In its annual “Musica da Coro” concert, the 100-voice Sno-King Community Chorale, under the direction of Frank DeMiero, will perform Welsh composer Karl Jenkins’ “The Armed Man: Mass for Peace,” in two concerts Saturday, March 20 at Trinity Lutheran Church in Lynnwood.
Joining the singers will be the Sno-King Community Chorale Orchestra and soloists.
Based on the Christian Mass, Jenkins combines it with other sources, principally the 15th-century folk song “L’homme armé” in the first and last movements.
The text includes words from the Islamic call to prayer, the Bible (Psalms and Revelation), the Ordinary of the Mass (“Kyrie Eleison” and “Sanctus”), the words of authors such as Rudyard Kipling and Alfred Lord Tennyson, as well as a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing.
The piece begins with a representation of marching feet, overlaid later by the shrill tones of a piccolo emulating the flutes of a military band, stirring images of the Napoleonic Wars, of “Redcoats” and war as a glorious pursuit. Kipling’s “Hymn before Action” stirs the listener much as Roman gladiators would with their proclamation to Caesar, “We, who are about to die, salute you.” Then the charge –- with blaring trumpets and crashing drums, ending in the cries of the dying. An eerie silence follows, broken by the evocative sound of a lone trumpet playing the “Last Post.” And then, the final message, “Better Is Peace.”
“This is an exciting work for our chorale to perform,” DeMiero said, “not only because of its soaring, driven rhythms, interwoven with a melodic score, but because of its searing anti-war message.”
The piece was commissioned by the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds, England for the Millennium celebrations and was initially dedicated to victims of the Kosovo crisis. Accompanying the Mass is a video montage relating to each song. The audience is cautioned that some scenes, though brief, contain graphic imagery.
Karl Jenkins has been voted the United Kingdom’s most popular living composer for the past five years by listeners on BBC Classical Radio One, and entered Classic KING FM’s “Hall of Fame” at number eight, the highest position ever for a living composer. He is a recipient of the Order of the British Empire for his “services to music.”
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