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About last night

You know, I bet “About Last Night” would be a really good name for a blog about art, music, and cultural events of one kind or another.  If I had a blog like that, I would tell a story about last night, when Janet and I traveled to the Philadelphia premiere of The Passion of Joan of Arc / Voices of Light.

The story would go something like this.  Richard Einhorn, the composer of Voices of Light (1994), got in touch with me via the Internets at some point last year about something or other, and we corresponded for a while; in late October I met him and his wife in New York, and we caught a performance of something at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and hung out for a bit.  By happy coincidence, my mother had seen Joan / Voices in Norfolk earlier that year, and described it to me as if it were something approaching an out-of-body experience; so by the time I met Richard Einhorn himself I’d bought the CD and listened to it a couple of times, and was mightily impressed, but I didn’t know anything about the film except what I’d read in the liner notes to the CD.  So Richard very kindly invited me and Janet to last night’s performance.

Ahem.  You see, in keeping with my customary practice of representing myself on this blog as if I were much cooler than I am, I have to establish first that Janet and I went to see this performance as guests of the composer.  This kind of thing happens all the time, I assure you.

Now, the film by itself is an amazing work of art—which is one of the reasons Einhorn wrote Voices of Light for it.  Its history is bizarre, but rather than paraphrase things I’ve learned only recently, I’ll just crib from the program notes:

The strange history of Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) nearly equals Joan’s itself. It has many of the same elements, including obsession, madness, and even fire.

The original screenplay for Joan was by Joseph Delteil, who had written a rather hyperventilated book about her. For one reason or another, Dreyer chose to forgo most of Delteil’s ideas and instead used actual excerpts from the trial transcripts as the script (the film, which is set entirely at Joan’s trials, and burning, compresses the action of the trial from seven months into a single day).

The film, censored somewhat by the Catholic Church prior to its release, was soon hailed as one of the greatest films of all time. Reneé Falconetti’s performance as Joan was (and is) considered one of the most extraordinary ever filmed. With its extreme close-ups and bizarre camera angles, with an editing rhythm that breaks nearly every rule of the craft, The Passion of Joan of Arc makes virtually every movie critic and scholar’s short list of masterpieces. It clearly influenced such filmmakers as Bergman, Fellini, and Hitchcock, and echoes of its intense style appear in the work of such contemporary masters as Martin Scorsese. Shot without makeup and with “natural” acting, Joan looks like it was finished yesterday.

But a few months after the premiere, Joan’s judges descended upon Dreyer’s film. The negative and virtually all prints of The Passion of Joan of Arc were destroyed in a warehouse fire. Dreyer, referring in all likelihood to his workprint for the original cut, painstakingly reconstructed the entire film from outtake footage that had survived the fire. This second version was destroyed in a second fire!  Devastated, Dreyer gave up and moved on to his next film, Vampyr.

From here the history of the film becomes confusing. Highly corrupt prints that somehow managed to survive the fires circulated for a while. In addition, the Cinémathèque Français unearthed a copy of the film in its vaults (at the time, it was unclear which version it was). In the late forties and early fifties, a French film historian by the name of Lo Duca pieced together his version of the film (apparently using prints from both versions) and added a score that was a montage of Albinoni, Vivaldi, and other Baroque composers. The result so horrified Dreyer that he completely disowned the “Lo Duca” version.

Then, in 1981, several film cans from the ‘20s were discovered at a mental institution in Oslo, Norway, stashed in the back of a closet. They were shipped unopened to the Norwegian Film Institute. Inside the cans, in nearly perfect condition, was a copy of The Passion of Joan of Arc with Danish intertitles. The accompanying shipping information made it clear that it was, in fact, a print of the original version of Dreyer’s great film.

In an informal talk preceding the performance, Einhorn mentioned that the people who discovered those film cans recognized that they contained nitrate film, and that opening the cans would not only destroy the film but also release some nasty toxic gases.  Had they not understood this, Dreyer’s film would very likely have burned a third time.

