ABSTRACT
Reich’s fellow composer Kenneth Gaburo still more bluntly comments, “I frankly don’t know what an audience is, so I can’t possibly imagine writing for one.”1 Like Reich’s and Rainer’s most recent works, Gaburo’s work-in-progress, Testimony, incorporates quite specific fragments of public dialogue in order to create “a kind of oral history on the topic of nuclear war” based upon responses to the question: “In the event of a nuclear war, humans would be sacrificed. This sacrifice could not take place unless human life was thought to be expendable. In this, your life is included. How do you feel about being expendable?” (interview with author, 5 Nov. 1990).
