For my work Requiem, inspired by Anna Akhmatova’s poem cycle of the same name, I never wrote any part or movement without the poem sitting next to me. I viewed my job as a translator of Akhmatova’s poem into music. Of course, no translation is without the translator’s touch. In my case, Requiem ended up drawing inspiration from diverse musical sources, including neoclassical metal, video game soundtracks, and Boise State University choral performances.
Requiem is a miniature symphony of 11 short movements, with each movement representing a poem or a few poems in Requiem. Many of the movements are combined into the same musical idea to prevent using an overwhelming number of musical ideas in a short period of time. Below are the names and timestamps of each movement and which poems they correlate to. Ideally I would have written one for each poem, but I didn’t want to sacrifice the musical quality to make the movements fit neatly.
“Only the dead smiled” (0:00 - 0:58) - Dedication and Prologue
“Creep to our wailing wall” (0:58 - 1:40) - 1
“Gently flows the gentle Don” (1:40 - 2:57) - 2
“Night.” (2:57 - 3:50) - 3
“Little jester” (3:56 - 4:34) - 4
“At the hangman’s feet… of death I hear them speak” (4:34 - 5:25) - 5, 6
“The Pole Star is glittering” (5:25 - 6:35) - 7, 8, 9
“Into flame” (6:35 - 8:03) - Crucifixion I
“Magdalina beat her breast and wept” (8:01 - 8:52) - Crucifixion II
“Red blind prison-wall” (8:52 - 9:53) - Epilogue I
“The ships sail slowly down the Neva” (9:55 - 11:41) - Epilogue II
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