The Armed Man

This article is about the modern Mass. For the French Renaissance song, see L'homme armé.
The Armed Man
A Mass for Peace
by Karl Jenkins
GenreMass
Text
Language
Composed1999 (1999)
Performed25 April 2000 (2000-04-25): London
Publishedby Boosey & Hawkes
Scoring
  • Solo female voice
  • solo cello
  • mixed choir
  • orchestra

The Armed Man is a Mass by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins, subtitled "A Mass for Peace". The piece was commissioned by the Royal Armouries Museum for the Millennium celebrations, to mark the museum's move from London to Leeds, and it was dedicated to victims of the Kosovo crisis. Like Benjamin Britten's War Requiem before it, it is essentially an anti-war piece and is based on the Catholic Mass, which Jenkins combines with other sources, principally the 15th-century folk song "L'homme armé" in the first and last movements. It was written for SATB chorus with soloists (soprano and muezzin) and a symphonic orchestra. Guy Wilson, then master of the museum, selected the texts for the mass.[1]

  1. ^ "The Armed Man: A Mass For Peace". Archived from the original on 2010-09-04.