DAVID CIERI | An Homage to Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc

Performing the score For The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) Live at the Winter Garden in The Battery in NYC - for John Schaefer’s/WQXR NEW SOUNDS annual silent film/live score series.

David Cieri has written and recorded a new score for Carl Th. Dreyer’s silent film masterpiece La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc. This new release, entitled An Homage to Carl Dreyer The Passion of Joan of Arc (Music Inspired by the Film), is now available on Ropeadope Records.

Order page for An Homage to Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (Music Inspired by the Film). Click through to sample a track from the album and order your copy. The release is out now on Ropeadope Records.

To mark the release of the album on Friday, January 24, 2020 WNYC’s The Greene Space hosted a sold out live presentation of the project with nine terrific musicians, including the traditional Sardinian vocal ensemble Tenores De Aterue, performing Cieri’s score in tandem with a screening of Carl TH. Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc.

David Cieri's new score for Carl Th. Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, entitled An Homage to Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (Music Inspired by the Film), will be released by Ropeadope Records on Friday, January 24, 2020.

Credits:
David Cieri: Una Corda, Haken Continuum, Spring Drum, Bass Waterphone, Voice, Field Recordings, Piano
Paige Breen: Carillonneur, Harkness Tower Carillon at Yale University
Tenores De Aterue: Traditional Sardinian Vocal
(Avery Book, bassu; Gideon Crevoshay, mesu boghe; Carl Linich, contra; Doug Paisley, boghe)
Shahzad Ismaily: Electric Bass, Elka Synthesizer, Moog Rogue
Anjna Swaminathan: Violin
Rubin Kodheli: Cello
Sam Ospovat: Vibraphone, Drums, Percussion
John McCarthy: Bagpipes

Engineered & mixed by Michael Coleman
Recorded May 8 & 9, 2019 at Figure 8 Studios in Brooklyn, NY
Mastered by Kevin Blackler at Blackler Mastering in Brooklyn, NY

THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC | A Mission Statement
by David Cieri

I have been deeply in love with this film for a painfully long time and it has been a personal calling of mine to write a score for it right from the moment I was witness to its dark magic. Rene Falconetti is a genius. Carl TH Dreyer was there to meet her too — with his intimate portrayal — sandblasting all that is not essential. Every eyebrow raise and every whisper and wink and even the fly cameo quietly — and without broadcast - add together in a way that gives us bristling paranoia, arrogance, unmitigated brutality of word and deed, humility, bravery, beauty and an unrelenting pathos and luminescence — as life is often felt from the inside – epic.

I recently read a little Internet blog situation about how some museums in Egypt have put makeshift “eyes” into the ancient sculptures heads – the experience is apparently transcendent on an entirely new level. With this new score, I am aiming to do a similar thing by integrating and infusing the images with feeling and sound texture so that the film may speak to us from a new angle and with a renewed and relevant voice. The script is taken directly from her surviving trial transcripts and they are telling for us today – in our age of character assassinations, this film and all if its hard earned beauty aside, has our reflection in it. My hope is that we have the patience and the courage to look. The score is intended to bring forward the shards of glass - the unbalanced and teetering danger lurking within the trial. I have loved many of the scores I have heard for the film because they seem to focus intently on her spiritual resolve – yet I found my ears wanting to confront the violence of these progressively horrific acts in an unblinking manner (while still honoring her commitment and vulnerability) Music is a safe way of having this crucial aspect of the trial – of us - out in the open and underscored so that we may hopefully disinfect through a more intimate understanding of all of our potentials.

While writing the score over this last year, I kept coming back to this poem by Pablo Neruda — written near the end of his life. The gap between this poem and Dreyer’s depiction of the trial is seemingly wider than life itself — yet I think we have a good path to bridging it by allowing for a sober look and listen through a clearer window.

Keeping Quiet

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still

for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms too much

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
In a sudden strangeness.

fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
life is what it’s about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the Earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

— Pablo Neruda