Voices of Light, heard by itself, is a beautiful, moving piece of work; much of it is written in the style of “early” music (medieval chant, the first fumblings at polyphony, motets; there’s even a viola da gamba in there, and last night I learned all about the gamba), but it never sounds merely neo- or citational.  The libretto is composed of texts written by female mystics of the period (St. Hildegard von Bingen, Marguerite d’Oingt, St. Umiltà of Faenza, Blessed Angela of Foligno, among others, and the nonmystic protofeminist Christine de Pizan as well) as well as the letters Joan (illiterate herself) dictated, all of which are sung in the original languages (Latin, Old and Middle French, Italian).  It’s quite overwhelming in and of itself.

But together with The Passion of Joan of Arc, the effect is stunning.  Einhorn’s music is not exactly a “score”; although it’s coordinated with the film, in fifteen movements—and Einhorn even took along a portable DAT recorder to get the sound of the church bells in Joan’s home town of Domremy, and the chiming of the bells occurs at key moments in the film—it’s more like a parallel text than a score.  And since the film relies on the transcript of Joan’s trial, you find yourself dealing with no fewer than four interwoven textual threads: the transcript, the visuals of the film itself, the music, the libretto.  It’s dizzying at first, and it stays dizzying for about half an hour or so.

The overpowering moments of the music were, well, overpowering: the thundering “HOMASSE!” of the interrogators as sung by the entire chorus would tear the roof off of any building, and then there’s the menacing but beautiful “Glorioses playes” ("glorious wounds") of the scene in which Joan’s inquisitors kindly show her around the torture chamber.  But what especially struck me about the performance were some of its most subtle and vulnerable moments: the opening—just one alto and one soprano in a delicate chant, almost too ethereal to survive in this world—and the violin solo that accompanies Joan’s “relapse” about two-thirds of the way through.  I had been listening to that solo for about a minute before I realized that I really hadn’t given it its due in its CD version, and then a moment later I realized that the first violin was playing it with an intensity that had her practically flying out of her chair.  All right, I exaggerate.  But not by much.

About the final ten minutes I cannot speak.  Partly because I don’t want to give the ending away—you all have to go get the DVD for yourselves, right now—but mostly because I can’t possibly do it justice.  I’ll say this much: there’s a burning.  There’s a riot.  There is much swinging of maces.  Musical motifs from the interrogation scene and the torture chamber return, transformed.  There is a climax that is anything but cathartic.  The performance ends.  And nobody, in an auditorium of over a thousand souls, can find the voice to speak for another fifteen minutes.

So instead, we all jumped up, those of us who were crying and those who were merely shaken, and gave the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia Chorus and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia a nice long ovation.  Then, as everyone calmed down a bit, but only a bit, Richard Einhorn took the stage for a brief question-and-answer.

We went out for drinks with Richard after he’d been thoroughly congratulated by everyone, remarking what a pity it was that after all the rehearsals and all the planning, there was only one performance of the piece in Philadelphia.  And guess what?  We wound up at a bar where we bumped into . . . members of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, including the first violin, whose name happens to be Gloria Justen and who, in response to my praise of her solo, gave me (along with her thanks) a postcard advertising her upcoming performance (with Charles Abramovic on piano) this May 13 at 8 pm at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia.  (I can’t make it—I’ll be in Ontario that day, speaking to the Canadian Down Syndrome Society—but I’ll pass the news along to any of you who might be in the area.  Twelve bucks—and the program will look like this.) It was so odd—it was like being backstage with the band, though of course it wasn’t really backstage and they weren’t really a “band.” We did entertain ourselves, though, by picking all the orange M&Ms out of the candy bowl for the benefit of the cellists.  Cellists are such pains in the ass about these things.

Actually, what happened was that we talked with Richard for quite a while before realizing that we should stop monopolizing the guy already and let him hang out with the good folks of the Mendelssohn Club who’d actually put this whole event together.  D’oh!  You just can’t take us anywhere.  But we had a great time, all the same.

