Speaking Boldly

02 Sep, 2026

On Julius Eastman's The Holy Presence of Joan d'Arc

Prelude

From the gloom,
a booming bass-baritone
intoned:

"St Michael said."

"St Margaret said."

"St Catherine said."

"They Said."

As soon as I heard these sung-spoken words,
I felt myself in thrall to an ill-defined
terror.

My eyes widened. I bit my lips and clutched my hands tightly to one another. I slowed my breathing, inhaling deep through my nostrils, gathering the air in my chest until it was tight, and then releasing it in long sighs. This was a quite unconscious act.

The singer-speaker, Davóne Tines, descended slowly down the right-hand aisle, the other side from where I was seated in this spacious gloom. The proclamations continued:

"They said. They said. She said. He said..."

These few words, repeated again and again, in a plain, authoritative voice, like dough kneaded with old calloused hands. Gradually, they took on more urgency, the gaps between them shortened, a snatched breath punctuated them. Always the words were crisp and clear. It continued in this way for a while, the phrases arranged in an order that belied no obvious pattern or logic - like dough kneaded with old calloused hands? More urgency. Snatched breaths. Repeated again and again:

"...St Catherine said. She said. She said. He said. She said. He said. She said. They said..."

Davóne Tines was now making his way from right to left. Gliding above the seated audience, I could see him properly for the first time. He held his body in a rigid posture, back bolt upright, chest slightly puffed out. He wore a sleeveless black lace tunic and rested his clasped hands on his abdomen. His steps were steady and measured, and

Suddenly he paused.
An unassuming breath;
a full-throated bellow:

"J - O - A - N"

a breath:

"J - O - A - N"

I feel it every second that it resounds, its flatness a gale, pressed undeniably against my eardrums, insinuating itself inside me. Again:

"J - O - A - N"

Again:

"J - O - A - N"

There is too much in these cries. I am listening, I hiss. I am, I whisper.

"She said."

"J - O - A - N"

"He said."

"J - O - A - N"

"St Michael said."

"St Catherine said."

"St Margaret said."

"J - O - A - N"

This desperate groan elbows its way into the vocabulary, bruising the other words, bending them out of shape. The words stagger on but O, how they protest: jumping, howling, growling, the voice loses control, and, inexplicably, the words, they beat me! like dough kneaded with old calloused hands. I'm agitated, desperate. Elongated words. Deep words. Strained words.

They repeat again and again, like dough, again and again, stretched and pulled - beaten or worked? Beaten or worked? Again and again and again. The words hurled around
and beaten (or worked)
in the hope that
some utterance
will convince you to:

"Speak."

"Joan."

"Speak. Speak. Speak. Speak. Speak. Sp - ee - ee - ee - kuh."

Words are reduced to sounds. Each syllable is a callous blow, which becomes unbearable when "speak" is uttered in a raging pair:

"Spee Kuh."

The second syllable is spat at us. We are so weak. Language was slipping. Everything is going backwards even as time surges forward. We are becoming a child, like dough kneaded into flour and water, old calloused hands softened. Water trickles away,
flour disperses on the air,
soft hands shrink...

"Speak. Bold. Ly."

"Spee Kuh. Spee Kuh."

"Bo - oo - old - Ly"

"Spee Kuh. Spee Kuh."

"Bo - oo - old - Ly"

"Spee Kuh. Bold - Ly"

"Spee Kuh."

"Bo - oo - oo - old - Lee"

"Say. Say. Say."

"Bo - oo - oo - old - Lee"

"WEN - THAY - KWES - CHUN - YOO - SPEE - KUH."

.....

....

...

_{"Bo - oo - old - ly"}

_{"Sp - ee - ee - kuh"}

_{"Sp - ee - ee - ee - kuh"}

The hands. My soft hands. Clasped together; loosen.

_{"Speak. Bold. Ly."}

_"Speak. ^Bold. _Ly."

I knead them. Like dough.

_{Jo .} . ^{. an}

These words are so sweet.

_"Saaaaaaaay"

They

_"Saaaaaaaay"

enfold

_"Saaay"

me.

