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“The Passion of Joan of Arc” is a 1928 silent movie classic that lends itself to live music score accompaniment, just as in the theaters in the days before “talkies.”
Walpole resident Rob Byrd, a well-traveled musician and composer, has lovingly created an ethereal soundscape, which he will play live with the film at the Walpole Public Library, on Tuesday evening, April 12, at 7 p.m.
Rather than the pianos and organs of old, Byrd uses electric guitar and electronic devices to highlight this riveting drama based on the actual record of the trial of Joan of Arc. The film stars Renée Jeanne Falconetti as Joan, and is widely regarded as a landmark of cinema.
This unique presentation is part of the Music Series sponsored by the Friends of the Walpole Public Library. Admission is free and all are welcome.
Rob Byrd’s music explores the guitar’s capacity for melodic expression, and its ability to evoke spaces and textures when treated with his carefully crafted sound design programs.
About his Joan of Arc film accompaniment, he wrote, “While performing my score on guitar, I like to watch the film along with the audience and feel and react to it musically as it unfolds. My aim is to have the score feel like a living thing, in the same way that this magical and powerful film has the feel of a living thing."
Byrd said that his overall aim is to meld sublimely beautiful songwriting with expansive sonic settings, evoking shadowy vistas and veiled memories.
Byrd performs his music in a wide variety of venues, including shows at the legendary CBGB, the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, the Queens Museum of Art in New York City, and the Southworth Planetarium in Portland, Maine.
His first full-length album, “The Bells of Tomorrow,” was released on Rootsucker Records in 2006. His 2009 follow-up “My Ghosts and Yours” was released on Del Chapel Recordings.
His newest album, “Soul Spaces”, features Byrd's glowing, spacious songs, evoking wild expanses and serene limitless plateaus drawn from real memories, imagination, fantasy literature, and dreams.
His music has been used as the score for several independent films, and has appeared in HBO’s “The Sopranos.”
A classic of the silent age, “The Passion of Joan of Arc” tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. The film summarizes the time that Joan of Arc was a captive of England, depicting her trial and execution.
On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc (Renee Falconetti) is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials (Eugene Silvain, Andre Berley). Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom
