Imagining Sonic Stories

Sonic narratives are the subject of Vincent Meelberg’s chapter, in which he discusses the capacity of sound not only to trigger narratives but also to tell stories that unfold over time. Meelberg uses his own sound collage work as an example of how narratives can be created through a sequence of sounds. He argues that sonic narratives emerge when the sequence of sounds represents a temporal development. Examples are provided that show how this temporal development emerges from either the referential qualities (hearing a succession of concrete events) or the acoustic qualities (e.g., the succession of tension and release) of the sound.

Steve Reich’s Dramatic Sound Collage for the Harlem Six

Steve Reich’s Come Out was produced for a benefit concert at Town Hall, New York, in April 1966, aimed at raising funds to pay for independent lawyers for a retrial of the Harlem Six following a miscarriage of justice. Come Out was one of two works by Reich performed on that occasion, the other being a much longer sound collage—Harlem’s Six Condemned—created as part of a dramatization of Truman Nelson’s The Torture of Mothers. The recording of Harlem’s Six Condemned—unheard publicly since 1966—is now available in the Steve Reich Collection at the Paul Sacher Stiftung, Basel. This chapter argues that a close reading of Reich’s sound collage offers a perspective on Come Out that has been increasingly lost in the time since the benefit concert. A deeper understanding of Come Out will be gained by tracing its prehistory and setting a broader context for its appreciation.