WINGATE: REQUIEM NO. 1
for Men’s Voices and Orchestra of Low Instruments

(THIS PROJECT IS A WORK IN PROGRESS)

Text:
The Latin Mass for the Dead

Notes:
Wingate’s First Requiem began as a response to a moving performance of Tomas Luis de Victoria’s 1585 Responsaries for Tenebrae heard sometime in the early 80s. The brief “Aestimatus Sum” (Third Nocturn, No. 2), especially, as performed in a rendering for men’s low voices by Westminster Cathedral Choir, struck the young composer as the most perfect music possible for those voices, and he set upon an enthusiastic study of Renaissance polyphony to unlock its mysteries, hoping to compose a large-scale work for men’s chorus when his technique caught up with his ambition. The idea of a requiem mass for this ensemble was sparked when he heard Liszt’s 1868 Requiem ("Messe des morts” S. 12, scored for men’s voices, brass, timpani and organ) for the first time in 1987 and was disappointed with Liszt’s strangely subdued and cobwebby Romanticism, feeling inspired to create his own version with different artistic aims. A brief obsession with the compelling dissonances of Byzantine chant shortly thereafter finally brought about the Requiem’s first sketches.
 
The final result, decades later, is a work of thick choral textures buttressed by a yet-more-thickening orchestra of low-pitched instruments, timbrally similar to the one deployed in Wingate’s Imaginary Overture to Medea. Here the text of the Requiem is almost lost at times in the dark forest of masculine vocal timbre, and even reduced to pitchless whispering in certain passages for tenebrous effect. Yet Wingate’s signature contrapuntal structures permeate the work, as the vocal lines navigate a complex labyrinth of dissonance and endlessly unresolved appoggiatura, creating a surreal homage to the Renaissance motets of the work’s initial inspiration.