The Three Gates was composed during the first two weeks of March in 2007, shortly after Ford began reading Dante's The Divine Comedy. It is dedicated to the British composer and singer David Warin Solomons, a fellow member of the Delian Society. Ford's musical style in these three movements, the last two of which include the organ, was strongly influenced by his familiarity with the music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly the polyphony of Josquin and the operas and madrigals of Monteverdi, although elements drawn from composers as diverse as Gesualdo, Beethoven, and Liszt also come into play.