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After the freezing morning of 10 May 1869, a crowd gathered at Utah\u2019s Promontory Summit to watch as a golden spike was pounded into an unfinished railroad track. Within moments, a telegraph was sent from one side of the country to the other announcing the completion of North America\u2019s first transcontinental railroad. It set off the first coast-to-coast celebration, and at New York City\u2019s Trinity Church, a choir chanted the Te Deum, \u2018imparting thankful harmonies\u2019, in the words of mayor A. Oakey Hall.<\/p>
Completed four years after the Civil War, the new rail link enabled the flow of people and commerce to the West Coast, with a trip that had once taken as long as six months cut down to a week. The impact was huge, and with the 150th anniversary this year marked by a wealth of museum exhibits and performances, it\u2019s clear that classical music in the US was forever transformed by the golden age of train travel.<\/p>
Key to the railroad\u2019s construction were immigrant labourers \u2013 mostly from Ireland and China \u2013 who worked amid avalanches, disease, clashes with Native Americans and searing summer heat. \u2018Not that many people know how hard it was to build, and how many perished while building this,\u2019 says Zhou Tian, a Chinese-American composer whose new orchestral work Transcend <\/em>pays tribute to these workers. <\/p>