The Settings Of L Homme Arme Essay, Research Paper

From about 1450 to the end of the 17th century the L homme arme melody has been used as the cantus firmus, or tenor, of over 40 mass cycles and other secular compositions. The earliest reliable source of the L homme arme melody is a late 15th century manuscript in Naples, which contains six anonymous Masses based on the song. The text from the sixth Mass may be translated as so Fear the armed man; word has gone out that everyone should arm himself with a haubregon (a sleeveless coat of mail) of iron , which may refer to a crusade against the Turks (Lewis Lockwood in the New Groves). This Neapolitan version of L homme arme poses two unsolved problems. One being whether it was originally a monophonic song or the tenor of a lost three-voice chanson; or the second being whether it originally had any more verses, as the refrain structure suggests.

No two masses contain precisely the same form of the melody so I think that is fair to assume that it had an unwritten origin and was monophonic. The three part division of the song makes it very well suited for use as the cantus firmus of a mass. According the David Fallows in the New Groves Music Encyclopedia, Other useful features include: the move into a higher register for the middle section coupled with the high A giving a sense of a different tonal center; the leaps of a 4th and a 5th combined with falling lines at the ends of sections; and the motivic economy of the melody.

There have been many disputes of which setting was the earliest because of difficulties dating 15th-century music. DuFay, being the oldest composer, may seem to be the most obvious choice, though the dates proposed for his settings range from the early 1450 s to the late 1460 s. Ockeghem s setting is generally dated to the early 1450 s, and it is said that its priority is asserted much later by Cerone. Last but not least, Busnoys is the most widely distributed of the early masses and is said to be the earliest by Pietro Aaron.

There is also a discussion as to whether or not there is a possibility of there being an original polyphonic song. Two men say different things. In about 1540 Cimello said that Ockeghem wrote the original song. Disagreeing with him, Aaron claimed that it was Busnoys. However, it seems that the only sure piece of music from then is a combinative chanson by Robert Morton called Il sera pour vous conbatu/ L homme arme, which reflects the compositional techniques of that time period (1463), especially in the top voice. If it is possible to have had these polyphonic settings at this time, then why could there not have been earlier ones that have just not been discovered. There were definitely later ones. For example: The anonymous quodlibet with O rosa bella cited by Tinctoris and found incomplete in a manuscript dating about 1460; a quodlibet with D ung aultre amer by Basiron; a quodlibet with Il est de bonne heure ne by Japart; and four voice settings given to Josquin and Falsum .

Since it seemed to be such a hit from that era it has influenced many 20th century composers to re-use it. Some of these are: J.N. David in his Fantasia super L homme arme for organ (1929); Helmut Eder, in L homme arme: Konzert in drei Teilen, op. 50 (1969), Peter Maxwell Davies, who used the second mass of the 15th- Century Naples manuscript in his L homme arme (1968) and his Missa super L homme arme (1971), Louis Andriessen in De materie (1989) and Frederic Rzewski in his Piano Sonata (1991).