condition (record/cover): NM / EX- (light sticker removal residue on front)
Gatefold sleeve with original innersleeve.
The largest Reich work to that date: 45 minutes, scored for chorus of twenty-seven amplified voices and an orchestra of eighty-nine. Reich sets fragments of William Carlos Williams (mostly from The Orchestra, Theocritus: Idyl I and the late poems) into a five-movement arch form whose central movement, "It is a principle of music to repeat the theme," addresses the threat of nuclear apocalypse directly. The piece was conceived during the height of the early-Reagan-era arms race.
The Nonesuch recording is by the Brooklyn Philharmonic chorus and orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas (who had been one of Reich's most consequential conductor-champions since the Carnegie Four Organs riot of 1973). Recorded at RCA Studios, New York. Co-produced by Reich, Tilson Thomas and Judith Sherman. The piece's harmonic palette is markedly darker than the earlier Reich, with extended chromatic sections that anticipate Different Trains.
