![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amethyst73My apologies to one and all for filling their Friends pages with mostly Zelda-related drivel over the past couple of months. I didn't intend that to be the bulk of my LJ entries, I truly didn't!
I therefore present: A serious post! With real content! Let there be rejoicing!
A while ago,
stolen_tea posted about the music of Karl Jenkins. Jenkins is probably most widely known for his compositions for his group Adiemus. He's also written somewhat more traditional choral works, including a requiem and a mass. The huz and I were lucky enough to sing his The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace back in August of 2005. This happened to be, amusingly enough, the first FULL performance of the piece in the U.S., even though it was written some years ago and has been wildly popular in Europe. Jenkins really really wanted the U.S. premiere of the piece to be in Carnegie Hall, and the powers that be at Carnegie Hall finally agreed - at which point, the person in charge of directing the local community summer chorus said, "Yahoo! We'll perform it here a month after that!"
Well, there was a performance at Carnegie Hall. But for reasons unknown, they decided to do only the 'pretty' movements out of the mass, leaving out the darker (but highly effective) movements. So we did the first full performance. :)
And now, about the music. It follows a story arc of calls to faith and to war, a battle, the various repercussions thereof, and an affirmation that "Better is peace than always war." The Amazon catalog page has snippets of each movement.
There's an old French folk tune called 'The Armed Man' that starts off the piece (The Armed Man):
One should fear the armed man.
It is called out everywhere
that each person should arm himself
in an iron suit.
One of Jenkins' hallmarks in his choral writing is repetition and variation of a theme within a movement. The tune is sung individually by different voice parts, in a round, and in a four-part choral arrangement; the repetitions are punctuated with horn calls from a trumpet duet. In our case, the conductor had us marching through the church from various doors up to our places on the risers during this movement.
The next two movements establish the two sides in the battle to come: The Call to Prayers is the Muslim call to prayers. The tune - I've heard two different ones, and according to this site there are a couple of dozen possible - is chosen by the conductor or the individual chanting it. Kyrie is the Latin text from the Christian mass, usually sung near the beginning of a service. Kyrie is set for soprano soloist and chorus, and at one point quotes from Palestrina's mass based on the tune of "The Armed Man". Most of the movement is in a minor key, giving it an air of great solemnity.
The next three movements depict the preparations for battle. Save Me from Bloody Men is an a capella plainchant for men's voices, invoking the image of monks praying for peace in a chapel. But with the sound of a sharp drumbeat at the end of the movement, the audience knows that the prayers come too late. The army marches past in its frightening size and precision in Sanctus, then prays for "strength to die" in the grandly cinematic Hymn Before Action.
Charge! outlines the the battle itself. All are caught up in the excitement of the pending battle in the first section of the movement ("The trumpet's loud clangor excites us to arms"), interpolated with an angelically high women's chorus proclaiming, "How blest is he who for his country dies!" After cries of Charge!, four bass drumbeats signal the start of the battle. Chaotic noisemaking by the chorus grows continually louder, ending in a near-shriek. A dead silence of ten to thirty very long seconds follows. The movement ends with a trumpet playing "Last Post" (the British equivalent of 'Taps') with subdued, almost ironic orchestra underneath.
What hath man wrought? Come and see.
The text of the next movement, Angry Flames, was written by a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing. It is a simple but horrifying depiction of the bombing and the "countless human beings, down on all fours... hair rent, rigid in death" after the bomb has been dropped. It's a surprisingly quiet movement, with strings humming tense and high, and a pair of trumpets played in occasional canon being virtually the only instrumental accompaniment to the four soloists and brief choral interjections. In Torches, even the innocent animals are not spared from destruction and horror. The text (from the Mahabarata) could easily have been written at the same time as Angry Flames, rather than many centuries earlier. (These, by the way, were two of the movements omitted from the Carnegie Hall performance of the piece.)
