美国国家公共电台 NPR Steve Reich at 80: The Phases Of A Lifetime In Music

Steve Reich at 80: The Phases Of A Lifetime In Music

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David Bowie, Brian Eno, Radiohead - these are just some of the artists and bands who have looked up to American composer Steve Reich. Since the 1960s, Reich's music has won him fans across many genres² and a Pulitzer Prize. This month, Reich is celebrating his 80th birthday, and NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas got to spend some time with Reich at his home.

ANASTASIA TSIOULCAS, BYLINE³: Steve Reich is a quintessential New Yorker. He's a fast talker, he's usually dressed in all black, and his outfit⁴ is always topped off by a baseball cap. And he vividly⁵ remembers how much September 11 reshaped his city.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

STEVE REICH: When I interviewed every friend and every neighbor, I asked them one question, which is - do you think this could happen again? And do you think it could happen again in New York? And everybody said, do I think it can happen again? It's not a question of if. It's a question of when.

TSIOULCAS: That's Reich from an NPR interview 10 years after the attack on the premiere of his composition "WTC 9/11."

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE REICH'S "WTC 9/11")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I was taking my kids to school.

TSIOULCAS: The composer took his neighbor's memories...

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE REICH'S "WTC 9/11")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: The first plane...

TSIOULCAS: ...And interspersed⁶ them with emergency calls from first responders and a string quartet.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE REICH'S "WTC 9/11")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: ...Went straight over our heads and into the building.

TSIOULCAS: The last movement includes the recollections of Jewish women who sat with victims' remains⁷.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE REICH'S "WTC 9/11")

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: I would sit there and recite songs all night. Recite songs all night.

TSIOULCAS: Steve Reich was born to a Jewish family, but he did not grow up observant. Sitting in his upstate New York home, he says he only started delving⁸ into traditional Judaism in the mid-1970s after a trip to Ghana in West Africa to study drumming.

REICH: When I came home, one of the things I thought about is this is incredible. Here's a tradition that's been handed down from father to son, from mother to daughter for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Don't I have anything like that? Then I began thinking, you know, I'm a member of the oldest existing group that has still remained somewhat cohesive⁹ for, you know, going on 3,500 years. And I don't know anything about it. So I thought, well, maybe I ought to go looking in my own backyard and dig up the crabgrass (laughter) and see what's there.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE REICH'S "TEHILLIM PART I - FAST")

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: (Singing in Hebrew).

TSIOULCAS: Reich began using words as a basis for music back in the 1960s, experimenting with tape recordings¹¹ and manipulating their speed. His 1966 piece, "Come Out," was inspired by the case of the Harlem Six, young African-American men who were arrested after a riot and accused of murder. Daniel Hamm was one of them, and his case was later overturned. At the beginning of the piece, Hamm describes being beaten by police.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE REICH'S "COME OUT")

DANIEL HAMM: I had to, like, open the bruise¹² up and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them - I had to, like, open the bruise up and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them -

REICH: "Come Out" was done as a civil rights piece. The world premiere of "Come Out" was as pass-the-hat music for the retrial of the Harlem Six in Town Hall.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE REICH'S "COME OUT")

HAMM: Come out to show them - come out to show them - come out to show them.

TSIOULCAS: Reich has continued to find music in speech, hearing melody in the flow of words.

REICH: I mean, what tells you more about a person, a photograph of them or recording¹⁰ of their voice?

TSIOULCAS: He took voices from his own life experiences to create "Different Trains" in 1988.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE REICH'S "DIFFERENT TRAINS")

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: From Chicago to New York. From Chicago.

TSIOULCAS: Reich spent much of his childhood on trains, shuttling between his divorced parents in New York and Los Angeles. This was the late 1930s and early '40s. As a grownup, Reich realized that if he'd been a Jewish child in Europe back then he would've been riding trains under very different circumstances. In his composition, he used the voices of his governess, a Pullman porter and three Holocaust¹³ survivors¹⁴ to compare those experiences.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE REICH'S "DIFFERENT TRAINS")

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #4: The war is over. The war is over.

TSIOULCAS: The melody of the human voice became one of Reich's signatures. He quotes Czech composer Leos Janacek.

REICH: Speech melody is like a water lily whose roots go down to the bottom of the soul.

TSIOULCAS: But he's also a drummer who likes to play with time, and another recurring¹⁵ device in his music is called phasing. Adam Sliwinski is a member of So Percussion¹⁶, and Reich's piece, "Drumming," is a touchstone for the group. He explains how phasing works.

ADAM SLIWINSKI: We think of it as, like, when you're in your car and you've got your windshield wipers on and the person in front of you has their windshield wipers on. And it looks for a minute like they're perfectly¹⁷ together.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE REICH'S "DRUMMING")

SLIWINSKI: But then you notice that they're kind of coming apart. One of them is slightly faster. And then you think that maybe they're exactly opposite from each other, but then they come back together again. That's a lot of what phasing is and what it feels like.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE REICH'S "DRUMMING")

TSIOULCAS: Sound is what appeals to Steve Reich - all kinds.

REICH: I became a composer because I had heard the "Rite¹⁸ Of Spring" of Stravinsky, I had heard bebop - Charlie Parker, Miles Davis - music which had a lot of rhythmic¹⁹ energy, music which was finally harmonic. They all have what Stravinsky called the magnetic attraction, the polaric attraction of sound.

TSIOULCAS: When he began, Reich was an outsider. Now his work is embraced by temples of high culture around the world. He'll be celebrating his 80th birthday in some of them with two new works next month. Anastasia Tsioulcas, NPR News, New York.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE REICH'S "MUSIC FOR MALLET²⁰ INSTRUMENTS, VOICES AND ORGAN")

MARTIN: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. BJ Leiderman writes our theme music. I'm Rachel Martin.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 genres   

（文学、艺术等的）类型，体裁，风格( genre的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Novel and short story are different genres. 长篇小说和短篇小说是不同的类别。
• But confusions over the two genres have a long history. 但是类型的混淆，古已有之。 来自汉英文学 - 散文英译

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 outfit   

n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装

参考例句：

• Jenney bought a new outfit for her daughter's wedding.珍妮为参加女儿的婚礼买了一套新装。
• His father bought a ski outfit for him on his birthday.他父亲在他生日那天给他买了一套滑雪用具。

5 vividly   

adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地

参考例句：

• The speaker pictured the suffering of the poor vividly.演讲者很生动地描述了穷人的生活。
• The characters in the book are vividly presented.这本书里的人物写得栩栩如生。

6 interspersed   

adj.[医]散开的；点缀的v.intersperse的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• Lectures will be interspersed with practical demonstrations. 讲课中将不时插入实际示范。
• The grass was interspersed with beds of flowers. 草地上点缀着许多花坛。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

7 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

8 delving   

v.深入探究，钻研( delve的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He has been delving into the American literature of 20th century. 他一直在潜心研究美国20世纪文学。 来自互联网
• In some ways studying Beckett is like delving into Shakespeare's words. 在某些方面，研究Beckett的戯好像是深入研究莎士比亚的语句。 来自互联网

9 cohesive   

adj.有粘着力的；有结合力的；凝聚性的

参考例句：

• She sealed the parcel with cohesive tape.她用粘胶带把包裹封起来。
• The author skillfully fuses these fragments into a cohesive whole.作者将这些片断巧妙地结合成一个连贯的整体。

10 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

11 recordings   

n.记录( recording的名词复数 )；录音；录像；唱片

参考例句：

• a boxed set of original recordings 一套盒装原声录音带
• old jazz recordings reissued on CD 以激光唱片重新发行的老爵士乐

12 bruise   

n.青肿，挫伤；伤痕；vt.打青；挫伤

参考例句：

• The bruise was caused by a kick.这伤痕是脚踢的。
• Jack fell down yesterday and got a big bruise on his face.杰克昨天摔了一跤，脸上摔出老大一块淤斑。

13 holocaust   

n.大破坏；大屠杀

参考例句：

• The Auschwitz concentration camp always remind the world of the holocaust.奥辛威茨集中营总是让世人想起大屠杀。
• Ahmadinejad is denying the holocaust because he's as brutal as Hitler was.内贾德否认大屠杀，因为他像希特勒一样残忍。

14 survivors   

幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The survivors were adrift in a lifeboat for six days. 幸存者在救生艇上漂流了六天。
• survivors clinging to a raft 紧紧抓住救生筏的幸存者

15 recurring   

adj.往复的，再次发生的

参考例句：

• This kind of problem is recurring often. 这类问题经常发生。
• For our own country, it has been a time for recurring trial. 就我们国家而言，它经过了一个反复考验的时期。

16 percussion   

n.打击乐器；冲突，撞击；震动，音响

参考例句：

• In an orchestra,people who play percussion instruments sit at the back.在管弦乐队中，演奏打击乐器的人会坐在后面。
• Percussion of the abdomen is often omitted.腹部叩诊常被省略。

17 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

18 rite   

n.典礼，惯例，习俗

参考例句：

• This festival descends from a religious rite.这个节日起源于宗教仪式。
• Most traditional societies have transition rites at puberty.大多数传统社会都为青春期的孩子举行成人礼。

19 rhythmic   

adj.有节奏的，有韵律的

参考例句：

• Her breathing became more rhythmic.她的呼吸变得更有规律了。
• Good breathing is slow,rhythmic and deep.健康的呼吸方式缓慢深沉而有节奏。

20 mallet   

n.槌棒

参考例句：

• He hit the peg mightily on the top with a mallet.他用木槌猛敲木栓顶。
• The chairman rapped on the table twice with his mallet.主席用他的小木槌在桌上重敲了两下。