Perhaps at some point since the 1970s, composer William Perry may have been tempted to discard some of his old notebooks. It's a good thing he didn't.
Perry was working as the music director at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in the early '70s when he was asked to write a score for one of the MoMA's many archived silent films, Hearts of the World (1918), directed by D.W. Griffith. "I had the great luxury of knowing and being able to communicate as necessary with Lillian Gish, who was the major star of the film," Perry recalls, "and so I could get some hints about exactly what was happening in the shooting and how she felt the storyline would unwind … things that I could use in musical terms."
Gish, who died in 1993, played the principal female role in Hearts of the World. The film tells the story of the First World War through the microcosm of a French village — a tranquil hamlet beset by the cataclysm of war and indelibly altered.
Some forty years removed from his initial project at the MoMA, as the centenary of World War I drew near, composer Perry looked back on his 1970s Hearts of the World score for solo piano and wrote a new orchestral piece that explores more of the themes and the storyline descriptions in musical terms. Perry also composed a song cycle for his updated score, writing much of the lyrics himself. "[Griffith] subtitled the film 'The Story of a Village'," Perry explains. "What my score is doing is personalizing the village … the musical material was derived from getting a sense of what was happening emotionally on the screen."
Perry's new take on Hearts of the World has been recorded by the Naxos label, and is scheduled for release in 2015. Performing the music are the National Symphony of Ireland, conducted by Paul Phillips, along with Canadian mezzo-soprano Wallis Giunta (now with the Metropolitan Opera) and American baritone John Brancy. "This is this third CD I've done with the National Symphony of Ireland," Perry says. "They're a remarkably fine orchestra and have a broad recording background. They're wonderful to work with, they understand the whole process, [and] they constantly amaze me by reading at sight a passage that you could have recorded right at that moment."
When asked about the reputation of Hearts of the World director D.W. Griffith — whose 1915 film Birth of a Nation remains highly controversial due to its racist overtones — Perry offers historical context. "We're looking back, at this point, 100 years, and there's no question that Griffith was a child and then a man of the South, that his forbearers were important parts of the Confederacy. He carried with him some of the less attractive aspects of post-Civil War thinking and that was reflected, in many ways, in a film like Birth of a Nation," Perry says. "But also we must credit him with having a highly patriotic view of his country, and films he did like Hearts of the World and America — about the Revolution — were Americana as he saw it in the broadest possible terms."
But it wasn't the director that intrigued Perry about Hearts of the World. Perry was fascinated by the production of the film. "I grew ever more interested in the story and in the way the battle scenes were set up — some were shot in England, some in California. And some of the footage was actually shot in the trenches in France within some 50 yards of the German lines."
Telling the epic story of World War I through the lens of the village is what Perry sees as the film's strength. "There is sweep to the scenes, and that really required that the title music especially would have a sweep to it. Then it gets down and very personal … before we know it, war has actually swept through that village, changed it forever. And this is where the epic and the personal really come together."
Classical MPR is delighted to present a first listen to William Perry's Hearts of the World: A commemoration of World War I for Mezzo-Soprano, Baritone and Orchestra; click the play button above to hear the music.
Given its age, D.W. Griffith's Hearts of the World is now in the public domain and is posted in its entirety on YouTube. You can view the film below.
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