Newspaper Article

An Irishwoman's Diary

Wallace, Arminta

2005

Overview

Tunes are second nature to [Karl Jenkins], who has never subscribed to the atonal approach to composition. As a youngster he played the oboe in the National Youth Orchestra of Wales; in his teens he took to jazz before spending a period with the way-out Seventies rock band Soft Machine. Then he went into advertising, producing award- winning music for Levi's, British Airways, De Beers and Pepsi, among others. Remember the ad with the guy taking off his Levi's in the laundrette? You probably thought the soundtrack was by Marvin Gaye. It wasn't. It was Jenkins, with the help of a singer from Barbados called Tony Jackson. In recent years, Jenkins is best known for his recordings with the Finnish choir Adiemus, which have topped classical and pop charts around the world. He has continued to defy musical boundaries, writing everything from a score for the television series The Celts to a marimba concerto for the percussionist Evelyn Glennie and an Ave Verum for the bass-baritone Bryn Terfel. As the man who commissioned it, Guy Wilson of the Royal Armouries, explains, the basis for the entire concept is a 15- century song called L'Homme Arme which was written at the court of the Burgundian King Charles the Bold. \"The armed man must be feared\" runs the text - and so popular did the melody prove that it became commonplace for composers, especially composers of Masses, to quote it in their work. Palestrina's Missa L'Homme Arme is just one of many such Masses, and its exquisite [Kyrie] is, in turn, quoted by Jenkins in The Armed Man.

• Publisher: The Irish Times DAC
• Subject: Arme, Missa L Homme / Jenkins, Karl