WINGATE: AMEN
(Landscapes of Consciousness)
for Double Mixed Chorus a cappella

Date:
2005 / arr. 2006

Instrumentation:
SATBSATB unaccompanied

Duration:
4'

Notes:
This Amen setting is a choral version of Wingate’s 2005 instrumental work Landscapes of Consciousness, originally composed for organ, but quickly begetting diverse transcriptions for various chamber ensembles as well as for orchestra. Within this 8-part a cappella arrangement, the Byzantine threads of vocal lines are woven into a complex fabric of terraced dynamics and menacing consonances. The unique text-setting strategy employed is that of endlessly delaying the last syllable of the piece’s only word, causing the music to sound like an extended vocalise all the way to its quiet closing moments when the ‘-men’ of ‘Amen’ is finally revealed. Sharing both a transcriptional spirit with Samuel Barber’s Agnus Dei (arranged from his celebrated Adagio for Strings), as well as a textual affinity with Henryk Górecki’s Amen, op. 35, Wingate’s Amen score has an additional feature in that it may easily be sung entirely as a wordless vocalise—or as one chorister cheekily put it: all ‘ah’ and no ‘men’—should the particular occasion warrant it.