There’s one more thing about last night.  Last night was the very first time we left Jamie alone for an overnight with a sitter (along with copious instructions about getting him to school this morning).  I’d originally asked Richard if we could bring Jamie—Jamie’s very well-mannered at such things, and actually loved going to a recent performance of the ballet “Giselle” with Janet—but Richard gently reminded me that, uh, you know, some aspects of the performance might be a bit much for a child.  And as I watched the crumpled, silhouetted form of Joan burning amid the flames and the chanted words of St. Hildegard, I thought, OK, so maybe this would be a bit much for a child.  I guess he had a point. For that, too, we owe Richard Einhorn our thanks.

Now stop reading this aesthetically overwhelmed and emotionally drained blog, and go get that DVD already.  And remember to play it loud.

Posted by on 05/02 at 02:12 PM

  1. "bizarre camera angels”!

    I love that!  Of course, a movie about a saint and martyr would have “camera angels”.

    That’s even better than my favorite grafitti from the bathroom of a bar, “Death will come and make angles of us all”

    Posted by  on  05/02  at  03:40 PM

  2. Sounds fantastic.

    BTW, Christine de Pizan’s no mystic. Except for being a woman and (sort of) a proto-feminist, she’s absolutely in the mainstream of the Western, Christian, late medieval intellectual tradition. She’s no more a mystic than Sontag. Hildegard is more a visionary than mystic (and, given the political force she had as well as the breadth of her work, she was much much more than a visionary) is dates from centuries before Joan of Arc.

    Love your work. Medievalists are testy creatures, though.

    Posted by  on  05/02  at  03:40 PM

  3. OK, OK, I’ll replace Christine de Pizan.  You’re right, Karl, she ain’t no mystic, but she is indeed in the libretto.  And yes, the libretto goes back to the early twelfth century for St. Hildegard.  The idea is that these are among the “voices” Joan heard (not literally, of course), and not necessarily the voices of women who were her coevals.

    And Morris, tell me why bizarre camera angels aren’t appropriate to the subject matter?

    Whatta bunch of proofreaders!

    Posted by  on  05/02  at  03:59 PM

  4. As one who has witnessed the effects of flames on heretics and people who have “different” thoughts, I must say this this is simply an astounding tale!

    Are Joan of Arc and heretics metaphors for where we are in the current political era?  I have a certain natural bias about this . . .

    Thanks for the info (and the add to the blogroll, Michael).

    Posted by The Heretik  on  05/02  at  04:11 PM

  5. Okay, while you’ve been dragged into a correcting spirit, you need to replace “Cruel to be Kind” with “Try a Little Tenderness.” Any version is probably good, but I’m partial to the version by The Mob from the In the Shadow of the Chi-Lites album. I think one of the criteria of a great pop song is its transferability from performer to performer (which is the only reason why I disqualify Smokey Robinson’s “What’s So Good About Goodbye,” which is heart-rendingly beautiful, but mainly because of SR’s inimitable voice): “Try a Little Tenderness” plays well for just about anyone. But I try to imagine, say, James Brown (admittedly not a pop singer) doing Cruel to be Kind: doesn’t work for me.

    Some people avoid grading; other people avoid writing diss. chapters. Back to work for me. And belated thanks for the SGGK post. You’re dead on about its beauty (a quality I’d almost forgotten about until the nudge of your post).

    Posted by  on  05/02  at  04:31 PM

  6. I had to go and wash my hands and put on my good white gloves before I felt clean enough to post. I’m standing lest I break the crease in my tux. And I’m dying of envy. I would have loved to see the performance and the film in that kind of setting. Sounds like you had a great time and I will indeed get the DVD.

    Posted by  on  05/02  at  05:02 PM

  7. I’ve seen the Criterion version and the music and its effect with the restored film is amazing (I think it was also shown during a Dreyer retrospective about 3 months ago on Turner Classic Movies). It’s interesting to contrast the frenetic close-ups of this movie with the slow, theatrical staging of Ordet (The Word), which was made almost 30 years later and must have had an influence on slow, deliberate filmmakers like Kubrick and Tarkovsky. Although I’m not a religious person at all, both of these movies are among my favorites of all time.

