L'homme armé

L'homme armé was a secular song from the time of the Renaissance.

Tune, text, and translation

L'homme, l'homme l'homme armé

l'homme armé doibt on doubter, doibt on doubter

On a fait partout crier

Que chascun se viengne armer

D'un haubregon de fer...

The man, the man, the armed man,

The armed man should be feared, should be feared.

Everywhere it has been proclaimed

That each man shall arm himself

With a coat of iron mail.

Use in the Latin Mass

L'homme armé is especially well remembered today because it was so widely used by Renaissance composers as a cantus firmus for the Latin Mass. It was probably used for this purpose more than any other secular song: thirty-one settings are known. Most early renaissance masters each set at least one mass on this melody; and the practice lasted into the seventeenth century, with a late setting by Carissimi. The majority of mass settings of "L'homme armé" are from the period between 1450 and 1500.

It was believed that the earliest extant use of the melody was in combinative chanson Il sera pour vous conbatu/L'homme armé ascribed to Robert Morton, which now is believed to probably date from around 1463, due to historical references in the text. Another possibly earlier version of the tune is an anonymous three-voice setting from the Mellon Chansonnier, which also cannot be precisely dated. In 1523 Pietro Aron, in his treatise Thoscanello suggested that Antoine Busnois was the composer of the tune; while tantalizing, since the tune is stylistically consistent with Busnois, there is no other source to corroborate Aron, and he was writing approximately 70 years after the first appearance of the melody. Richard Taruskin has argued that Busnois wrote the earliest known mass on the melody, but this is disputed, many scholars preferring to see the older Guillaume Dufay as the creator of the first L'homme armé Mass.

The tune is singularly well-adapted to contrapuntal treatment. The phrases are clearly delineated, and there are several obvious ways to construct canons. It is also unusually easy to recognize within a contrapuntal texture.

Origin

The origins of the popularity of the song and the importance of the armed man are the subject of various theories. Some have suggested that the 'armed man' represents St Michael the Archangel (1), whilst others have suggested it merely represents the name of a popular tavern (Maison L'Homme Arme) near Dufay's rooms in Cambrai (2). It may also represent the arming for a new crusade against the Turks (3). It is useful to note that the first appearance of the song was exactly contemporaneous with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks (1453), an event which had a huge psychological effect in Europe; composers such as Guillaume Dufay composed laments for the occasion. Yet another possibility is that all three theories are true, given the feeling of urgency in organizing a military opposition to the recently victorious Ottomans which permeated central and northern Europe at the time.

References

1 Penguin History Of Music, Vol 2 ed. Robertson & Stevens (1963)

2 Pryer's article on Dufay in New Oxford Companion to Music, ed Arnold (1983)

3 Lockwood in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980) (quoted by Peter Phillips, in notes to 1989 recording of the two Josquin masses)

David Fallows, 'L'homme armé', Grove Music Online

External link

• The translation above is adapted slightly from program notes for the early music group Capella Alamire.