Like Benjamin Britten's War Requiem before it, it is essentially an anti-war piece and is based on the Catholic Mass, which Jenkins combines with other sources, principally the 15th-century folk song "L'homme armé" in the first and last movements, as well as during the Kyrie.
[1] In addition to extracts from the Ordinary of the Mass, the text incorporates words from other religious and historical sources, including the Islamic call to prayer, the Bible (e.g., the Psalms and Revelation) and the Mahabharata.
Writers whose words appear in the work include Rudyard Kipling, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Sankichi Toge, who survived the Hiroshima bombing but died some years later of leukaemia.
[2] It begins with a representation of marching feet, overlaid later by the shrill tones of a piccolo impersonating the flutes of a military band with the 15th-century French words of "The Armed Man".
Agnus Dei is followed by "Now the Guns have Stopped", written by Guy Wilson himself as part of a Royal Armouries display on the guilt felt by some returning survivors of World War I.
[2] In 2002, Boosey & Hawkes published a chorale suite with excerpts from the work for choir and orchestra (or organ), containing Kyrie, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei and "Hymn before Action".
When he finally retaliates, he learns the greater consequences of taking up arms — an allegorical representation of Jenkins' call for peace in times of war.