    Posted by norbizness  on  05/02  at  05:56 PM

  8. The frenetic close-ups really are something, norbizness.  They were hard to take at first, and seemed overwrought in a weird surrealist kind of way, but gradually they came to seem precisely correctly wrought.  By that point—say, by the twenty-minute mark—the extreme-claustrophobia effect of the film had set in, and I was willing to believe that the world did not exist except for maybe five or six faces in two or three all-white rooms with one small window.  Of course, then when the film opens out into the mob at the end, the effect is all the more jarring.

    Chris, this is a white-gloves-optional blog and always will be.  But I do appreciate the tux.  Me, I wore a suit (I’ll admit that much), but no tie.

    And Karl, my apologies and all, but there’s no way I can revise last Friday’s arbitrary but fun value judgment so radically as to substitute “Try a Little Tenderness” for “Cruel to Be Kind.” “Try a Little Tenderness” is much too emotionally serious, and it’s got that undercurrent you sometimes find in Sam Cooke ("Bring It On Home to Me,” “Let the Good Times Roll")—you know, even when the lyrics evoke tenderness and joy, there’s that sense that tenderness and joy are transient, fragile things and that what’s really waiting for us is a landscape of despair and betrayal and hopelessness.  But General Public’s “Tenderness”—now there’s a song that’s untroubled by weltschmerz.  Catchy tune, too!

    Posted by Michael  on  05/02  at  07:29 PM

  9. That sounds like a great night out.  And CONGRATULATIONS on the overnight for Jamie.  We haven’t had one of those yet ourselves… sigh…

    Posted by bitchphd  on  05/02  at  07:49 PM

  10. Dang!  Way back when, my violinist friend took me off to his performance at Jean d’Arc in the Aarhus Musikhus; I had no idea that this might be film history in the making.

    One of the key points here is that employees of mental institution in Norway could recognise the cans as i) film of artistic interest and ii) a potential catastrophe that required special handling.  That speaks volumes about the educational level of norwegians as a whole.

    I will use this point tomorrow, in my on-going tussle with a cow-orker who can’t understand why he should waste his money paying taxes towards the education of other people’s children.  Perhaps this example will trip the switch and enlighten him.

    Posted by  on  05/02  at  08:40 PM

  11. Morajokaj - and while you’re at it, AGREE with your coworker that taxes toward education are a horrendous waste of money. It’s a much more sound investment to spend those tax dollars on the prison industrial complex instead, even though it costs a HELL of a lot more.

    Tell him another good investment in his time and money is fighting with the police and insurance companies trying to recover his possessions that were stolen by all those little hooligans he didn’t care about trying to educate. Fun stuff!

    Posted by  on  05/02  at  11:22 PM

  12. Isn’t that the film where Artaud plays a monk?

    Posted by Scott McLemee  on  05/03  at  08:34 AM

  13. I was fortunate enough to be tricked into seeing Voices of Light several years ago. Blew me away. Two large choruses, an orchestra, a quartet and two soloists. You are surrounded by the music and forced inside the film.

    Try to see it in person…

    Posted by Ezra  on  05/03  at  10:08 AM

  14. Yep, Artaud plays a monk.  The handsome guy with the cheekbones and the haunted look?  That’s him.  And you know, the kids today, you ask them and they tell you it’s Bryan Ferry.  Buncha cultural illiterates.

    And morajokaj, thanks for chipping in.  But seriously, if your co-worker can’t understand why he should waste his money paying taxes towards the education of other people’s children, I wouldn’t lead with the discovery of The Passion of Joan of Arc as Exhibit A.  I’d try pointing out that these children are in fact his fellow citizens, and that if he doesn’t like living in a country with free public education, he should move to a nation where there is no such thing, just to see what his ideal state actually looks like.

    Posted by Michael  on  05/03  at  11:31 AM

  15. Somebody who doesn’t understand the need for educating “other people’s children” probably doesn’t want to pay for other things he sees himself getting no benefit from as well.

