L'homme armé was a French secular song from the time of the Renaissance. It was the most popular tune used for musical settings of the Ordinary of the Mass: over 40 separate compositions entitled Missa L'homme armé survive from the period.
Contents |
| Original French | English |
|---|---|
| L'homme, l'homme, l'homme armé, L'homme armé L'homme armé doibt on doubter, doibt on doubter. On a fait partout crier, Que chascun se viengne armer D'un haubregon de fer. |
The man, the man, the armed man, The armed man The armed man should be feared, should be feared. Everywhere it has been proclaimed That each man shall arm himself With a coat of iron mail. |
The origins of the popularity of the song and the importance of the armed man are the subject of various theories. Some have suggested that the 'armed man' represents St Michael the Archangel.[1] The composer Johannes Regis (c.1425 – c.1496) seems to have intended that allusion in his Dum sacrum mysterium/Missa l'homme armé based upon the melody, which incorporates various additional trope texts and cantus firmus plainchants in honour of St Michael the Archangel. Others have suggested it merely represents the name of a popular tavern (Maison L'Homme Arme) near Dufay's rooms in Cambrai.[2] It may also represent the arming for a new crusade against the Turks.[3] There is ample evidence to indicate that it held special significance for the Order of the Golden Fleece.[4] It is useful to note that the first appearance of the song was exactly contemporaneous with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks (1453), an event which had a huge psychological effect in Europe; composers such as Guillaume Dufay composed laments for the occasion. Yet another possibility is that all three theories are true, given the feeling of urgency in organizing a military opposition to the recently victorious Ottomans which permeated central and northern Europe at the time.
Another recently proposed theory for the origin of the tune is that it is a stylised combination of a street cry and a trumpet call, and may have originated as early as the late 14th century, or perhaps early 15th, due to its use of the major prolation, which was the commonest metre at the time.[5] Richard Taruskin noted that the tune was a special favourite of Charles the Bold and suggested that it may have been composed for him (or, at very least, that he had identified himself with the titular man at arms).[6] This however has come to be refuted by several key researchers who show it was used before Charles the Bold's ascension to Duke of Burgundy.
L'homme armé is especially well remembered today because it was so widely used by Renaissance composers as a cantus firmus for the Latin Mass. It was probably used for this purpose more than any other secular song: over 40 settings are known. Many composers of the Renaissance set at least one mass on this melody; the two settings by Josquin, the Missa L'homme armé super voces musicales, and the Missa L'homme armé sexti toni are among the best known. Other composers who wrote more than one setting include Matthaeus Pipelare, Pierre de La Rue, Cristóbal Morales, and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. A cycle of six settings, all anonymous but probably by the same composer, survives in a Neapolitan manuscript which was supposedly a gift to Beatrice of Aragon of some of the favorite music of Charles the Bold.[7]
While the practice of writing masses on the tune lasted into the seventeenth century, including a late setting by Carissimi, the majority of mass settings of "L'homme armé", approximately 30, are from the period between 1450 and 1510.[4]
One of the earliest datable uses of the melody itself was in the combinative chanson Il sera pour vous conbatu/L'homme armé ascribed to Robert Morton, which now is believed to probably date from around 1463, due to historical references in the text. Another possibly earlier version of the tune is an anonymous three-voice setting from the Mellon Chansonnier, which also cannot be precisely dated. In 1523 Pietro Aron, in his treatise Thoscanello suggested that Antoine Busnois was the composer of the tune; while tantalizing, since the tune is stylistically consistent with Busnois, there is no other source to corroborate Aron, and he was writing approximately 70 years after the first appearance of the melody. Taruskin has argued that Busnois wrote the earliest known mass on the melody,[8] but this is disputed, many scholars preferring to see the older Guillaume Dufay as the creator of the first L'homme armé Mass. Other composers whose settings of the tune may date from the 1450s include Guillaume Faugues, Johannes Regis, and Johannes Ockeghem.[4]
The tune is singularly well-adapted to contrapuntal treatment. The phrases are clearly delineated, and there are several obvious ways to construct canons. It is also unusually easy to recognize within a contrapuntal texture.
Composers still occasionally turn to this song for spiritual or thematic inspiration. In 1968 the British composer Peter Maxwell Davies wrote his Missa super l'homme armé.[9] American composer Mark Alburger includes settings of L'homme armé in his Deploration Passacaglias (1992) in the first (Ockeghem) and tenth (Bach) movements. The Welsh composer Karl Jenkins continues a 600-year tradition with The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace, written in 1999 to a commission from the Royal Armouries to mark the millennium. Christopher Marshall wrote L'homme armé: Variations for Wind Ensemble in 2003.
The song is part of the repertoire of Italian ensemble Camerata Mediolanense. A modern arrangement of the song, with both the original French and an English translation, was recorded by self-styled folk boyband Mawkin:Causley on their 2009 album "The Awkward Recruit" (Navigator Records). The English translation of the French verse above is rendered as follows:
"Oh, the Man, the Man-at-arms
Fills the folk, fills the folk with dread alarm,
With dread alarm.
Everywhere I hear 'em wail
Find a good strong coat of mail
Perhaps you'll then prevail."
Additional verses follow in English about the fear instilled by the man-at-arms in the civilian population. Mawkin:Causley learned this version from Rick and Helen Heavisides, historical musicians who perform as Hautbois.
Hautbois, on their 1994 CD Stella Splendens, credit this translated version to Robert Morton (died 1476).