Karl
Jenkins (1944- ): The
Armed Man: a Mass for Peace
This work was
commissioned by the Royal Armouries Museum to celebrate the Millennium and
takes its name from a fifteenth century French song, the tune of which became
the basis of a series of military masses written in the ensuing hundred
years. The work starts with this song
and contains some of the words of the Catholic mass interspersed with texts relating
to war and peace by a variety of writers and poets, including some from other
religious traditions. There are 13
movements in all, charting a progression from a call to arms and prayers before
battle; through the battle itself, the human destruction (evoked by the words
of a Hiroshima victim), the eerie silence afterwards and the guilt of the
survivors; and finally arriving at the conclusion that peace is a better way
than war and resolving that the new millennium will be more successful than the
old one in this respect. Along the way
we experience a huge variety of musical styles both historically and
geographically, ranging from the timeless traditional call of the muezzin, through
plainsong and sixteenth century polyphony, to twentieth century film music and
Brazilian drum beats.
The Armed Man was premièred in the Royal Albert Hall,
London, in April 2000 and has gained in popularity ever since, being voted 15th
in Classic FM’s hall of fame in 2010. By
coincidence, the official CD was issued the day before the atrocities in New
York on 11 September 2001, and because of its subject matter the work has acquired
a resonance with the survivors of terrorist violence. Peter Harbord, North
Yorkshire Chorus
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