Griffin Choral Arts has now had two rehearsals for "The Armed Man" (or TAM, for short). There seems to be great enthusiasm in the choir and the music is already attaching itself to our hearts and minds. At the first rehearsal, I felt it most during the "Hymn Before Action" movement.
The earth is full of anger, the seas are dark with wrath.
The Nations in their harness go up against our path:
Ere yet we loose the legions; Ere yet we draw the blade,
Jehova of the Thunders, Lord God of Battles aid!
High lust and froward bearing, proud heart rebellous brow,
Deaf ear and soul uncaring, we seek thy mercy now!
The sinner that foreswore Thee, the fool that passed Thee by,
Our times are known before Thee, Lord grant us strength to die,
Lord, grant us strength to die!
(two of the five verses written by Rudyard Kipling)
When we finished, I told the choir that I believed them! I think it is the strength of the poetry that lit the fire in our collective bellies. The music is dramatic and sweeping and provides momentum as the choir gets ready to "Charge!" in the following movement.
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DO we really want even the strength to die--much less even to die in the first place--in battle? This is the tricky part about appreciating TAM, it seems to me. We might get SO caught up in the excitement of the music (as John Dryden claims in the "St. Cecelia's Day" poem showing the power of music to sway our emotions) that--at least at times--we forget about what we're singing. In this case, postmodernist that he is, Jenkins seems to be using this hyped-up emotion ironically, to suggest how quickly we might all get swept up in blood-lust, even the all-too-theoretical possibility of our own "heroic" deaths in such combat. The heroic romance of war. Even Swift's line "Blest is he who for his country dies" (the original line from the Roman poet Horace was closer to "Sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country") that Jenkins couples with the "Charge!" is what realist war poet (and soldier who died in WWI) Wilfred Owen called "the old lie." What's more, both the Dryden and the Swift quotations are taken out of context. As stated earlier, Dryden is writing a kind of poem-exercise to illustrate the emotion-swaying power of music, in which a trumpet call to battle is only one example. And the blessedness of the death Swift is describing is not in reference to death on the battlefield but instead some advice to buck up the courage of an imprisoned friend facing execution for being on the wrong side in the tumultuous politics in England at the turn of the 18th century. It's not Jenkins' "fault" for these misappropriated quotations, but the doing of the Master of the Armouries who gave him the commission to set the chosen texts in the Mass. Still, though, it's tricky to decide whether Jenkins is also getting too quickly caught up in the questionable emotion for the sake of the WOW! of his own music--or (for which I choose to give him credit) whether he's writing the music with tongue firmly in cheek--forcing us to realize the dangers of getting emotionally caught up too quickly--even in stirring music.
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