On the 2nd of November I went to a fantastic local concert hall, Birmingham Symphony Hall, to see Welsh composer Karl Jenkins conduct his large choral work The Armed Man: A Mass For Peace. It is only relatively recently I have become more interested in choral works, but there are one or two famous movements within the mass that I consider among my favourite pieces of music, namely Agnus Dei and Benedictus. Extracts from some of Jenkin's other works were also being performed, including another favourite, Palladio.
Once I had booked the tickets, I spent the couple of weeks or so before the concert listening carefully to the complete Armed Man in order to become more familiar with the whole work, and I also read programme notes and other articles to better inform myself. Aside from the clear enjoyment value of the concert, I thought it would be an opportunity to investigate a contemporary composer's use of instruments and form, both of which are pertinent to my course in composition. In particular I was paying close attention to the percussion elements within the music.
Jenkins juxtaposes traditional orchestral instruments, contemporary instruments and world instruments in his music. For example, the percussion parts included chimes, cymbals, side drum, timpani, congas, and drum kit along with many others. I enjoy a mix of colourful percussion in music, and it was especially prevalent in The Armed Man.
Some percussion highlights in the work include the very opening, which features a marching side drum rhythm alongside a lone piccolo, which sets the 'war' theme in motion perfectly. The repetitive rhythm continues as it is joined by brass and voices, and gradually builds in volume to ratchet up the tension.
In other movements such as Charge! and Sanctus, the composer uses percussion, usually one of the various membranophones, to keep an underlying beat, and to ensure the continuing forward momentum. It is an understated and minimal way of utilising percussion, but very effective.
Several of the other moments do not feature a regular percussive accompaniment like in the above, but instead Jenkins highlights the beginning or end of certain phrases or climaxes with a cymbal crash, and/or timpani roll, or use of the floor tom on the drum kit. The use of low and high pitched percussion instruments playing simultaneously is a technique I have heard in music on a lot of previous occasions, and something I have tried to utilise in my compositions so far. In The Armed Man, the timpani is also used at certain points with other non-percussion instruments, where it serves solely to add drama to the musical landscape.
At the beginning of the movement Angry Flames, there is a recording of the ultra-famous bell 'Big Ben', housed inside Elizabeth Tower in London. In the concert, the recording was substituted by a percussion instrument, of which I unfortunately forget the name. This particular part of the work however got me thinking about how Jenkins uses Big Ben as a type of percussion instrument, reminiscent of the musique concrète style of composition, elements of which I may use in my own compositions in the future.
The final movement of The Armed Man features a rhythmic, almost tribal rhythm, the primitive 'folk' feel I attribute to the use of the tambourine, an instrument I have used in my own percussion exercises, for a similar effect. Not all movements in The Armed Man feature percussion instruments, and others use them sparingly. Others still use them as a sort of focal point in the music. It is this skill of knowing when and how much percussion to use in any given piece of music that I'd like to personally develop to a high standard.
The Armed Man is based on the Catholic mass, but Jenkins also introduces other sources such L'homme armé, a 15th-century folk song, and most interestingly Adhaan, the Islamic call to prayer, sung very beautifully by a Muezzin. The text in the music is sung in a variety of different languages, including English, Hebrew, Latin, Aramaic, and Greek. Performing the vocals was the City of Birmingham choir, and mezzo-soprano Kathryn Rudge. This was my first live experience of either, having only been to purely instrumental concerts in the past. The sound of the different pitched voices in the choir interweaving with each other was extraordinary, and on more than one occasion I closed my eyes and just let the music wash over me.
The work is inspirational for me as a student composer, and very much fits my own ethos of using a combination of different sources and bring them together under a unifying framework, in this case a Mass. As my own compositional knowledge and skill develops I'd hope to be able to revisit The Armed Man and talk convincingly about Jenkins formal structure and harmony, which along with everything discussed above, contributes to the unique and beautiful sound in his music.
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