Le Figaro Nantes
The work was perhaps too contemporary, too universal.
Scheduled for May and June by the Schola Cantorum choir of Nantes, two interpretations of
The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace,
by the British composer Karl Jenkins were canceled in Nantes and Saint-Nazaire, following intimidation from the fundamentalist Catholic spheres,
Le Figaro
learned
, confirming information from
Ouest-France
.
An about-face which comes a few months after a controversial concert of the same work, given in November at the Trinity Church in Paris.
Composed in 1999 by the former instrumentalist of the jazz fusion group Soft Cell, the controversial work is a symphonic piece of approximately one hour, conceived in the manner of a universal prayer, with both musical and religious syncretism.
Renaissance motifs rub shoulders with sequences with more modern harmonies,
kyrie
and
agnus dei
borrowed from the Catholic liturgy, as well as recitals sometimes martial, sometimes intimate, where church Latin mixes with biblical psalms, and secular or sacred language of English, Indian and Japanese poets.
“It is a work of great beauty, a piece for choir and orchestra which is also a universal call for the end of conflicts
,” explains
Annie Le Guevel, director of Schola Cantorum, to Le
Figaro .
However, one detail does not fail to point out the opponents of
The Armed Man
.
"Desecration"
This
Mass for Peace
, dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo War which was raging at the time of its writing, contains an
adhan
, the Muslim call to prayer interpreted for two minutes, by a reciter, towards the beginning of the room.
The passage had already sparked some surprised reactions last fall, when an extract of around fifty seconds was massively shared on social networks.
Captured during a performance of
The Armed Man
at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Paris, the concert was organized as part of the November 11 commemorations - a clarification omitted in the viral publication.
Pressed to react, Father Emmanuel Pinot, parish priest of La Trinité, said in December that he regretted the event.
“The sung text is in fact in obvious contradiction with the Christian faith and therefore had no place in our church, even on the occasion of a musical event,”
he noted in a press release.
The incident was revived on January 8 by an article on the website Riposte Catholique, close to the traditionalist movement.
The news and
“Catholic reinformation”
portal has designated a series of
L'Homme Armée
concerts scheduled in French churches.
Either a
“desecration”
of these places of worship, according to the site’s editorial staff.
For Loire-Atlantique, this concerned the Notre-Dame d'Espérance church, in Saint-Nazaire, and the Sainte-Madeleine church, on the island of Nantes.
The dates were respectively announced as May 25 and June 8.
All that remained was to act.
“The priest of Sainte-Madeleine called me at the beginning of January, in a worried tone
,” says Annie Le Guevel.
The man of faith had then just received a series of messages about the concert,
“intimidation”
linked to the publication of Riposte Catholique.
“He was embarrassed, sorry, and asked me if it was possible to remove the prayer, because he feared having to deal with a hateful controversy, or even violence.
It was of course out of the question to cut out a passage from the work – we might as well delete the whole piece!”
.
The decision was made the next day to cancel the show.
Asked by
Le Figaro
, the parish did not wish to follow up.
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Avoid any “virulent reaction”
The cancellation of the Nazaire concert immediately followed the Nantes turnaround.
According to our colleagues from
Ouest-France
, the diocese of Nantes would have informed the two parishes concerned of the sensitive nature of the work, which aroused
“virulent reactions during previous performances”.
The management of the diocese assures Le
Figaro
that the priests have nevertheless decided on their own to deprogram
L'Homme Armé
.
This news did not fail to distress the organizers, who have been preparing the concert since the summer, with rental of the church from June 2023 and rehearsals starting from September.
Only three dates were planned, including two in places of worship.
The third concert, organized on June 9 in a hall in Saint-Brevin-les-Pins, however, remains current, to the relief of the 130 choristers and 120 musicians of the Saint-Nazaire Symphony Orchestra and the Symphonique des Bords de Loire which were to accompany the Schola Cantorum of Nantes, under the direction of Thierry Bréhu.
Our policy remains zero tolerance for censors
Aymeric Seassau, deputy mayor of Nantes in charge of culture
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For Nantes, a fallback solution was finally found, with the auditorium of the municipal conservatory being made available on June 8.
“We are saddened to see a century-old ensemble subject to this type of censorship
, ” the deputy for culture of the city of Nantes, Aymeric Seassau,
told Le
Figaro .
This is not the first time that this type of event has occurred in Nantes.
Our policy remains zero tolerance for censors.”
Among the previous accidents, in Nantes, a few dozen people blocked access to the Notre-Dame du Bon-Port church, in December 2021, the evening where the Swedish artist Anna Von Hausswolf was to perform, deemed blasphemous by mobilized individuals
.
The work of Karl Jenkins, very popular internationally, is frequently performed on both sides of the globe.
The composer, aged 79, was recently asked by UNESCO to create a new work of the caliber of
The Armed Man,
on the occasion of the concert for peace organized in Linz, Austria, on November 19, 2023 Another prestigious commission, Karl Jenkins was also one of the composers requested by the British crown for the coronation ceremony of Charles III.