on a piece called "Three Tales." Specifically the first act and I'm rather late because of all the time spent with my sixtieth birthday and the 10 CD set and so on and so forth. The "Three Tales" are "Hindenburg," "Bikini," and "Dolly," as in cloned sheep. So it's a look at technology in the twentieth century from the first third of the century, to the middle of the century to the end.

RK: By "Bikini," you mean the islands?

SR: I mean Bikini atoll, and the testing of the A-bomb, and maybe the bathing suit, too because it's named after the island. That's all anybody knows now. "Oh, you mean underwear." "No, not entirely."

RK: It took me a second to get it.

SR: I know. That's why it's good. It's like "Oooh, I see." Anyway, right now I'm working on "Hindenburg" and it's quite different than "The Cave." Musically, it's different because in "The Cave" and in "Different Trains" I would record interviews with people about the holocaust and about my train trips as a child in the thirties and forties here in the States. And in "The Cave" I asked people about the biblical characters, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Hagar and Ishmael. As these people answered, so I wrote. Their speech melody became, literally, the melody that I wrote. Of course, I chose what I wanted to, but I would never change their speech melody. I felt that, because of the subject matter in "The Cave" being religious subject matter and in the "Different Trains" the piece being an homage to people dead and alive, it just had to be that way. I could pick what I wanted, but I had to leave it the way it was. And I did, and I think it served those pieces very well. In "Hindenburg" and in "Three Tales" in general the basic idea is "Okay, I want to be in three flats. I want to be at quarter note equals 144. And if you're not there, I'm going to change you". So, for instance, there's a very famous radio announcer -- when the Hindenburg crashed there was one guy with a microphone: "It flashed and it's crashing! It's crashing. Oh, terrible!"

RK: "Oh, the humanity," was a cry of that radio announcer.

SR: Exactly. He wasn't speaking in three flats. But I needed him that way! So I made a few little adjustments...The piece opens with a typed out headline in the New York Times: "Hindenberg Burns In Lakehurst Crash, 21 Known Dead Twelve Missing, 64 Escaped." And then a quote from the German ambassador: " It could not have been a technical matter." Which is what the German ambassador said to the New York Times, when asked what had gone wrong.

So, the music is more characteristic of what I do. It sets up a tempo and you get a head of steam going, rhythmically, instead of the constant changes of key, constant changes of tempo in both "Different Trains" and "The Cave." That's what I'm working on now. "Hindenburg" is going to be premiered at Spoleto in South Carolina in May 1998, Munich in September 1998, and then it will be at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in October 1998. The whole three act piece is slated for world premiere in 2001.

RK: This is kind of a weird question but, I figured I'd throw it at you anyway. You're a giant in new music, there's no doubt about it. How does it feel? Thirty years ago, you were out there driving a cab and doing social work . Thirty years later...

SR: Well, I feel I've been enormously fortunate. I think of Belá Bartók dying penniless in Mt. Sinai hospital. I was fortunate enough to join Boosey & Hawkes when Sylvia Goldstein was still there as their lawyer. And she told me "You know, we sent Bartók a hundred dollars in those days as extra money in the royalties." And about a month later, they got a check for a hundred dollars back and a letter saying "You've made an error." You hear that and it sends shivers up your spine. We think "Oh, Bart—k, he's the staple of repertoire," but he wasn't in 1945 when he died. I've been very fortunate. John Cage was eating mushrooms until he was in his fifties, certainly. I just feel that God has been very good to me, and the musical public and the musical industry have been very, very good to me. I feel enormously fortunate. That's really all I can say that makes any sense.

RK: I think it's been music's fortune.

SR: Thank you.

  

Reich Interview

1.	Starting Out
2.	Audiences
3.	Orchestras and Acoustics
4.	Music as Language
5.	Music and Technology
6.	New Works

Supporting Materials
Biography
List of Works
List of Recordings
Links

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Steve Reich (photo: John Halpern)

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