The "Armed Man Mass" traces its roots more than 500 years.
The desire for peace it expresses goes back far further.
"Our country’s at war again," noted Mark Munson, of the Bowling Green State University College
of Music faculty.
He will conduct the University Choral Society in the multimedia "The Armed Man: A Mass for
Peace" Wednesday at 8 p.m. in Kobacker Hall on the BGSU campus.
The choir will perform with soloists – Chelsea Cloeter, soprano, Ellen Strba Scholl, mezzo-soprano,
Christopher Scholl, tenor, and Lance Ashmore, bass – and an orchestra consisting of wind players from
the university’s Wind Symphony and strings from the Toledo Symphony as well as BGSU faculty and
students. A film is projected during the performance.
The mass draws on the old practice of using a single tune as the underpinning to build a mass around. It
could be a Gregorian chant, Munson said, or in the case of "The Armed Man," a secular tune.
That French song from the Renaissance was a popular choice, one that contemporary Welsh composer Karl
Jenkins drew upon for his own mass.
Munson first heard selections from Jenkins’ mass while visiting Sweden, and decided he wanted to do it.
Jenkins’ composition uses the traditional sections of the Catholic mass and intersperses them with an
international selection of texts set to music.
After the first iteration of the root tune which states the theme "The armed man is to be
feared," student Mahdi Almomin will intone a traditional Islamic Call to Prayer.
The texts are tied the sections of the mass. The movements "Angry Flames," written after the
bombing of Hiroshima and "Torches" including the line, "They breathed their last as
living torches," lead to the Agnus Dei with its plea for peace and mercy.
The film, created to go with the "Armed Man," includes horrific images, Munson said.
The film opens with soldiers of many nationalities and from different times marching to war. But
"The Call to Prayer" is accompanied by images of believers from many faiths including Orthodox
Christians praying, Jews at the Wailing Wall and Muslims bowing toward Mecca.
The piece resolves with a call for a thousand years of peace after a thousand years of war. After the
imagery that preceded it, Munson said, "people will find it quite moving."
