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composer
WINGATE: SCHWERMUT
for Tenor, Harp, and Percussion
Date:
1995
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Instrumentation:
Tenor solo, 6-7 Perc. (Timpani, Tambourine, Tenor Drum, Bass Drum, Triangle, Suspended Cymbals, Tam-Tam, Temple Blocks, Marimba [with 2 Contrabass Bows], Vibraphone, Tubular Bells), and Harp.​
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Duration:
4' 30"
Text:
August Stramm (1874 - 1915), from ‘Du. Liebesgedichte’, 1915
SCHWERMUT
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Schreiten Streben
Leben sehnt
Schauern Stehen
Blicke suchen
Sterben wächst
Das Kommen
Schreit!
Tief
Stummen
Wir.
Notes:
Wingate’s setting of August Stramm’s celebrated short poem ‘Schwermut’ (‘Melancholy’) imagines a sonic landscape in which tones of a sustaining character are coaxed out of traditionally non-sustaining percussion instruments as they mimic as best they can the exhalational richness of the human voice — an ultimately hopeless (and perhaps therefore somewhat melancholy) task. All of Schwermut’s accompaniments are manifested by a subdued array of pitched and un-pitched percussive gestures, giving Stramm’s expressionist text space to expound its quiet sadness via the tenor’s reluctant vocal lines. Yet a sense of existential heaviness is also present in the corners of these restrained and murmuring textures, as the composer had Albrecht Dürer’s masterfully dense 1514 engraving Melencolia I in mind during the composition process as well.
Albrecht Dürer: Melencolia I, 1514
Stramm’s text has also enjoyed musical settings by such luminaries as Wladimir Rudolfowitsch Vogel (1922), Milton Babbitt (1951), and Steffen Reinhold (2001 & 2003). But Wingate’s version was obliquely inspired by a concert performance of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ inimitable 1969 monodrama ‘Eight Songs for a Mad King’ in 1995, as well as by his readings during the previous year of Robert Burton’s 1621 magnum opus The Anatomy of Melancholy, whose half a million words contrast markedly with Stramm’s pithy 25 German syllables on the same subject.
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