If you can forget about Getty's money for 20 minutes, just listen to his 1998 cantata Joan and the Bells and evaluate the work on its own merits. Yes, it ignores almost every musical technique developed during Getty's lifetime (he was born in 1933), and yes, it calls to mind the styles of other composers, most especially Samuel Barber, with a whiff of Vaughan Williams's Sea Symphony in the choral writing. Yet it is a highly effective work, well written for the voices, ably orchestrated, thematically coherent, dramatically persuasive.

The arresting, driving opening bars hurl us into the final moments of the trial of Joan of Arc, with her condemnation by Bishop Pierre Cauchon (a baritone) and denunciation by the chorus. Joan (a high soprano) remains quietly defiant. The town's bells have been silenced, for they represent the heavenly voices Joan claims to have heard guiding her in her military exploits against the invading English. The cantata's second movement is a long soliloquy for Joan, who recounts to the saints in heaven (or at least in her head) her call to action, and implores the saints to return to her. The final movement is mostly choral, with a few lines from Cauchon; initially, the chorus takes the part of villagers witnessing Joan's auto-da-fè, and then it gives voice to saints almost breathlessly urging Joan on to heaven. Bells sound only in the final measures, ending the work in tintinnabulation.

Unless your heart is hardened against new music that doesn't really do anything new, Joan and the Bells is a fully engaging cantata, with its shimmering orchestration and vocal lines that are actually singable. Getty is not exactly a naiäf; his bachelor's degree in English literature surely prepared him for assembling this capable, never self-consciously poetic libretto, and Getty's musical background includes lessons in piano and voice, and (after "four years in family businesses," as the bio coyly puts it) studies in music theory at the San Francisco Conservatory. Getty is trained to do what he does well.....

Joan and the Bells is a compelling cantata that gets better with each audition. Set aside your various prejudices, and buy this disc for the Getty.