Two of today’s four performances made a huge impact on me—the first was Karl Jenkins’ “The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace,” performed by the Three Choirs Festival Youth Choir; the Philharmonia Players, Gregory Bannan, baritone; and Samuel Hudson, conductor.
The work begins with a military march and drumbeat and the singing of the 15th Century popular tune, “L’homme armé,” followed by a Muslim Call to Prayer (Allahu Akbar. La Illaha il la-lah.) I wonder if quite a few people didn’t think that being in Gloucester Cathedral and hearing this Muslim chant wasn’t a tiny bit incongruous, but that soon led to a quotation of Palestrina’s Christe eleison from his L’homme Armé mass—the music of which is near and dear to my heart since I wrote a major paper on this in graduate school.
I quote now from the program: At the very centre of the work is ‘Angry Flames,’ an excerpt from a poem about the horrors of the atom bomb attack on Hiroshima, written by a poet who was there at the time and died in 1953 of leukemia brought on by the exposure in radiation.
Angry Flames. Pushing up through smoke From a world half darkened by overhanging cloud, The shroud that mushroomed out And struck the dome of the sky, Black, red, blue, Dance in the air, Merge, Scatter glittering sparks already tower over the whole city. Quivering like seaweed The mass of flames spurts forward, Popping up in the dense smoke, Crawling out wreathes in fire, Countless human beings on all fours, In a heap of embers that erupt and subside, Hair rent, Rigid in death, There smoulders a curse. (Toge Sankichi 1917-1953)
Up to this point the music had been very consonant and tuneful but then turned angry, dissonant and incredibly loud. If decibels could bring the Cathedral down, then this would be it.
The confusion didn’t stop—as we listened to this passage from an ancient Indian epic: The animals scattered in all directions, screaming terrible screams. Many were burning, others were burnt… Everywhere were bodies squirming on the ground, wings, eyes and paws all burning. They breathed their last as living torches. (From The Mahabharata, 6th c.)
The music turned peaceful with the Agnus Dei and I will never forget the beautiful tune of the Benedictus, both of which “heals those wounds in its slow and stately affirmation of faith,” ending with a peaceful a cappella chorale, showing us that sorrow, pain and death can be overcome.
I actually found a recording of the Benedictus on YouTube for you to savor:
And a recording of the complete work is here.
Three Choirs Festival Youth Chorus
My friend, Joan Ishibashi, arrived from London and we went to a recital by tenor Joshua Ellicott, sensitively accompanied by pianist Simon Lepper.
The work that made such an impression on us was a sequence of songs and reading, From your ever-loving son, Jack from 19-year-old Jack Ellicott, soldier in World War I. Through the letters we hear about life on the front line, interspersed with songs from Frank Bridge, Gerald Finzi, John Ireland, Haydn Wood, Francis Poulenc, Claude Debussy, Reynaldo Hahn and James Macmillan, songs of longing, of life, of death—an extremely moving and emotional experience.
Joshua Ellicott “represents an extraordinary talent, effortlessly crossing genre from song to opera to concert repertoire with his sweet-toned, flexible yet powerful, lyric tenor voice.” My friend Joan described his voice like “butter!” I thought his voice was clear as a bell.
We then went to Evensong sung by the St. Cecilia Singers of Gloucester Cathedral where we met former Lutheran Church of Honolulu music director, Joe Hansen.
At the evening concert, An English Requiem, by John Joubert, the program also included Elgar’s Cello Concerto with a fantastic cellist, Natalie Clein.
