Modals
Tuesday, July 18
6:30 PM
Festival Napa Valley Stage at Charles Krug
Constantine Orbelian, Conductor
Kristina Reiko Cooper, Cello
Ronit Widmann-Levy, Soprano
Lisa Delan, Soprano
Melody Moore, Soprano
Lester Lynch, Baritone
Matthew “Motl” Didner, Whisperer
Stephanie Lynne Mason, Whisperer
Julianna Smith, Mezzo
Matteo Adams, Tenor
Clinton Garrison, Baritone
Julianna Smith, Mezzo
Festival Orchestra Napa
Festival Napa Valley Volti Chorale
Lera Auerbach (b. 1973)
Symphony No. 6, “Vessels of Light” for Violoncello, Choir, and Orchestra (2022)
Dedicated to Chiune Sugihara and all those who risk everything to save others
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Vocalise (1915)
Gordon Getty (b. 1933)
Shenandoah (arranged 2018)
Annie Laurie (World Premiere)
Joan and the Bells Cantata (1999)
Shenandoah
About Shenandoah, the composer shares, “Shenandoah has haunted me since I first heard it sung by Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians seventy-five years ago. My arrangement pays tribute to what I remember of his.”
There are few melodies as recognizable as that of the poignant American folk song Shenandoah. The tune exists in many iterations, including that of a sea shanty. Getty himself has penned multiple versions of his setting of the song.
Getty’s original arrangement was written for Lisa Delan’s 2016 Pentatone release, Out of the Shadows (recorded with Kevin Korth and Matt Haimovitz). San Francisco Symphony and Chorus premiered the choral version in 2019 (after it was released in 2018 on Pentatone’s second album featuring Getty choruses, Beauty Come Dancing).
Delan premiered Getty’s arrangement for solo voice and chorus with the Young People's Chorus of NYC on their 2020 gala, which is the version you will hear tonight.
Shenandoah
Oh Shenandoah, I long to see you,
Away, you rolling river.
Oh Shenandoah, I long to hear you,
Away, I’m bound away across the wide Missouri.
Missouri, she’s a mighty river,
Hi-o, you rolling river.
When she rolls down, her topsails shiver,
Away, I’m bound away across the wide Missouri.
Oh Shenandoah, I love your daughter,
Away, you rolling river.
I hear her voice across the water,
Away, I’m bound away across the wide Missouri.
For sev’n long years I’ve heard you calling,
Away, you rolling river.
For sev’n long years I’ve heard her calling,
Away, I’m bound away across the wide Missouri.
-Traditional, adapted by Gordon Getty
Annie Laurie
Getty shares that he was first drawn to the Scottish song Annie Laurie by “the beauty of the tune.” Annie Laurie is based on a poem attributed to William Douglas of Dumfriesshire (c. 1682–1748), reflecting his romance with Annie Laurie (1682–1764). The words were modified and the tune was added by Alicia Scott around 1834-1835. Tonight’s performance is the world premiere of Getty’s setting of Annie Laurie.
Annie Laurie
Maxwellton braes are bonnie,
Where early falls the dew,
And 'twas there that Annie Laurie
Gave me her promise true.
Gave me her promise true,
And ne’er forgot will I,
And for bonnie Annie Laurie.
I'd lay me down and die.
Like dew on the gowan lying,
Is the fall of her fairy feet:
And like winds in summer sighing,
Her voice is low and sweet:
Her voice is low and sweet,
And gentle in reply,
And for bonnie Annie Laurie,
I'd lay me down and die.
Her brow is of the snowdrift,
Her movement of the swan,
And her face, it is the fairest,
That e'er my eyes looked on:
That e'er the sun looked on,
And dark blue is her eye,
And for bonnie Annie Laurie,
I'd lay me down and die.
-William Douglass, Lady John Scott
Joan and the Bells
1429 was the 92nd year of the Hundred Years’ War. Three generations of French had been bloodied in the disasters of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt. In the spring of that year, an illiterate peasant girl told first the Governor of her region, and then the Dauphin, that she had been chosen by God to drive the English back to their shores. She was given a few soldiers and sent to join the defense of Orleans. She led the French army to victory. Later in that year she broke the English strongholds along the Loire, and led the Dauphin through Burgundian territory to his coronation at Rheims.
Soon she had proved too warlike and independent for the new king’s comfort. In 1430, she attacked Burgundian Paris, without result, after he had declared a truce. When she was captured in battle a few months later, he did not ransom her, although he could have done so easily under the customs of the time. She was sold to the Duke of Burgundy and tried by the Church for heresy and witchcraft at Rouen in 1431. Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, led the prosecution. She renounced her visions under a promise that her life would be spared and recanted on learning that the terms included life imprisonment on bread and water. She was now trapped as a relapsed heretic and was burned at the stake. She was about nineteen-years-old.
