WINGATE: THIRTEEN PRE-SOCRATIC FRAGMENTS
for Baritone and Orchestra

(THIS PROJECT IS A WORK IN PROGRESS)

Text:
Thirteen text fragments from the pre-Socratic philosophers Anaximenes of Miletus, Democritus, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Melissus of Samos, and Thales; in the original Classical Greek.

The piece begins with Thales:
     παντα πληρη θεων ειναι
     (All things are full of gods.)

Notes:
Wingate’s Thirteen Pre-Socratic Fragments for Baritone and Orchestra sets these enigmatic philosophical utterances as if they were modern poetry. Speaking to us through thousands of years of translation, quotation, and speculative commentary, these ancient words nevertheless retain an uncanny freshness, like wisdom only just forgotten after waking from a dream. The music in this piece seeks to evoke that almost unimaginable era when the endeavor of philosophy (or being a ‘lover’ of wisdom) was a new human occupation, indistinguishable from what we would now call ‘science’. Open to endless interpretation and misunderstanding due to that distance, the texts duly float around this orchestral song in clouds of ambiguous melodies and abstruse harmonies.