For the convenience of concertgoers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:oo pm.

The use of cameras or recording equipment during the

performance is not allowed. Please be sure that cell phones,

pagers, and other electronic devices are turned off.

Please note that late entry or reentry after 6:30 pm 

is not permitted.

Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

Mailing address

2000B South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

COVER: Belbello da Pavia, Initial A: Young Christ Blessing, leaffrom

an antiphonal, Venice, 1467-1470, Ms. 96, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

The Sixty-fourth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,547th Concert

National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble

Rosa Lamoreaux, artistic director

Gregorian Chant and the Music of

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Presented in honor of Masterpieces in Miniature:

Italian Manuscript Illuminationfrom the J. Paul Getty Museum

November 6, 2005

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
The audience is asked to refrain from

applauding until the intermission and the end ofthe program.

Program

Gregorian Chants

Resurrexi

Introit for Easter

(Preceded by the dialogue trope Quern queritis)

Aspiciens a longe

Responsory for the first Sunday of Advent

(Preceded by a lesson from the book of Isaiah, chapter i)

Missus est Gabriel

Responsory for the second Sunday of Advent

(Preceded by a lesson from the book of Isaiah, chapter 7)

Hodie nobis celorum rex

Responsory for Christmas

(Preceded by a lesson from the book of Isaiah, chapter 9)

Laude

Christo e nato e humanato

Facciam laude a tuct’l sancti

INTERMISSION

Gregorian Antiphon

Veni sponsa Christi

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525-1594)

Motet: Veni sponsa Christi

Palestrina

Mass: Veni sponsa Christi

Kyrie

Gloria

Credo

Sanctus

Agnus Dei
The Musicians

This is the second season of concerts at the National Gallery in which its resident Vocal Arts Ensemble performs as a chamber choir. The ensemble last 

year presented two concerts in honor of exhibitions: nineteenth-century vocal

chamber music in connection with All the Mighty World: The Photographs

ofRoger Fenton, 1852-1860; and the St. Matthew Passion by Johann Theile

(1646-1724) in conjunction with Rembrandt's Late Religious Portraits. For this

concert the ensemble takes as a starting point the Gregorian chants Resurrexi

and Aspiciens a longe, music that appears in two ofthe manuscripts in the

exhibition Masterpieces in Miniature: Italian Manuscript Illuminationfrom the

J. Paul Getty Museum.

The singers participating in this concert are sopranos Rosa Lamoreaux

and Gisele Becker, altos Barbara Hollinshead and Roger O. Isaacs, tenors

Gary Glick and Gerald Stacey, and basses Bobb Robinson and Robert W.

Tudor. The Gallery music department extends special thanks to Bobb

Robinson, who assumed responsibility for the artistic direction ofthis program in addition to his role as a singer, and to Ruth Steiner, professor of

music emerita at the Catholic University of America, who generously

shared her expertise in the field of chant as an advisor for this project and

provided the program notes.

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Program Notes

Gregorian chant is not often performed in concerts, because it primarily functions as a form of prayer, specifically in the context of Roman Catholic worship. The special circumstances ofthis program—music in association with

an exhibition ofmanuscripts, many ofwhich contain musical notation— 

give rise to a concert presentation. The first chant is an introit, or entrance

song, often sung as choir and clergy process to the place in the church or 

cathedral where the Mass is to be celebrated. Before singing the introit proper, 

which begins with the text Resurrexi et adhunc tecum sum (I arose and am

still with thee), the ensemble performs one ofthe tropes that was traditionally

sung as an introduction to an introit in the medieval period. Tropes such as

Quern queritis, which presents a dialogue between an angel and the women

who were looking for the body ofJesus in his tomb, are seen as the first manifestation ofliturgical drama.

The second, third, and fourth chants in the program are responsories,

relatively long and elaborate chants that are sung during matins, the first of

the daily services known collectively as the Divine Office. A typical matins

service in a cathedral would have included nine readings from the Bible or

other sacred literature, each followed by a responsory. In order to duplicate

the context in which this music would have been heard in the medieval and

Renaissance eras, each responsory in this performance is preceded by an

appropriate scriptural reading. A familiar modern equivalent to matins is

the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols that is broadcast worldwide each

Christmas Eve from Westminster Abbey in London. The importance ofthe

responsories is suggested by the fact that in illuminated manuscripts it

is the initial letter ofthe responsory that is decorated, rather than the first

letter ofthe text ofthe lesson.

Two examples of laude, devotional songs that are for the most part in

the vernacular, conclude the first half ofthe program. Laude were sung

by religious confraternities in Italy as early as the thirteenth century. The

5
lavish decoration of a manuscript gives evidence ofthe relative prosperity of

the guilds and brotherhoods who met to sing the lauds as well as the devotion that prompted such a generous use ofresources. Although the notation

of laude, like the notation of chant, gives no indication as to the intended

rhythm, these works are often performed with strongly marked rhythms,

with the blessing ofmost musicologists. Some members ofthe scholarly 

community believe that because the notes all look essentially the same they 

were meant to be given equal value, while others point to the rhythmic

notation in a few isolated examples as a guide for the performance of all

music in this style. But the more widely held view is that the rhythms have 

to be invented for each performance, along with the rhythmic patterns

used by any accompanying instruments, and that this was the practice in

ancient times.

The role ofthe antiphon in the Divine Office is to introduce and follow

the chanting of a psalm. The antiphon Veni sponsa Christi (Come, Thou

Bride of Christ) is one ofseries of chants that were often used on the feast

day of a female saint, few of whom had specific liturgies such as existed for 

the feast days of major saints and apostles. The text is among several dozen

that would have been sung to the same melody, and the melody consists of

four musical phrases that are relatively easy to identify. The first begins

with a descending third and a return to the initial note. The second, which

corresponds to the words accipe coronam, also begins with a descending

third but continues to descend thereafter. The third phrase begins with the

words quam tibi, and the fourth with the word praeparavit.

Ve - ni spon - sa Chri - sti, ac - ci - pe co - ro - nam,

• • •

quam ti - bi do - mi - nus prae - pa - ra - vit in ae - ter - num.

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For both his motet and Mass ofthe same title Palestrina uses this

Gregorian antiphon as the basic melodic material. In the motet each section

is a polyphonic elaboration of one phrase ofthe chant The Mass belongs to 

a genre that was identified until recent times as a “parody Mass” but is now

termed an “imitation Mass,” reflecting the work’s derivation from an extant

polyphonic composition. In this case borrowings from the motet are most

easily discernible in the Kyrie, but they also recur throughout the Mass.

The polyphonic works in this program make the point that elaboration

was employed not only by the artists who recorded and preserved chants

in manuscripts but also by those who realized the music in performing it.

This elaboration was an important aspect ofthe development of musical

style during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and any understanding

ofthe history of music in Western Europe must acknowledge the role that

Gregorian chant played as an essential part ofits foundation.

Program notes by Ruth Steiner