Myth can add little to such a history. Like other writers, even so, I have cast Joan’s story in a myth to suit my telling. Joan and the Bells keeps to some facts and makes up others. Thus Domremy is given a Lourdes-like setting for picturesqueness alone. It is true meanwhile that church bells brought Joan’s visions and voices, but not that any were silenced at her trial. It is true that her banner read “Jesu Maria” and that lip-readers made out her last words to be “Jesu, Jesu.”
There is also no reason to suppose that Cauchon was compassionate in the end. He is made so here to mitigate Church-bashing, to give the benefit of the doubt to little-known historical figures, and to keep the focus on Joan. Her story needs no villains. It is the hero, not the saint, who is measured by the size of the dragon slain. The saint is measured by the promise kept, by the beauty of the vision, and by the straightness of the path.
Schiller and Mark Twain, and Verdi and Tchaikovsky, made Joan wise beyond her years. Indeed she was. The record of her trial, which was meticulous by the standards of the time, shows a defendant of acumen and poise. People grew up fast in her age of war and freebooters and the Black Death. It was the genius of Shaw that inverted this safe literary tradition and brought out the spunky teenager in Joan. Jean Anouilh went farther, in The Lark, and gave her the simplicity of preadolescence. Joan and the Bells owes much to these masters, particularly Anouilh, and takes the same poetic license. It is a tale of a child’s faith in an age without childhood, of a valor undeflected, and of the redemption these qualities commend.
Joan and the Bells
Part One: Judgment
CAUCHON AND MONKS
Joan the Maid, you are condemned.
You have done prodigies by witchcraft,
Beyond all temporal power, in men’s clothes,
You have led armies and defeated armies,
And counseled heresies. You have heard our judgment.
Let it be entered.
JOAN
I wore men’s clothes and armor
And fought their fight.
God put a sword into my hand.
MONKS
She is blaspheming. Silence her.
CAUCHON
You are mistaken. Satan armed you, child.
The sword was his. Repent, be healed, be saved.
Cast him away, and you will bless our judgment.
Receive God’s grace and you will bless the flames,
Let God’s grace shine in them and sing in them,
Let them drive out the husk, the dross, the slag,
Let them drive out that antichrist, the mortal world,
Let them refine, cleanse, cauterize,
Let them anneal, let them distill,
Let them make pure. Renounce your visions,
Know them aright. They are not your three saints.
You have confessed that these things are not saints
But Satan and his minions.
JOAN
I thank the court. Your Reverences
Are old and wise, the Church is God’s true agent,
And I am perjured.
I was afraid, and was not true to them,
Saint Catherine, Saint Margaret, Saint Michael,
I did them evil,
Here in this room I called them frauds and specters,
But I have asked their pardon,
And must not wrong them more.
Your Reverences have sentenced me most justly.
I am still wicked and afraid.
But, Reverences, I must not wrong them more,
And I will ask their pardon in the fire.
MONKS
Defiance! Blasphemy! Brothers, you are too patient.
CAUCHON
She is obdurate. We can do nothing.
Remove her. Pray for her. The trial is closed.
There was no fault in it. God help us now,
But, Brothers, who can say we were not fair?
We were most circumspect. The pope absolves us.
The laity consent.
MONKS
Thus far.
But there must be no bells.
CAUCHON
There will be none.
The Duke of Bedford stilled them.
MONKS
They are her voices.
CAUCHON
He took their tongues.
MONKS
Her visions come with them.
CAUCHON
The bells are mute. God help us, Brothers,
But who can say we were not fair?
MONKS
Who can say we were not fair?
Part Two: Joan in her Chamber
JOAN
Saint Margaret, I ask your pardon first,
Because it was you I saw the first of all,
Running to church. Do you remember?
It was fall and cool and morning and beautiful;
I was running up where the path was highest,
Up where the bells came loudest, on the hillside,
In the forest by the spring,
Where I could see our roof and all the roofs,
But this time I was running not to be late,
And did not look.
Do you remember? All at once I saw you,
As plain as anyone, but beautiful and shining,
And I knew you were a saint.
Then I saw you, Saint Michael,
And you, Saint Catherine,
And now I ask your pardon too. I am ashamed,
For I have broken faith with you,
And made you angry,
And that is why you will not come to me.
But then you came, all three,
And, Blessed Margaret, you said,
“Joan, do you know us?” And I said,
“I do, Saint Margaret,
But I think you must have lost your way.
Not even the abbé comes to Domremy.”
