At-Home Dictation #6
“Spaceship” from Philip Glass, Einstein on the Beach
Part I (due Monday)
Transcribe the repeating 5-chord progression of this excerpt. Transcribe it as a pitch reduction into a 4-voice progression in whole notes, without regard to the changing rhythm. or download it here.Only the bass is in sustained notes; the three upper voices (soprano, alto, tenor) are implied by the right hand arpeggio. Your pitch reduction will render these implied upper voices as if they were sustained notes.
You might notate the bass first (the only sustaining part). Then you could:
- try to identify the quality of each chord, and/or
- try to isolate the intermittent upper voices that coalesce out of the arpeggio
If you do this, you may find yourself hearing phantom melodies that result when you hear a pitch from one of the implied voices (e.g. the tenor) “migrate” to nearby pitches in an adjacent voice (e.g. the alto). That may be confusing at first, but the pitches you identify will be useful in any case: just sketch them in over the bass framework, and eventually you will figure out which voice is which. (The subjective appearance and disappearance of various melodies through the ambiguity of the voice leading is part of the charm of the piece.)
Part II (due Wednesday)
Notate the exact rhythm and melody for the first eight cycles (approximately 18 seconds) of the harmonic pattern you transcribed for Part I. Here is the pattern for reference. (Note that my transcription begins on the second chord you hear, not the first.)
Transcribe the fast notes as eighths and use changing meters to fit the number of notes in each pattern. For example, if a cycle (once through the chord progression) has a total of 15 notes in the upper part, notate it in 15/8. Beam however you think makes sense given the arpeggio patterns.