    A sad sign of our age is the loss of the sense of commonwealth embodied in the preamble of the United States Constitution in these words, “to promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

    You see it in the lack of funding for the arts, while already well off business interest get more subsidies.  It’s a sickness of the body politic best adrressed sooner rather than later.

    Posted by The Heretik  on  05/03  at  01:11 PM

  16. Michael I am so very pleased that you were able to share your experience, The Passion of Joan of Arc / Voices of Light with a wide audience. I have seen/heard it live twice, many years ago and several weeks ago. An experience that has never been eclipsed by any other performance experience I have ever had. Is there anyone out there who can articulate the profundity of this mysterious combination of silent grainy film and human chorus and why it reaches so deeply into ones inner life?

    Posted by  on  05/03  at  04:20 PM

  17. I hereby dub you an honorary medievalist, Michael (even if you did originally get Christine de Pizan mixed up, perhaps, with Julian of Norwich).  Come to Kalamazoo this weekend—we have a dance, you know!

    Posted by  on  05/03  at  04:21 PM

  18. "You know, I bet “About Last Night” would be a really good name for a blog about art, music, and cultural events of one kind or another.”

    If someone happens to be looking for such a blog with such a name, that person ought to check out [WSJ(!) drama critic and Commentary(!!) music critic] Terry Teachout’s site, About Last Night, which fulfills the above description in every way.  Suffice it to say that I don’t agree with the man on things political, but he writes about the arts quite well.

    And if anyone’s in the mood for more cinematic burnings of heretics, check out Dreyer’s Day of Wrath, though it’s a talkie and can’t really be seen in the same dramatic context that Michael describes above.

    Posted by Tyler  on  05/03  at  07:29 PM

  19. Nothing beats a movie with a time-travelling Jesuit in it.  Sherman, set the wayback machine for 1431…

    Posted by david ross mcirvine  on  05/03  at  11:17 PM

  20. Michael: I’m a member of the chorus you heard Sunday night; I stumbled on your blog post while searching for a review in the Philadelphia Inquirer (or any other paper). Having visited your blog before, I was surprised and delighted to read your piece. From my vantage point (behind the screen) I couldn’t see the film, though we did view it—with soundtrack—early on in the rehearsal phase.

    Backstage before the concert/movie, there was much speculation that the audience might not even feel it was appropriate to clap; we were quite relieved that that was not the case. My wife, daughter and son-in-law were in the audience, and while they found it moving, were not quite as blown away as you reported being. So I found your account very gratifying.

    Now I want to see the movie again, this time while not singing. I’m still running little clips from the score in my head several days later. Being part of that performance was quite an experience.

    Posted by  on  05/05  at  02:26 PM

  21. Thanks for writing in, Philip!  And congratulations on being part of that performance.  You mean to tell me that the Philly papers didn’t cover the dang premiere of Joan / Voices in their own city?

    I imagine that your family makes for a pretty tough (and knowledgeable) crowd.  As for me, I was indeed blown away, and so far as I could tell, everyone within a five-person radius of me was, too.  Lots of wiping of eyes and shaking of heads in my section.

    I did hear that you all saw the film at one point in rehearsals, but only once.  It’s definitely worth a second look.  My copy of the DVD arrived today, by the way--

    Posted by Michael  on  05/05  at  07:52 PM

  22. Thank you for a wonderful review of this work.  I really love Voices of Light and this piece compelled me to both buy the DVD and to put my copy of the CD in the stereo immediately.  The music that Richard composed gives me chills every time I listen to it.  It will be great to see the movie for which this work was done.  Perhaps someday I’ll get a chance to see a live version.

    Posted by Mary  on  05/07  at  05:16 PM

  23. See my post Hildegard comes to Norwich via IRCAM and Darmstadt on my blog On An Overgrown Path for coverage of the world premiere of James Wood’s new opera Hildegard.

    Regards,
    Pliable

    Posted by Pliable  on  05/13  at  05:56 AM

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