Recently, I finally got around to notating the synth/mellotron quotation of "Dies Irae" at the beginning of Argent's "The Coming of Kohoutek." I've known the guitar quotation for years, but this keyboard quotation (which I learned in August) is at a lower pitch. After I notated it, I lookt at my old posts about "The Coming of Kohoutek," and I discovered that I haven't written much about the "Dies Irae" quotation, so I'm doing that now.
I identified the quotation myself (after hearing a similar phrase in Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and doing some research), but I also found this interview with Rod Argent where he talks about the song a bit and confirms the "Dies Irae" quote:
Progsheet: Argent's The Coming Of Kohoutek got lots of airplay on FM radio here in the States. Please give me some background on the song.
Rod Argent: The comet was heralded as being potentially one of the most spectacular events to occur in the sky for many years. In the far past, spectacular comet visitations had been linked to all sorts of prophesies of doom and destruction, and I included a very famous musical theme - the Dies Irae, (Day of Wrath), written in the 13th century. It was a short theme that's been used by many composers. I just thought it was interesting to look at things a bit from a historical perspective, and it was the dramatic nature of the whole event that fascinated me. In the end, the comet Kohoutek was pretty much a damp squib!!Here's the "Dies Irae" tune:
 |
| [source] |
And here's the synth/mellotron quotation from the beginning of "The Coming of Kohoutek":
Argent uses only the first two thirds of the "Dies Irae" and changes the rhythm a bit (notwithstanding the overall lengthening of the note values), but the intervals remain the same.
