Chamber Choir spring concert a Mass for peace

by: Linnea Morris

The Chamber Choir is working hard in order to perform its spring concert. The choir will be singing “The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace” at 8 p.m. Friday in Clarke Chapel.
The choir, under the direction of Dr. Fred Thayer, is a professional group of 29 Lycoming students with various majors.

Accompanying this grand performance will be Richard Lakey and Kristin Ivers on keyboards along with two trumpeters, Dale Orris and David Bailey, from the Williamsport Symphony Orchestra, flutist Lauren Godfrey, percussionists Donald Fisher, Chad Grundon and James Tyson and an alto saxophonist Brian Stillman.
Soloists from the choir in varies movements are Senior Emily Hopko, Senior Danielle Heaney, Senior Nina Cline, Senior Ken Vincencio, Sophomore Robert Rinaldo and Junior Sara Bartholomew.

“The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace,” was composed by Karl Jenkins and premiered in 2000.

It was commissioned by the Royal Armouries Museum for the Millennium celebrations and dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo crisis.

The piece is an anti-war piece based on the Catholic Mass and selected texts featuring a 15th century French folk song, “L’homme armé,” which translates to “The Armed Man.”

The Mass has 13 movements and has a running time of about 70 minutes.

Guy Wilson, the master of the museum, commented in the program notes, “The Mass begins with a marching army and the beat of military drums, the music gradually building to the choir’s entrance, singing the 15th-century theme tune – ‘The Armed Man.’”

After this highly intense movement, the style and pace changes. The reflective “Kyrie” pays homage to the past by quoting the style of Palestrina.
Next is a movement following the style of the Gregorian chant, which only the men sing from the psalms, asking God’s help against the enemies.

“The ‘Sanctus’ that follows is full of menace, and has a primeval, tribal character that adds to its power,” Wilson writes.

Then the menace grows. The next movement uses Kipling’s ‘Hymn Before Action’ to build to its final devastating line ‘Lord grant us strength to die.’

“War is now inevitable. ‘Charge!’ opens with a seductive paean to martial glory which is followed by the inevitable consequence – war in all its uncontrolled cacophony of destruction, then the eerie silence of the battlefield after the battle and, finally, the burial of the dead,” Wilson notes.

At the center of the work is Angry Flames, an excerpt from a poem written by a poet who was at Hiroshima during the atom bomb attack on Hiroshima and died in 1953 of leukemia brought on by exposure to radiation. The poem is about the aftermass of the bomb.

“But if we think that the obscenity of this mass destruction is new to our consciousness, we must reconsider as we listen, to the eerily similar passage from the ancient Indian epic The Mahàbharàta. From the horror of mass destruction the work turns to remember that one death is one too many, that each human life is sacred and unique,” Wilson writes.

“First the Agnus Dei, with its lyrical chorale theme, reminds us of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice,” Wilson commented. Following this is “Now the Guns Have Stopped,” about a missing husband. These movements have a great significance for many survivors of the First World War who feel significant loss and guilt when they came home when their friends did not.

“The Benedictus” tries to heal all the wounds in its slow and stately affirmation of faith and leads us to the final, positive, climax of the work.
“The menace of the ‘Armed Man’ theme returns but this time moves on and we come to our moment of commitment. Do we want the new millennium to be like the last? Or do we join with Tennyson when he tells us to ‘Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace?’

It may seem an impossible dream, we may not have begun too well, but the Mass ends with the affirmation from Revelations that change is possible, that sorrow, pain and death can be overcome. Dona nobis pacem,” Wilson said.