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British composer Karl Jenkins’ “The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace” is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2025. This weekend, the very popular contemporary choral work will have its Rochester premiere.
After a quarter-century, a best-selling recording, and more than 2,700 performances throughout the world, “The Armed Man” is bringing its messages of peace and inclusivity to Rochester as the featured work on this summer’s concert at the Finger Lakes Choral Festival. The concert will be Sunday at the Hochstein Performance Hall.
Conductor Eric Townell, encouraged by local choral singers, has wanted to present Jenkins’ work for several years. But in its original form, “The Armed Man” calls for choral, orchestral, and solo forces beyond the reach of the Finger Lakes Choral Festival. A brand-new version for smaller forces finally made a local performance practicable. The chorus will still be a large one, with more than 100 singers. As Townell notes, many of them have performed “The Armed Man” before.
“It’s a destination piece,” says the conductor. “People will follow this piece to sing in it, or to hear it.”
Several new chorus members have made Rochester their destination this week, one of whom performed earlier this month in an anniversary performance conducted by Jenkins himself.
While “The Armed Man” is a contemporary work, its title and its musical basis are very old: the 15th-century song “L’Homme Armé,” whose first line is “The Armed Man must be feared.” That simple tune became tremendously popular—even in the 21st century. Once heard, it’s hard to get out of your head. It was borrowed by many Renaissance composers, often—despite its militaristic tone—as the basis of settings of the Roman Catholic Mass.
Jenkins expands an exclusively Roman Catholic tradition by including many other perspectives on war and peace. For example, the opening movement, a raucous, emphatic setting of “L’Homme Armé,” is followed by a complete change in tone: a Muezzin’s Call to Prayer, which will be sung in Arabic by University of Rochester student Mohammed Abdelshafy.
Jenkins alternates the sections of the Mass with settings of poetry from many different periods about war and peace, ranging from two biblical Psalms, to passages by Jonathan Swift, Rudyard Kipling, and Alfred Tennyson, as well a harrowing poem by a Japanese poet who died of radiation poisoning after the Hiroshima bombing. The ancient-meets-modern structure of “The Armed Man” is reminiscent of a 20th-century British choral classic, Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem.”
The Welsh-born Jenkins has had a long career in jazz and classical music. His music for “The Armed Man” is relatively simple in style (“but not without its difficulties,” says Townell) but also emotionally direct and moving.
“What I find compelling in the Mass movements,” says Townell, “is not the music itself, but the feeling Jenkins is able to express behind the words. The words may be formal, but the music is symbolic of human feeling and emotions.”
A performance by the Mount Hope World Singers, conducted by Brian White, will precede “The Armed Man” with songs from Australia, Brazil, the Ute Tribe, and Malaysia that enhance Jenkins’s message of inclusivity.
“These songs touch on experiences shared across humanity—a sense of place, of celebration, feelings of wonder and beauty, and the practice of forgiveness,” says Annika Bentley, the chorus’s artistic director.
The FLCF is offering its audience an opportunity to contribute to this concert by sending their own thoughts on the subject of peace through the ensemble’s website. The movements of “The Armed Man” will be interspersed with these reflections, read by Thomas Warfield, who will also interpret two of the movements in dance.
“These won’t interrupt the flow,” notes Townell, “but instead amplify it. They give some perspective to what the piece is about.”
“Happily, there have been many responses,” says Warfield. “Not only will these words from our community add to the unifying message of peace, but the activity has already contributed to world peace by the mere fact that people have extended their own energy, focus, and time into an effort for peace.
“That vibration of peace,” Warfield concludes, “ripples out into the world.”
The Finger Lakes Choral Festival presents “The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace” on Sunday, July 27, at 4 p.m., at Hochstein Performance Hall, 50 N. Plymouth Avenue. The performance also includes Thomas Warfield as dancer and narrator, and the Mount Hope World Singers with Brian White, conductor.
Admission is free. Donations will help support the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence.
To send your definition of “peace” to be read during the concert, go to https://www.fingerlakeschoral.org and use the QR code provided.
David Raymond is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer.
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