The Agincourt Carol
I have spent the past week exploring military history in Western Europe. Time constraints have made it a superficial exploration in many ways. In some places, I was well prepared to understand what I was seeing. In others places, I have at least gained an image that will inform further reading about the events that occurred there.
Military history carries with it high drama, intense struggles, hardship and horrors. It fascinates me largely because war is very real but lies, thankfully, beyond my experience. In contrast, music history, the thing Carol and I focus on here, carries with it unending beauty. That, thankfully, need not be beyond anyone’s experience.
I can’t overstate the value of standing in the middle of a historical site. Part of that comes from my interest in geography and the location of historic events relative to one another—time and place. Part of it is simply gaining a concrete image, of turning an imagined place into a real one. No visit will ever be more startling to me than walking the streets of Jerusalem and surveying it from the Mount of Olives. All of those Bible stories learned at a young age suddenly became more real. They were tangible.
On this trip, I traveled first to Normandy and wrote about that in another post. I left Normandy by car to explore the Ardennes, site of the Battle of the Bulge. Only a few miles off the direct route lies Waterloo. So I made plans to do a quick survey of that battlefield. Along the way, sticking to back roads partly to see the countryside and partly to avoid excessive tolls, I saw a sign for Crécy. After a brief detour, I stood where King Edward III stood in 1346 as wave after wave of French cavalry tried to climb a muddy slope to clash with his much smaller force of English archers. I know something of this battle partly because the French ars nova composer Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377) was in the service of John I of Bohemia (John the Blind) who was among the many French killed in that battle. Machaut often accompanied King John on his military expeditions. Yes, music and military history sometimes collide. (You can learn more about Machaut in our Early Sacred Music course.)
Once in Crécy, Agincourt is just one more short detour. How did Henry V in 1415, also with a much smaller force comprised largely of English archers, again obliterate the French foot soldiers and cavalry as they attempted to advance in the mud? Accounts of this battle have come down to us in various forms. Best known, of course, is Shakespeare’s Henry V with the St. Crispin’s Day speech:
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
Folk songs describing the battle also soon appeared. The most famous of these is known as the Agincourt Carol or Agincourt Hymn, or sometimes Deo gratias. The tune is one you may recognize as the hymn O Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High that appears in the hymnals of many denominations.