program notes

l’homme armé, or “the armed man,” is a short burgundian chanson, or secular song, that emerged in the mid 15th century. it is a rabble-rousing tune to a menacing text: “the armed man should be feared; everywhere it has been proclaimed that each man should arm himself with a coat of mail.” mystery shrouds the history of "the armed man's" spread across europe, but we do know that the religious and political context of the continent at the time was far from stable. constantinople had been captured in 1453 marking the fall of the byzantine empire, and a crusade against the ottomans was subsequently called for, leading to the rise of the gruesome battlefield tactics of vlad the impaler. this tune likely encapsulated the existential threat that europeans were feeling at the time.

in the early fifteenth century, the practice of singing secular songs during a church service was fairly common practice. while the council of basel of 1435 forbade songs sung in the vernacular tongue during mass, the tunes had a habit of sneaking their way into the mass. by the mid 1400s, the five movements of the cyclic mass ordinary was relatively new but already highly influential. in the franco-flemish polyphonic style, the cantus firmus mass—where composers developed polyphony around a popular tune—emerged as the leading way to set the text of the mass ordinary. in particular, the l’homme armé tune was one of the most influential and widely adapted, with over forty mass settings by different renaissance composers. while we may not know the cultural or political context for the original tune or mass settings, it rapidly became a musical game of one-upsmanship, with each subsequent polyphonic setting trying to outdo the last.

the selection of l’homme armé settings in the first half of this concert gives a small sampling of the way the tune echoed through the early generations of the franco-flemish composers. the kyrie and gloria movements by dufay and ockeghem are some of the earliest settings in the 1460s, and established many of the practices that later composers picked up on: manipulating the cantus firmus through retrograde, augmentation, canon, modal shifts, and an upbeat 3/4 closing. the credo by senfl, a swiss composer who heavily influenced the development of the franco-flemish style in germany, intermixes the original credo plainchant with the chanson tune. by the early 1500s, the tune had become popular enough to be exported to spain, where morales shifts the tune into the phrygian mode for his sanctus, giving it a somber feel. the turn-of-the-millenium benedictus by jenkins echoes and flips the renaissance context, mourning the deadly wars that occurred in the 1900s and hoping for a more peaceful future. finally, the agnus dei by josquin, likely composed in the late 15th century, sets the cantus firmus three ways, concluding with an almost unrecognizably slow crab canon in the two bass lines (one sings the tune forward and one backwards, until they meet in the middle and reverse course) while the upper voices cascade in a canon just a beat apart.

the second half of the program offers a more narrative view, imagining a proverbial protagonist, caught up in the fearmongering about the armed man, who enlisted or was drafted and ultimately shipped off to a war far from his home and family to fight against an existential foe. the pieces in the second half the program continue exploring the franco-flemish tradition of polyphony while reflecting on a potential mindset of this protagonist. in mille regretz, we catch a first glimpse of doubt creeping into their mind as they begin to experience regrets from leaving. this may be amplified in a field of battle—in hematite, by shaw, we can imagine the protagonist, one of the few survivors of a brutal battle, gazing out on a field of bodies and armor, covered in rust and blood—we hear the echoes of regret once again. these amplify and cascade in their mind in gombert’s je prens congie as the emotions overwhelm. andreissen’s un beau baiser offers a melancholic, intimately personal reflection of the protagonist’s loneliness. in s’io esca vivo, lasso—one of the last composers of the franco-flemish school before the cultural center of renaissance music shifted to italy—sets the protagonist lost at sea, questing for a deep personal change as they grapple with their past. at long last, they find solace ashore in monteverdi’s ecco mormorar l’onde, as a new day rises before them, their resolve set on peace. 

though most left the l’homme armé tune in the renaissance, the specter of the armed man continues to infiltrate the modern world. strongmen and fearmongering demagogues continue to dominate societies around the globe, and many peoples live under the constant threat of violence or war. we can look to this simple tune as a window to that past, to strive to remember it and avoid retreading those paths, to choose life and peace over death and destruction.