_{"St. Margaret said."}

_{"St. Catherine said."}

_{"Speak. Bold Ly. Now."}

Now: Black lace tunic, hands clasped at the abdomen, posture immaculate. Davóne Tines, unchanged, ascends onto the stage. His words rise, drift through the hall, float with the darkness, plead, bleed:

^{"J - o - a - n"}

Each word, a peeling back, a wound healed, a bruise erased. All that beating, all that working, slipping away. In the nearness I hear crisp, dull peals:

_{"Speak. Bold. Ly."}

_"Speak. ^Bold. _Ly."

_"Speak. Bold. _Ly."

_{"Speak. Bold. Ly."}

I was naked and alone; the voice was near death.
A breath
an exhalation:

^{"J - o - a - n"}

Never did I identify the terror.
The sung-spoken words just
Left me:

_{"Sp - ee - eak"}

_{"Bo - oo - old - ly"}

Dear Joan,

...

When meditating on your name I am given strength and dedication. Dear Joan I have dedicated myself to the liberation of my own person firstly. I shall emancipate myself from the materialistic dreams of my parents; I shall emancipate myself from the bind of the past and the present; I shall emancipate myself from myself.

...

Yours with love,

Julius Eastman

One Dedicated to Emancipation

Julius Eastman's The Holy Presence of Joan d'Arc is a composition for 10 cellos that runs for about 20 minutes. It was composed in 1981 and first presented in a concert at The Kitchen in New York. The music is dense and relentlessly rhythmic, occupying an entirely different musical world from the prelude that precedes it. The prelude, however, isn't part of the original composition.

Julius Eastman conceived of the prelude to Holy Presence after recording the cello piece for a radio broadcast. It was a seemingly whimsical addition, and since the studio session was over, an impromptu recording of the prelude had to be made in his apartment. As well as the prelude, he recorded a spoken introduction, which was previously used as the program note for the Kitchen performance. This introduction is in the form of a letter addressed to Joan of Arc, in which Julius Eastman devotes himself to her memory.

I was surprised to discover this background for two reasons:

I think Holy Presence is incomplete without the prelude. That it was, in effect, an afterthought or an appendix, challenges my understanding of the piece and the process of composition.
The introductory letter (whether written or spoken), previously unknown to me, contributes to the prelude and the cello piece in a way that becomes totally indispensable to the whole.

This triptych of letter, prelude, and cello piece is the complete work.¹ The cello piece occupies the central panel, and, folded out on either side, the letter and the prelude.

The first time I heard Holy Presence was in a radio broadcast of the Manchester Collective at the BBC Proms in 2021. They played an arrangement for string orchestra which began with a reduced version of the prelude chanted by the players: "Saint Michael said. Saint Margaret said. Saint Catherine. They said. Joan, speak boldly. When they question you, speak boldly." It was the first time I had heard anything by Julius Eastman, and, knowing nothing about his music or this piece, I was transfixed.

My next encounter with the composition was at the Barbican Hall in October 2025. Davóne Tines performed the prelude, and Seth Parker Woods, with his own pre-recorded tape parts, played the 10-part cello piece as solo performer. The performance so entralled me that I became discontent with my ignorance. I subsequently found two brilliant essays by Mary Jane Leach and Jessica Higgins that elaborated on the background of the piece and introduced me to the introductory letter.

This gradual discovery of the work in its full(er) form was accompanied with a shift in my attitude towards it. What gripped me in the first encounter was the intense rhythm and overflowing minimal structures of the cello piece. It was a purely musical reaction, and I wasn't particularly conscious of the programmatic or extramusical elements.

Davóne Tines' performance of the prelude then took me on a journey that I've attempted to distill into words at the start of this post. The simplicity of the material means that the voice has to generate the emotional arc of the piece. The stripping of complexity is compensated by the physicality of the performance. It is overwhelming and intimate, but all distinctions break down by the end of the piece. The physicality supplants everything. You feel that as the listener. You feel that as Joan.

