| Original French | English | |
|---|---|---|
| L’homme armé doibt on doubter. On a fait partout crier Que chascun se viegne armer D’un haubregon de fer. L’homme armé doibt on doubter. |
The armed man should be feared. Everywhere it has been proclaimed That each man shall arm himself With a coat of iron mail. The armed man should be feared. |
Perhaps you can do better from the lute music? no?
Well, ok. How is this?
A very fine composer named Karl Jenkins took this as an inspiration and spun a piece of thread into a tapestry; a piece of sublime music written less than a score of years ago. You can hear the Benedictus of from it below. The Wiki article on Jenkins "The Armed Man" makes mention of the early work above.
This is from Wiki: "The Armed Man charts the growing menace of a descent into war, interspersed with moments of reflection; shows the horrors that war brings; and ends with the hope for peace in a new millennium, when "sorrow, pain and death can be overcome". It begins with a representation of marching feet, overlaid later by the shrill tones of a piccolo impersonating the flutes of a military band with the 15th-century French words of "The Armed Man". After the reflective pause of the Call to Prayer and the Kyrie, "Save Us From Bloody Men" appeals for God's help against our enemies in words from the Book of Psalms. The Sanctus has a military, menacing air, followed by Kipling's "Hymn Before Action". "Charge!" draws on words from John Dryden's "A song for St. Cecilia's day" (1687) and Jonathan Swift citing Horace (Odes 3,2,13), beginning with martial trumpets and song, but ending in the agonised screams of the dying. This is followed by the eerie silence of the battlefield after action, broken by a lone trumpet playing the Last Post. "Angry Flames" describes the appalling scenes after the bombing of Hiroshima, and "Torches" parallels this with an excerpt from the Mahabharata (book 1, chapter 228), describing the terror and suffering of animals dying in the burning of the Khandava Forest. Agnus Dei is followed by "Now the Guns have Stopped", written by Guy Wilson himself as part of a Royal Armouries display on the guilt felt by some returning survivors of World War I. After the Benedictus, "Better is Peace" ends the mass on a note of hope, drawing on the hard-won understanding of Lancelot and Guinevere that peace is better than war, on Tennyson's poem "Ring Out, Wild Bells" and on the text from Revelation (21,4): "God shall wipe away all tears".
Here is your music....be still your heart. We aren't at war. Yet.