Choral SATB choir, piano
SKU: PR.312418710
A Brief Meditation On
The Devil's Verse.
Composed by Richard
Wernick. -. Secular
choral. Performance
Score. With Standard
notation. Composed 2011.
8 pages. Duration 4
minutes. Theodore Presser
Company #312-41871.
Published by Theodore
Presser Company
(PR.312418710).
ISBN
9781598066265. UPC:
680160618743. Octavo
inches. The Devil's
Verse.
To celebrate
25 years of excellence
and promotion of new
concert works, the New
York Virtuoso Singers
commissioned 25
contemporary composers
for 25 new choral works,
all of which now appear
on their recording, 25 X
25: Twenty-Five Premieres
for Twenty-Five Years.
Among the 25 is Richard
Wernick's The Devil's
Game. Here, Wernick uses
The Devil's Verse, a
Latin palindrome that
still puzzles us today as
to its meaning, and
appropriately embraces
repetitive use of the
verse in a musical
palindrome of his
own.
The text is a
palindrome (in girum imus
nocte et consumimur
igni), a rather
mysterious one called The
Devil’s Verse. Its
origin is vague (probably
Roman, but possibly
Medieval) and it does not
surrender its meaning
easily; many scholars
have fussed over it. It
is a riddle as well as a
palindrome, in other
words a puzzle within a
puzzle. My preferred
translation, without
going into the niceties
of Latin grammar, is
“We enter the
circle at night and are
consumed by
fire.â€This music is
also a palindrome, the
outer parts of which are
homophonic, while the
turning around point in
the center (where the
basses enter for the
first time) is a brief
double canon.