Wir Weben Wir Weben

The string sextet setting from the original work for string orchestra was premiered by Musical Elements (Daniel Asia, director) in 1980 and recorded by them on New World Records NWCR682 Martin Bresnick: Music for Strings. From the liner notes: "The title Wir Weben, Wir Weben (We're Weaving, We're Weaving) is taken from the refrain of Heinrich Heine's poem 'The Silesian Weavers.' The poem was written in sympathy with a strike by German textile workers in 1844. The musicians' repeated melodic and contrapuntal patterns imagines the work of the weavers - an audible realization of the terrible beauty of repetitive labor."