What is most important is that Gordon Getty has produced one of the most dramatic, exciting and tautly constructed tone poems it has been my pleasure to hear for a long time. The forces are large as befits the subject and the listener is gathered up and swept into the turmoil of Joan’s final trial and execution for which retry emphasises her inner tension and the pride of her faith in her voices, his scoring for chorus particularly effective in the final pages when the Saints urge Joan’s spirit to join them.

Whether the opera is complete enough, at this late stage of its existence, is another matter. The score, as it stands, sets a libretto by the composer from both Parts of Henry IV and Henry V. Plump Jack, therefore, cannot but invite comparison with Getty's notable predecessors, not always to his disadvantage, and we applaud the dedication he has brought to his self imposed task. The result is a score of clarity, colourfully and powerfully orchestrated, spurring the familiar story onward, and in which the words are almost always audible. 

But a price has been paid for cramming so much into such a time-scale. The libretto is too wordy for an opera of this length. Getty gives himself scant opportunity for reflective contemplation and the characterisation, in this of all subjects, is not musically well drawn in the First Act. The Second Act is better in this respect, for by then we know the characters. In avoiding any obviously English colouration Getty relies too much on predictably short-breathed arioso-recitativo, with many similarities in word-setting, when specific melodic expression is called for. The lack of an orchestral Prelude is a serious mistake, as is that of female characterisation. Consider how Verdi solved this latter problem, or imagine what Britten or Korngold might have made of the subject, to get the point.

The Second Act is, in these terms, more successful. Falstaff's rejection by the young King is well accomplished but the old man's death passes by too quickly and the final pages are long drawn-out. 

To judge from this injudiciously attentuated cycle on the poems of Emily Dickinson, Getty still has a great deal to learn about the art and craft that mean so much to him. He employs an idiom only a trifle less spare and simple than the New England hymnals of Dickinson's time....

In far, far too many of the songs, he falls back on a sort of punctuated recitative style, instead of devising interesting musical ideas and then organizing them into a true aesthetic entity...Getty does have an apt feeling for the poetry, and his sense of prosody, a few lapses excepted, stands him in good stead.

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.