Written at the turn of the millennium to commemorate what had been the most violent and war stricken century in recorded history, Sir Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace expressed hope for a new century of peace and compassion. With no disrespect for Jenkins’ optimism in a time that was indeed full hope, he was wrong; nearly a quarter of a century on, the work feels more like an elegy for that hope than an expression of it.
The Armed Man is a carefully woven collection of verse, poetry and prayer of varying religious connotations laced among the traditional movements of a catholic mass. The single hour-long work is accompanied by the montage of 20th century war footage created by team led Hefin Owens to accompany the work.
The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace. Credit Daniel James Grant.
Even with the documentation of horrific scenes of the last hundred years played on the screen above the orchestra in a bespoke film, the work feels like it posits this violence as something of the past, something for us to remember. It is easy, from the comfort of a concert hall, tens of thousands of kilometers from some of the most horrific violence history for those of us privileged enough to be in the audience to view these events of the past with a sense of triumph and relief as if those days of unthinkable death are behind us – Those days are not behind us.
Following the Gillham vs Melbourne Symphony Orchestra ruling on the freedom of speech afforded to artists on an orchestra’s stage, there is understandably hesitance to speak to ongoing conflicts. The fact remains that war crimes are being committed and documented daily. I cannot help but think that our response to the daily horrors would be different if instead of the comfortable discomfort of the past, events such as these would confront the very real and current suffering in Palestine, Ukraine, and Sudan to name just a few across which hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed.
The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace. Credit Daniel James Grant.
The West Australian Symphony Orchestra and WASO Chorus, the combined forces of which amounted to a small army themselves, filled Winthrop Hall with the thunderous militaristic cacophony and ethereal shimmering of the 13 movement work. Despite the chamber arrangement, the orchestra, in combination with Jonathan Bradley at the organ sounded well beyond the 27 players that they were. Alongside mezzo-soprano Ruth Burke who sang out over the ensemble, Jenna Smith’s off stage Last Post and veritable acrobatics at the commencement of the seventh movement, ‘Charge!’ stood out alongside Andrew Nicholson’s piccolo which bookmarked the evening.
There were some false starts from the chorus and a slight shakiness to the beginning of the famous ‘benedictus’ but WASO brought a raw sincerity to the emotionally taxing piece under the baton of WASO Chorusmaster Hugh Lydon.