Looking for music suitable for a Peacemaker Festival, it’s clear that the work of a modern composer with strong pacifist convictions is an obvious choice.
‘Benedictus’ by the Welsh musician Sir Karl Jenkins CBE, from his 1999 work The Armed Man: A Mass For Peace, is a powerful and moving work. Commissioned by the Royal Armouries to mark the transition from one millennium to another, it reflects on the passing of ‘the most war-torn and destructive century in human history’ and looks forward in hope to a more peaceful future.
The Armed Man is dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo conflict, whose tragedy was unfolding as it was being composed. It was first performed in 2000 by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, conducted by Jenkins himself.
A later composition The Peacemakers, described as ‘a work extolling peace’, was first performed in January 2012 at Carnegie Hall in New York.
Jenkins’ words on the subject of conflict in today’s world reflect his bitterness. ‘The Peacemakers is dedicated to the memory of all those who lost their lives during armed conflict: in particular, innocent civilians,’ he wrote. ‘When I composed The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace for the millennium, it was with the hope of looking forward to a century of peace. Sadly, nothing much has changed.’
The photo of Carl Jenkins in 2017 is from Wikipedia.
Click on the link at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKN9ubD54n0 below to hear the remarkable performance of ‘Benedictus’ by 14-year-old treble Malakai Bayoh.
If you are interested in the history of early America, and Roger Conant as a peacemaker in troubled times you can join the Devon Peacemaker Festival Facebook group at
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