People have embraced technology as a means of making music for thousands of years, but technology is rarely the subject of a major classical composition. Indeed, the few notable exceptions have tended to befuddle music lovers. Alexander Mossolov's The Iron Foundry, a 1923 experimental piece filled with the sounds of whirring machinery, was dismissed by one critic as "music of a metallic nightmare." The response was even more derisive to George Antheil's Ballet Mécanique, which featured airplane propellers and a siren. At the 1927 New York premiere, the audience pelted the orchestra with paper planes folded from programs.
Composer Steve Reich and video artist Beryl Korot have received much warmer receptions from the audiences in New York, San Francisco, and other cities who recently previewed Hindenburg, the first act of their opera Three Tales. By 2002 Reich and Korot plan to stage an epic musical dramatization of three pivotal technological events of the 20th century: the 1937 explosion of the dirigible Hindenburg, A-bomb testing in 1946 at Bikini atoll, and the 1997 birth of Dolly, the cloned sheep. The unabashed motivation of Reich and Korot is to engage audiences in the intensifying debate over the spiritual, religious, and ethical implications of fast-paced technological innovation, which often seems frighteningly out of control and out of touch with the needs of humanity. "The question is, How far do you pursue knowledge?" says Korot.
Reich and Korot set out to answer that question in a work that bears little resemblance to traditional opera. Hindenburg is a stunning assemblage of minimalist music, sung text, eerie chants, and recorded sounds, with archival film footage, photographs, and other images flashed on a giant screen. The piece opens with beating drums and still shots of the burning German zeppelin. Voices intone the German ambassador's public reaction to the crash: "It could not have been a technical matter." What follows underscores the then pervasive faith in technology even as it hints at a darker underside. Reich quotes Wagner's Das Rheingold as the video shows workers building the zeppelin at a Frankfurt factory. The striking sounds and images bring to mind one word: hubris. Yet there is hope. "The Hindenburg has gone," declares a newsreel announcer at the end of the piece. "Her tragedy will not halt the march of progress." As if to emphasize the point, a lone airplane wing swings into sight, blocking out the burned dirigible.
The demise of the Hindenburg was viewed by many as a technological aberration. But the beginning of the atomic age at mid-century, says Reich, "marks a very different mentality. This is the first time that human beings have the physical wherewithal to do away with themselves en masse. Everybody thinks, 'Well, we hadn't counted on this.' " The advent of genetic engineering at the century's close marks yet another view. Technology is now turning, says Korot, from "looking outward to looking into ourselves." This development has generated hope for improving human health as well as anxiety over the danger of tampering with DNA.
Reich and Korot plan to weave into the next two tales the voices of spiritual leaders, philosophers, and scientists. Their goal is to stimulate discussion about where technology is taking us. "For all its excitement and possibility for good, there's a sense that you're unleashing something that can't be recalled once it's out there," Reich says. Still, he and Korot are under no illusion that their work will stir massive change. "Pablo Picasso was arguably the greatest artist in the 20th century, and one of his greatest works is Guernica, which is about civilian bombing," says Reich. "As a work of art, Guernica is a towering masterpiece. As a political gesture, it was a failure! A total, absolutely irrelevant nothing! He didn't stop civilian bombing for a millisecond!" But, says Korot, "on the personal, humanizing level, he had an impact, I'm sure— on the individuals who came to see his work."
