An Interview with Julia Holter
In anticipation of the premiere performance of her live score for the classic 1928 film The Passion of Joan of Arc, Julia Holter has shared some of the inspirations behind her new commission for the Chorus of Opera North. The first performance of the soundtrack, in Huddersfield’s historic Town Hall for Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (hcmf//) on 23 November, will be followed by a further date at London’s Barbican on 25 November.
“I haven’t looked forward to a project so much in a long time”, says the Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter and composer.
With her own band joined by Opera North’s 36-strong Chorus, Holter has taken the opportunity to dig deeper into her longstanding fascination with the art, history and music of the medieval era. On her last studio album, Aviary, her unique approach to vocals took in everything from found texts to wordless abstraction and electronic processing. Driven by a deep engagement with Carl Theodor Dreyer’s visionary film and actress Renée Jeanne Falconetti’s astonishing performance in the lead role, Holter has pushed her music further into new territory as she writes for Opera North’s massed voices.
“I wanted to keep the mystery”
“The live score began centered upon my voice through a contact mic on my throat, the words rendered unintelligible, retaining the pitch yet tongue-less”, she explains. “There is so much powerful cinematography in the film, without a lot of change in scenery, almost like a theatre stage. There is so much beauty and space available to the composer and yet I was hoping not to take advantage of that space too much; I wanted to keep the mystery.
“I was inspired by an essay, Variations on the Right to Remain Silent, in which the poet Anne Carson explores the untranslatability of the sublime—how, throughout Joan’s trial, the judges are trying to forcibly extricate some kind of material from Joan to manipulate into their narrative, while Joan stays true to the inexplicability of her spiritual experience with vague statements like, ‘The light comes in the name of the voice’.
“Impassioned”
“I had the entire Chorus of Opera North to work with, so I had to figure out a way to bring out that ‘sublime unintelligibility’ with a group of operatic voices as well as my own. Alongside some notable quotes of Joan’s from the film to set to music, I also wanted to set and adapt a couple of medieval chants relevant to Joan’s story and/or time (Te Deum and Ave Maris Stella), and so throughout, we hear these chants in various forms—sometimes only as very long stretched-out and isolated syllables decapitated from their word context, and sometimes sung more conventionally.
“But always there is some muddying up—between my contact mic and the Chorus, there is Sarah Belle Reidon trumpet and electronics distorting words by singing into the trumpet as well as playing, often sounding fragments of the chant. Tashi Wada’s synth will provide, among other things, a bed of harmonisations of the chants to both work with and against the chorus’ melodies, and his bagpipe resonating with the trumpet swells. And finally percussionist Corey Fogel will be punctuating the most impassioned moments on, among other things, timpani and a giant bell”.
“I’m really honoured to write this music”
While lockdowns have frustrated the project’s schedule, the last two years have brought even more acclaim for Julia Holter as a soundtrack composer, with the film Never Rarely Sometimes Always, featuring her original score, taking awards at Sundance and Berlin International Film Festival. Having covered Karen Dalton’s songs in the past, Holter also scored In My Own Time, the much-anticipated documentary on the elusive Greenwich Village singer-songwriter. She has also campaigned for a rebalancing of streaming incomes in favour of musicians, an injustice thrown into stark relief by the pandemic; and in 2021 she was appointed Professor of the Practice in Songwriting at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
“I’m very excited to finally be working on this live score with the great Chorus of Opera North, for whom I’m really honoured to be able to write this music”, she says. “I don’t know exactly how it will turn out honestly, but I would say that usually when I feel that way it’s a good thing!”
Tickets for the world premiere at Huddersfield Town Hall on Wednesday 23 November, part of hcmf// 2022, are priced at £26.00 (concessions £20, Under 30s £5). Tickets for the performance at the Barbican on Friday 25 November are priced from £15 – £25 plus booking fee.
For more details and to book, visit operanorth.co.uk
It should be noted that the film (“The Passion of Joan of Arc”) may well have been based heavily on the trial transcript (specifically the Latin version), but this is problematic due to the many falsifications described by dozens of eyewitnesses who had been at the trial. English government records show that they set up and manipulated the trial by placing collaborators on the tribunal, and eyewitnesses gave details on how the tribunal charged her with deliberately false or misleading accusations and convicted her by manipulating her into a “relapse” when the guards took away her dress and then forced her to put the soldier’s clothing back on, then the judge condemned her to death for that. The transcript of course gives a different version. The Latin version also differs consistently on certain points from the original French version in the Urfe manuscript, since the Latin was mistranslated in a systematic fashion. Dreyer’s movie uses a falsified source.