As featured on the best-selling CD, this is a powerful and compelling account of the descent into and terrible consequences of war. Commissioned for the millennium by the Royal Armouries and dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo crisis, this work is a contemporary example of a mass based on the 15th-century French song L’Homme Armé (The Armed Man). The complete work sets sacred and secular texts including Tennyson, Kipling, The Koran and the Hindu Mahàbharàta within the framework of the Christian mass. Championed by Classic FM it has captured the imagination of music lovers everywhere to become not only a chart-topping CD but also one of the most currently performed and poignant choral works of the moment.
"This is a work of immense haunting beauty .... I can strongly recommend that you look at this piece, as there will undoubtedly be many occasions when its use is appropriate"
Two anthologies of Bernstein favourites are in the Masterworks series of full scores: Volume One contains music from West Side Story and On the Town, and Volume Two includes the Candide Overture, On the Waterfront and Prelude, Fugue & Riffs.
