Quintet l'homme armé

Quintet l’homme armé opens the album with a shriek. Surprisingly, given its titular invocation of medieval aesthetics, this dissonance continues as the once pervasive 15th-century melody is subjected to a series of transformations so drastic it is rendered largely unrecognizable. Historical, contrapuntal, and isorhythmic techniques are effaced by strategies linked to more recently ascended masters, like Ligeti and Lutoslawski. Quintet l’homme armé understands the rhetoric of the Modern, that the hierophants’ call must be shrill if they hope to clear the space of the negotium of our everyday. To prepare the parish for the ritual, to inaugurate the liturgy with appropriate attention. But the dynamism of the opening dissolves as time expands, towards enthalpic stasis and an aorist mood.