Saint Michael, then you said, “Joan,
Are you afraid of us?” And I said, “No, Saint Michael,”
And then, Saint Catherine, you said,
“It is good that you are not,
For you must ride a horse, and be a soldier,
And hold a sword.” And I said, “Oh, Saint Catherine,
A soldier?” And you answered,
“If you are not afraid, and keep your word,
And do your very best,
Then you will be a soldier, and ride a horse,
And hold a sword, and crown a king,
And do brave things that will be told forever.”
And I said, “Well, then, I will try,
But how can I do all of that?”
And then, Saint Michael, you said,
“You will know how, all by yourself,
And when you need us we will come to you.”
Oh, blessed saints, it was the truth.
At Chinon Castle you led me to the Dauphin
And made him trust me. At Orleans
Where we had fought all day without advantage,
And had fallen back to garrison as weak as death,
You came and said that we must try once more.
Somehow I made them do it, and we won.
So it was on the Loire,
At Meung, Jargeau, Patay, so many times,
Whenever we were nearly broken,
With fresh reserves against us, banners high,
Mocking at us, our ordnance driven back,
Dust-blind, our force encircled, then you came
In our great need, just as you said,
To give me courage, and the field was ours.
Even when I was taken at Compiègne,
And even here, you came to me each day,
But now I have been untruthful,
And that is why you will not speak to me.
Dear saints, I will do better,
There is only a little time, but I will try,
And then perhaps you will not be so angry,
And you will come to me.
Part Three: The Square at Rouen
MOST TOWNSFOLK
They are building the fire too high.
The executioner will not be able to come near,
Once it is lit,
To do the act of mercy.
It is cruel.
CAUCHON (aside)
Yes, it is cruel.
MONKS AND OTHER TOWNSFOLK
It is justice. She is a witch.
She is a heretic relapsed.
VARIOUS GROUPS OF TOWNSFOLK
She is young and beautiful.
I do not think she is a witch.
She is not afraid. She is very calm.
CAUCHON (aside)
Her head is high.
VARIOUS GROUPS OF TOWNSFOLK
She is a witch. The court condemned her.
Now they will light the fire. It is lit.
The flames are terrible.
Listen! There are bells. I hear them.
Yes! There are bells.
MONKS, etc.
There are no bells. Lord Bedford took their tongues.
Sometimes the bells can bring her visions to her.
That is why he made them mute.
MOST TOWNSFOLK
They are not the bells of Rouen.
CAUCHON (aside)
No, they are other bells. I heard them once,
When I was very young.
VARIOUS GROUPS OF TOWNSFOLK
They are other bells.
There are no bells. Lord Bedford stilled them.
She is looking at something up high.
What is it?
She is watching the tower.
No, she is looking above it.
Her lips are moving.
She is praying. I cannot make out the words.
What does she say?
CAUCHON (aside)
She is saying, “Jesu, Jesu, Jesu.”
CHORUS (ANGELS)
Come, child, come, soldier,
The task is finished, finished and settled away,
It is all mended and folded away,
The battle is done with, over and gone,
And washed away with the morning.
You have won and rested. Listen! The bells!
See, you have won, child! Now rise up
In the cool of the morning, run to us,
Run up in the cool hills, run barefoot, run, child, feel the wind,
Feel the cool wind, run higher, higher,
Up to the mountaintops, higher!
Jump higher than the world! The bells are louder!
Here, child! Faster! See, you are almost home!
Up here, child! Run up to the sky and past it,
Past clouds and moons and comets,
Up, child! It is so blue and bright!
You can hardly see! Brighter and brighter!
Come running, riding; now you are riding, child!
Ride forward, faster, faster, higher, higher,
Up to the front, child!
See the battalions align, there are Dunois, LaHire,
In the cool of the morning, Xantrailles and his lancers,
The ground is resilient, quick for the charge,
See the horses, the riders, the ranks,
How they quiver and quicken, their eyes, they are ready,
All of them furious, dangerous, ready,
Spur, child! Up to the gallop, apace, hear the war-shout,
The banner, aloft! Let it fly, let it carry them,
Jesu Maria, they see it, they follow,
Attack, child! Into the enemy, at them!
Into the cavalry, up to the cannon, the colors!
The bells are everywhere!
See, the gates open, child, the pennants fall, the captains kneel!
Ride up, child, up to the battlements, up to the stars,
Ride up in the cool of the morning.
- Gordon Getty
Festival Orchestra Napa's appearance is made possible by a generous gift from Tatiana and Gerret Copeland, proprietors of Bouchaine Vineyards.
Frost School at Festival Napa Valley is a multiyear partnership with the University of Miami, featuring Frost School of Music faculty and students playing a lead role in the Festival’s university-level educational, chamber music, and orchestral music programming.
Ronit Widmann-Levy, Lisa Delan, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, and Festival Napa Valley Volti Chorale appear as part of the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Vocal Arts Series.
This concert is a Kaiser Permanente Thrive Community Concert.