Last Saturday I joined 157 other singers ...
<archivists-note nitpicking="Missing apostrophe explained>
(I was the 158th)
</archivists-note>
...to sing Karl Jenkins's The Armed Man. I have sung this piece three times in various formats...
<parenthesis>
- The whole piece, imam and all
- The concert suite – just the choral settings of the traditional movements of the Mass: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei (more accessible for both singers and audience, but omitting the song L'homme armé, which seems to me to be rather the point)
- Last Saturday's version (much the most successful). The score for the concert suite asks the pianist to simulate a marching drum by tapping the piano with their bass hand – a feat of leftidigitation; but we had a percussionist with full drum kit. There was also a trumpeter, marked by the composer as 'optional' (though I'd rather have said 'crucial' – especially her spine-tingling Last Post).
</parenthesis>
... and every time I sing it I see the note in the score, which says it was commissioned by the Royal Armouries to mark their move. This note invariably triggers a memory of the visit to the Royal Armouries that led to this post back in November 2012.
The 2000 recording of the London Philharmonic with the National Youth Choir of Great Britain pronounces The first L'homme in the opening line...
<parenthesis>
(L'homme, L'homme, l'homme armé)
</parenthesis>
... ['lɔmɛ].
<parenthesis>
(You must excuse my use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Regular readers will know how I feel about 'sounds like' transcriptions. If you want to understand the depths of my loathing, click on IPA in the word cloud on the right. For the purposes of reading on, the funny thing that looks a bit like a reversed 3 represents an open e)
</parenthesis>
... rather than a schwa – as one would expect in modern French.
This sound is historically likely, though not to my liking – and not preferred by Saturday's MD George de Voil. The song L'homme armé was a popular French medieval French song:
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| L'homme armé from the Mellon Chansonnier (late 15th cent.) |
Over the years, various bits of original words were eroded and/or changed in some way – depending on the contexts they were used in; and the open e of the original HOMINE(M) evolved into the schwa of the modern French homme.
<inline-ps>
The illustration I used here is potentially misleading, as it suggests that it represents the tune used by Kark Jenkins (which is true of the first three lines and the fifth. But this analysis from the Early Music Muse website ...L’homme armé – The armed man – first appeared in the 1450s or ’60s and was a popular melody for two and a half centuries. ...
Antoine Busnois was a singer in the Burgundian court of Duke Charles the Bold, as was Robert Morton. One of these two singers composed a quodlibet, a song which combines elements of other songs in counterpoint. This particular quodlibet, Il sera pour vous, was based on L’homme armé. Translated, the words are:
It will be fought for you
against the Turk, Master Simon,
certainly it will be,
and the axe will beat him....
These words are sung while the tenor sings:
The man, the man, the armed man,
beware of the armed man.
Everywhere is the cry:
Into battle
With an iron breastplate.
..seems to me to change the meaning. In the version we sang, the armed man is someone who should be regarded with suspicion (doibt on doubter); he might be a goodie or a baddie. In this version there's no question: Kill him. (And I've no idea where that 'breastplate' came from; an haubregon de fer is just chain mail, like a hauberk, but without arms (according to this website).
<tangent>
Strikes me as something of a false economy, but what do I know about armed combat? Maybe that's what 'unarmed co...' too silly to finish.
</tangent>
Whatever the meaning, à l'attaque (or rather – at least, in this manuscript – à l'assault) is a much more likely candidate for the ringed words in the illustration than que chascun se viegne armer (the words given in the Wikipedia article).
This strikes me as a flaw in the (generally admirable) Wikipedia model. The person writing, however well-intentioned, is always a potential prey to the 'needs citation' rubric (which governs anyone writing for Wikipedia), so may end up providing examples of limited relevance just because they are easy to cite.
</inline-ps>
So the e was open in say 100 CE, and it was schwa by say 1850 CE....
<apologia-pro-indolentia-sua excuse="laziness">
These guesses are completely off the top of my head; during my studies I avoided a paper called The History of French because there was too much conflicting data to wade through, and a tedious lecturer who had written the one, overlong, set book.
<apologia-pro-indolentia-sua>
...in medieval France, when the song first appeared, the odds are that it was fairly open.
<objection>
But what about the -MI-? That's why I said 'various bits of original words were eroded and/or changed in some way'. Unstressed syllables are often the frst things to go; DOMINA(M), for example, gave Spanish doña (where the ñ is a sign of the two nasal consonants left after the -MI- disappeared; it went one step further in Portuguese dona).<meta-objection>
Only one? Spelling is only part of the story. The final a was reduced, becoming schwa.<autobiographical-note></meta-objection>
In my time as a technical writer I worked on some software that had the internal codename de Gama (pronounced with a schwa). I had come to the project too late to correct this to da Gama. See what I have to suffer?
</autobiographical-note>This post says more about this sort of erosion, including a case involving an unstressed -MI- (in an inscription on a ring unearthed [unashed?] at Pompeii).
</objection>
But what about that haubregon de fer? (This has gone one too long already. The haubregon will have to wait for an update, if I ever get a round tuit. Words for our next concert won't learn themselves.
Update: 2026.03.02.21:55 – Added PS.
PS
Afterthought: this is largely (entirely?) inconseqential so if this sort of thing (implied by the tag-pair <autobiographical-note>...</autobiographical-note>) you can skip this bit.
<autobiographical-note>
To end our forthcoming concert we are singing Hansel and Gretel's evening prayer, which reminded me of this one, which I learned in the mid-50s, at St Scholastica's Kindergarten:As I lay me down to sleepPray the Lord my soul to keep.Four corners to my bed,Four angels round my head.One to watch and one to prayAnd two to keep me safe alway.<tangent>
I'm not sure about the last word. My memory may have been influenced by an early twitch of my characteristic red pen, deleting a final s to repair the rhyme.
</tangent>FOUR angels – that strikes me as plenty to guarantee a safe night's sleep. But Hansel and Gretel aren't satisfied with so few. And they want not just twice as many; not even three times as many: 3½ times as many: vierzehn Engel.
To add to my reaction against such profligacy, the basses' underlay (the way words fit the notes) omits two of them. So while the higher sopranos itemize the angels...
2 round their head; 2 by their feet; 2 to the right; 2 to the left; 2 to tuck me in; 2 to wake me;2 to lead me to Heavenly paradise<parenthesis>
Those last 2 are analogous to the last 2 in my 4-year-old's version. So the comparative values are effectively 12 vs 2; Hansel and Gretel's angel-count is 6 times as many as St Scholastica's.
</parenthesis>...the basses (together with all the other voices apart from the S1s) enumerate only 12 of the 14. It's a lovely setting, but I can't help feeling the angel-count is a bit excessive.
</autobiographical-note>
