WINGATE’S transcription of 
MUSSORGSKY’S “PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION”
for grand orchestra, organ and chorus

Transcription date:
2003

Instrumentation:
3 Flutes [All doubling Piccolo; 3. doubles Alto Flute], 2 Oboes, English Horn, 3 Clarinets in B-flat [1. doubles Clarinet in E-flat; 3. doubles Bass Clarinet in B-flat II], Bass Clarinet in B-flat, Bassoon, Contrabassoon, 4 Horns in F, 3 Trumpets in B-flat [1. doubles Piccolo Trumpet in B-flat], Bass Trumpet in B-flat, Tenor Trombone, Bass Trombone, Contrabass Trombone, Tuba, Timpani, 6 Percussion: Triangle, Crash Cymbals, Suspended Cymbal, Large Tam-Tam, Tambourine, Snare Drum, Bass Drum, Whip, Crotales, Tubular Bells, Handbells [E-flat2, G2, A-flat2, A2, B-flat2, B2, E3, F3, G-flat3, B-flat3], Celesta, Harp, Organ, Chorus (SATB div.), Strings (with soli)

Duration:
33'

Notes:
Modest Mussorgsky’s widely celebrated piano suite Kartinki s vystavki (‘Pictures at an Exhibition’, 1874) was Wingate’s favorite piano piece during his childhood keyboard studies, and his youthful zeal even led one of his teachers to begin referring to the piece by the epithet ‘piano-pounder’s paradise’. It might also be the most-transcribed piece of music in history. By some counts there exist an astonishing fifty-five orchestral versions, and dozens for other musical entities, from balalaika ensemble to Tomita’s 1976 synthesizers. But of course Maurice Ravel’s 1922 orchestration is a work of transcriptional genius, and any subsequent attempt is necessarily burdened by a great debt to this version, as it has even come to be the way that most listeners recognize the piece, even eclipsing Mussorgsky’s original core. Wingate was naïvely undaunted by this legacy, and having resolved to teach himself the craft of orchestration, he chose Pictures at an Exhibition as a kind of ultimate orchestration étude. His aim was not to create a new, ne plus ultra version of ‘Pictures’ for the ages, but to create a personal account by showcasing his favorite instruments and orchestrational details. The result is, perhaps inadvertently, a de facto concerto for orchestra, pushing the Western symphonic ensemble to its limit in the service of this ostensibly ‘common-practice period’ piece.
 
Wingate spent twenty years making a series of seven different versions, all giving way to the final 2003 iteration incorporating organ and (wordless) chorus into the sonic palette. Mussorgsky’s famous opening is here thrillingly taken by the horns, which then continue to feature prominently throughout the suite. There is also a healthy dose of Russian orchestral spirit, especially with a few Rimsky-Korsakov-esque string solos embroidered into the score, but also a touch of Wagnerian gravitas with a rarely-heard bass trumpet taking the famous ‘Bydlo’ movement solo. The organ’s brilliant first entrance (halfway through the piece in the promenade that Ravel did not deign to include) will inevitably evoke the Maestoso of Saint-Saëns’ Third (‘Organ’) Symphony. And the long-awaited first entrance of the chorus at the ‘Grand Gate of Kiev’ movement might also seem like a conceit of Beethovenian bent. But Mussorgsky’s pair of chorale-like passages in this movement (based on a Russian Orthodox chant, as it turns out) fit very well around the voices of an actual chorus, who then joins the full orchestral forces to bring the piece to its rapturous close.
 
Mussorgsky’s triumphant comingling of music and the visual arts in this famous work have also inspired some of Wingate’s original compositions, notably the Second Symphony (‘Kleetüden), which might be fittingly described as a kind of ‘Pictures at a [Paul Klee] Exhibition’. And as the number of Mussorgsky transcriptions continues to grow ad infinitum, his continuing legacy haunts the ear, like the refrain of an old Russian folk song writ large. Some miracles of composition like Mussorgsky’s masterpiece will brilliantly survive all our best-intended tributes and adulterations, and continue to bring joy to all, even if it is true what Jorge Luis Borges says, that ‘The original is unfaithful to the translation.’