The Agnus Dei seems like the only possible response to the searing images of the previous two movements. The lovely melody expresses a universal sorrow at both the carnage and its cause. Now the Guns Have Stopped, sung by an alto soloist, is a much more personal sorrow at the loss of a comrade in the battle. The meditative calm and peace of Benedictus seems to promise that - somehow - all will be well.
The final movement, Better is Peace, is full of energy and joy. Most of the text comes from Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ring Out, Wild Bells":
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
In Jenkins' hand, it sounds like a welcome promise by man to reform his ways and to not make war anymore. And almost in return for that promise, the piece closes with a stunning chorale:
God shall wipe away all tears, and there shall be no more death.
Neither sorrow, nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain.
Praise the Lord.
There's an old French folk tune called 'The Armed Man' that starts off the piece (The Armed Man):
One should fear the armed man.
It is called out everywhere
that each person should arm himself
in an iron suit.
One of Jenkins' hallmarks in his choral writing is repetition and variation of a theme within a movement. The tune is sung individually by different voice parts, in a round, and in a four-part choral arrangement; the repetitions are punctuated with horn calls from a trumpet duet. In our case, the conductor had us marching through the church from various doors up to our places on the risers during this movement.
The next two movements establish the two sides in the battle to come: The Call to Prayers is the Muslim call to prayers. The tune - I've heard two different ones, and according to this site there are a couple of dozen possible - is chosen by the conductor or the individual chanting it. Kyrie is the Latin text from the Christian mass, usually sung near the beginning of a service. Kyrie is set for soprano soloist and chorus, and at one point quotes from Palestrina's mass based on the tune of "The Armed Man". Most of the movement is in a minor key, giving it an air of great solemnity.
The next three movements depict the preparations for battle. Save Me from Bloody Men is an a capella plainchant for men's voices, invoking the image of monks praying for peace in a chapel. But with the sound of a sharp drumbeat at the end of the movement, the audience knows that the prayers come too late. The army marches past in its frightening size and precision in Sanctus, then prays for "strength to die" in the grandly cinematic Hymn Before Action.
Charge! outlines the the battle itself. All are caught up in the excitement of the pending battle in the first section of the movement ("The trumpet's loud clangor excites us to arms"), interpolated with an angelically high women's chorus proclaiming, "How blest is he who for his country dies!" After cries of Charge!, four bass drumbeats signal the start of the battle. Chaotic noisemaking by the chorus grows continually louder, ending in a near-shriek. A dead silence of ten to thirty very long seconds follows. The movement ends with a trumpet playing "Last Post" (the British equivalent of 'Taps') with subdued, almost ironic orchestra underneath.
What hath man wrought? Come and see.
The text of the next movement, Angry Flames, was written by a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing. It is a simple but horrifying depiction of the bombing and the "countless human beings, down on all fours... hair rent, rigid in death" after the bomb has been dropped. It's a surprisingly quiet movement, with strings humming tense and high, and a pair of trumpets played in occasional canon being virtually the only instrumental accompaniment to the four soloists and brief choral interjections. In Torches, even the innocent animals are not spared from destruction and horror. The text (from the Mahabarata) could easily have been written at the same time as Angry Flames, rather than many centuries earlier. (These, by the way, were two of the movements omitted from the Carnegie Hall performance of the piece.)
The Agnus Dei seems like the only possible response to the searing images of the previous two movements. The lovely melody expresses a universal sorrow at both the carnage and its cause. Now the Guns Have Stopped, sung by an alto soloist, is a much more personal sorrow at the loss of a comrade in the battle. The meditative calm and peace of Benedictus seems to promise that - somehow - all will be well.
The final movement, Better is Peace, is full of energy and joy. Most of the text comes from Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ring Out, Wild Bells":
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
In Jenkins' hand, it sounds like a welcome promise by man to reform his ways and to not make war anymore. And almost in return for that promise, the piece closes with a stunning chorale:
God shall wipe away all tears, and there shall be no more death.
Neither sorrow, nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain.
Praise the Lord.
It was quite possibly one of the most emotional choral singing experiences I've ever had, and I feel very fortunate to have been introduced to the piece.
