Benedictus - SLSC Presents The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace Choral Suite

Presented by the Salt Lake Symphonic Choir and conducted by Erin Pike Tall, Karl Jenkin's The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace Choral Suite: Benedictus.

The British Royal Armouries Museum commissioned Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace to mark the millennium. The mass is dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo war that lasted from February 1998 to June 1999. Incredibly, the first recording of the full work was released on September 10, 2001.

Jenkins’ The Armed Man intertwines secular poetry exploring the descent into war with four movements of the Christian mass. A shorter choral suite was subsequently published which has been adapted for tonight’s performance by including additional material from the full work.

With Islam the predominant religion in Kosovo, the suite opens with the Moslem Call to Prayers (Adhān), connecting the audience with each other and with God. Continuing in the reflective tone, the Kyrie next pays homage to the past by quoting from Palestrina’s 1560’s Missa L’Homme armé (‘The Armed Man Mass’). The Sanctus that follows is full of menace, with a primeval, tribal character reminiscent of troops marching that adds to its power. The menace grows in the next movement as Kipling’s Hymn Before Action builds to its final devastating line, “Lord, grant us strength to die”.

In the narrative of the full work, war and the horror of mass destruction are now inevitable, but here Jenkins reflects that each human life is sacred and unique by returning to the text of the mass. First the Agnus Dei, with its lyrical chorale theme, reminds us of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice, with the Benedictus to heal the wounds of war with its slow and stately affirmation of faith. Better Is Peace is the final, positive, climax of the work, in which the words of Tennyson tell us to “Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace”.