Assignment 5: Arvo Pärt, Fratres
A recording and my analytic reduction of the first three cycles are on the Audio page.Read
Read this H. Wiley Hitchcock essay and this excerpt from Steve Reich's "Music as a Gradual Process".
Listen
Listen to Fratres at least once through complete, without distractions.
Do not multi-task (research suggests there really is no such thing).
Use decent playback equipment.Do not consult my analytic reduction score yet.
Discuss
What are your first impressions of the piece?Include your emotional and aesthetic reaction (gut feeling) as well as any other observations.
Post your observations here:
• An initial posting before Monday midnight, and
• At least one response to someone else's posting before class on Wednesday.Do not read the instructions for the analysis task (below) until you have listened and posted your initial observations.
Analyze
Do not read further until you have listened and posted your initial observations.
(scroll down for the instructions)
Only after listening and posting, look at the analytic sketch of the first three cycles of the piece.
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...What pitch collection do the outer voices use?
What pitch collection do the inner voices use?
This piece is algorithmic.
Using the sketch and your analytic listening, can you determine how the outer parts are generated? Could you (for instance) write out the outer parts to the 4th cycle without looking at a score or transcribing it from the recording?Can you determine how the inner voice is generated? Could you predict it for the 4th cycle without a score or transcription?
Please keep this part of your thinking offline, so as not to deprive others of the opportunity to "reverse engineer" the piece themselves. Come to class with your best attempt at the piece's algorithm.