And One Was A Soldier For many musicians of the past, war was personal. It ravaged their cities, starved their loved ones, drove them to flee, or inspired them to fight. And, sometimes, it influenced what they wrote. The Europe of centuries past was not a particularly peaceful place. Noblemen vied for power; religious conflict abounded, and day-to-day life was hard. Writing from war-torn England, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes described what he saw as the inevitable outcome when humans were left to their own devices: lives that were “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” with “no letters, no arts, no society.” But the arts are hardier than we give them credit for, and men of war were as likely to find their way into song as onto the battlefield. The Franco-Flemish composer Josquin Desprez, writing in the 1400s and early 1500s, was one of several composers to set to music text about men of arms. We’ll hear the Hilliard Ensemble performing two settings of the tale of the solider Scaramella, one by Josquin and one by his contemporary Loyset Compere. You can hear the drums in the singer’s words: Scaramella goes to war with his lance and round shield, Bom-borom-borom-bom… Scaramella is out for fun, with his shoes and pack, Bom-borom-borom-bom… Scaramella wasn’t the only armed man to merit his own song—there’s the armed man himself, l’homme arme, an unnamed soldier who has haunted the imagination of many a student of music history. The text is basic: The man, the man, the armed man, The armed man should be feared. Everywhere it has been proclaimed That each man shall arm himself With a coat of iron mail. The origins of the tune are murky, but l’homme arme did the equivalent of shooting to the top of the Renaissance charts, becoming one of the most popular tunes around which to base a Latin mass. More than forty settings of the tune exist. https://youtube/watch?v=z5aPWAZTlS0
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 22:58:46 +0000
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