And finally, there is the injection of Julius Eastman himself with his letter. He identifies with Joan, and in doing so, he introduces the subtext of his struggles as a gay black man working in an industry and living in a society not wholly welcoming of his presence. His struggle, Joan's struggle, and the composition itself become a single fluid entity.

Mary Jane Leach writes that Julius Eastman was "the embodiment of a composer/performer", and John Patrick Thomas that Julius Eastman had "a singing voice very close to his speaking voice." These two observations are very apparent in the prelude, but they hint at something more fundamental about his approach to music.

Julius Eastman was a creator and interpreter, casual listener and mordant critic. His music takes on chimeric and chameloenic qualities. Something you will discover in performances of his works is that there is incredible variation in the interpretations. Novel interpretation, indeed, was a vital part of his outlook on music. He wrote in his article "The Composer as Weakling" that a composer/performer (he doesn't make a distinction) "must become an interpreter, not only of her own music and career, but also the music of her contemporaries, and give a fresh new view of the known and unknown classics." It is perhaps then no surprise that Holy Presence developed as it did. The off-the-cuff prelude was something he felt was, as an interpreter of his own music, a necessary enrichment.

He sees the composer as someone who must not work in solitude, that a composer must be an active member of their musical community and become "the total musician, not only a composer." I think you could argue that Julius Eastman goes further than that - poet, writer, thinker, wanderer. The composer must be open to all and any influences. And composition is an iterative process that does not stop at the point of performance or publication, nor does it remain in the sole purview of the composer. If Julius Eastman's music feels organic, it is because he expects the performer to inject their own voice alongside his, and this gives it space to grow, to accept other influences, and transform into something new.

During the 1980s, Julius Eastman struggled to find professional work and became dependent on drugs. He lost much of his music during this period and drifted into obscurity. He died alone in 1990. His death went largely unnoticed at the time, and only in the new millennium did his music gain the attention it very much deserves. It's a sad story, but there is joy to be found in the revival of his work, which by necessity has asked for the same sort of radical reconstruction and reinterpretation he hints at in his writing.

Speaking boldly then, if I invoke, cheaply, the title of this post, is about emancipation from the strictures of form and hierarchy. Composer/performer. Singer/speaker. Writer/orator. Past/present. You/I. Us/them. Race/personhood. Justice/anarchy. Honesty/corruption. Virgin/martyr. Body/soul. Reinterpretation and synthesis are a gateway to freedom. They are a way to make sense of the insensible, the obscene, the unjust, and to articulate the truths that connect them. It is necessarily a communal process, and one that requires nurturing attention. Speaking alone is not good enough; our speech, meaning any and all expression, to have any impact, must be bold enough to challenge ourselves and inspire others.

Julius Eastman speaks boldly.

Afterword

I experienced Holy Presence live at the Barbican Hall on the 28th of October 2025. Davóne Tines sang the prelude, and Seth Parker Woods, with his own pre-recorded tape parts, played the 10-part cello piece as solo performer. The introduction was omitted. The concert featured several works by Julius Eastman, including Gay Geurilla which accompanied two male ballet dancers in an intimate pas de deux. That was a performance as equally moving as Holy Presence was, interrogating the limits of our convictions and the desperate, inconsolable need for intimacy. I will write about it another time perhaps.

There are several recordings of The Holy Presence of Joan d'Arc available online, including on Wild Up's fourth volume of Julius Eastman's work, featuring Davóne Tines and Seth Parker Woods. You can also find a video of a performance here. The original recording of Julius Eastman performing it can be heard on the album Unjust Malaise. I think in this version, you can really hear the physicality of the performance. The long moans of Joan's name sound less controlled, slightly more desperate, not just in the spiritual sense but in how the voice strains and gasps for air. By the end of the piece, there is palpable exhaustion in Julius Eastman's voice, as though he has given all he has to give. That isn't to take anything away from Davóne Tines, whose interpretation is striking because of its operatic power and sensitivity to the dramatic arc of the composition. I can't find any recordings of the introduction, but the text is reproduced in full in Mary Jane Leach's essay.

And finally, I would recommend giving this podcast a listen. Julius Eastman in his own words.

I will somewhat contradict myself later on in the post on this point.↩