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 of

the West Building 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

irww.nga.gov

The Sixty-fifth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,614th Concert

Carthage College Lincoln Chamber Singers

Peter Dennee, music director

Jane Livingston, harpsichordist and pianist

Stephen Smith, pianist

April 15, 2007

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Performed without intermission

Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704)

Psalm 126: Nisi Dominus (c. 1670)

Robert Beaser (b. 1954)

Psalm 150 (1995)

Kenneth Jennings (b. 1925)

Spiritual Songs (2000)

Text by George Herbert (1593-1633)

Discipline

Love

Antiphon

Lloyd Pfautsch (1921-2003)

Prayer (1975)

Text by Dag Hammarskjold (1905-1961)

Gwyneth Walker (b. 1947)

Harlem Songs (2000)

Text by Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

Spirituals

Harlem Night Song

Tambourines

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Selections from Liebeslieder Walzer, op. 52 (1869)

Texts translated by Georg Friedrich Daumer (1800-1875)

Rede, Madchen, allzu liebes

Am Gesteine rauscht die Flut

O die Frauen, o die Frauen 

Ein kleiner, hubscher Vogel nahm den Flug

Wenn so lind dein Auge mir

Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943)

Nocturnes (2005)

Sa Nuit d’ete

Text by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

Soneto de la noche

Text by Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

Sure on This Shining Night

Text by James Agee (1909 -1955)
The Musicians

CARTHAGE COLLEGE LINCOLN CHAMBER SINGERS

The Carthage College Lincoln Chamber Singers compose a mixed choral

chamber ensemble ofsixteen singers. The choir performs sacred and secular

music, ranging from early music to that ofthe twenty-first century, as well

as arrangements offolk and world pieces. The Lincoln Chamber Singers perform regionally and nationally. In fall 2006 they were invited to perform in

Madison at the annual conference ofthe Wisconsin Music Educators Association. The ensemble’s spring 2007 tour ofthe Baltimore/Washington area 

marks its first to the East Coast.

Members ofthe Lincoln Chamber Singers are Kristen Barnes, Shannon

Burke, Megan Lyne, Caitlin Smulski (sopranos); Michelle Anderson, Rachel

Cui, Jennifer Diethart, Alison Walker (altos); Andrew Johnson, Sean Knudson, Ben Kuttler, Kenton Rauwerdink (tenors); Sean Bryan, Andrew Lenox,

Aaron Steckman, and Jamie Wilson (basses).

PETER DENNEE

Peter Dennee is associate professor ofmusic and director of choral activities

at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he oversees the Carthage

Women’s Ensemble, Chapel Choir, Lincoln Chamber Singers, and Masterworks Chorale. In addition, he teaches choral conducting, choral literature,

and music education courses. He earned a doctor ofmusical arts degree in

choral music from Arizona State University, a master ofmusic degree in

music education from the Peabody Institute ofthe Johns Hopkins University,

and a bachelor of arts degree in music education from Carthage. Dennee is

also active as a guest conductor, clinician, and composer. His composition

Three Mystical Songs for unaccompanied women’s choir was recently selected

as the winner ofthe 2007 Wisconsin Choral Directors Association Choral

Composition Competition.

4

Program Notes

In recognition ofNational Poetry Month, the Lincoln Chamber Singers’ program comprises exemplary choral literature with texts drawn from Hebrew

scripture; seventeenth-century metaphysical poetry; the writings ofthe second

United Nations Secretary-General; a set of pieces by a twentieth-century African American poet; German translations of Russian and Polish “folk” poetry;

and poems oflove and night written in French, Spanish, and English.

The French baroque composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier lived and

worked in the shadow ofthe French court composer Jean-Baptiste Lully

(1632-1687). Charpentier’s recognition and fame were posthumous, and

many now consider him to be the superior composer. He composed over 

eighty psalm settings, including Psalm 126: Nisi Dominus, which is believed

to be from the early period ofhis career. The music is Italianate in style and

shifts between solo quartet and full satb (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) choir.

Charpentier employed his characteristic word-painting here, especially in

the words surgite (rise up) and somnum (sleep).

Robert Beaser is a contemporary American composer—head ofthe

composition department at The Juilliard School. Psalm 150 is a song of

praise that was commissioned in 1995 for the one hundred fiftieth anniversary ofthe Temple Shaaray Tefila in New York City. Like Charpentier’s

Psalm 126, Beaser’s Psalm 150 shifts between solo quartet and full SATB choir.

The music begins calmly and gradually builds in intensity, becoming more

rhythmic and utilizing the upper ranges ofthe voices, culminating in the

phrase “Let all that have breath praise our God.”

Composer Kenneth Jennings is conductor emeritus ofthe St. OlafChoir

and Tosdal professor emeritus ofmusic at St. OlafCollege. His thirty-seven

years there have included twenty-two as conductor ofthe St. OlafChoir. A

graduate of St. Olaf, he holds a master ofmusic degree in composition from

the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, and a doctor ofmusic degree in

choral music from the University ofIllinois.

5
The texts for Jennings’ Spiritual Songs come from The Temple, a volume

of over one hundred sixty religious poems by George Herbert. Discipline is a

fervent plea to God to forego wrath and rod, and use the gentle discipline of

love instead. Love portrays an intimate dialogue between Love and the Soul.

Herbert wrote Antiphon in the style of a liturgical psalm setting (an antiphon), 

even including the terms Cho. (chorus) and Vers, (verse) exactly as they would

have appeared in contemporary church music manuscripts. Rather than use

a biblical phrase for the chorus and a psalm for the verses (as was common

practice), Herbert used the antiphon form but created his own sacred text.

Lloyd Pfautsch, former professor ofsacred music and director of chorus

at Southern Methodist University, uses a sparse accompaniment with unison

and two-part singing to enhance a thought-provoking text by Dag Hammarskjold, former United Nations Secretary-General. Markings, the collected

writings of Hammarskjold, was published after his untimely death while

traveling to negotiate a cease-fire in the Congo.

American composer Gwyneth Walker’s musical catalogue includes over

one hundred twenty commissioned works for orchestra, band, chorus, and

chamber ensemble. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Hartt

School. Her Harlem Songs are settings of poetry by Langston Hughes, an

African American poet who lived most of his life in Harlem and whose 

poetry was inspired by the culture ofthe neighborhood. Walker’s music

is highly evocative ofthe text. In Spirituals, ascending patterns represent

’‘the rising shafts ofmountains....” Harlem Night Song is nocturnal and 

atmospheric, and the chorus sings “I love you,” as if calling back and 

forth across the rooftops. Tambourines utilizes a variety of hand-tapping

and vocal patterns to mimic the sounds ofthis percussive instrument

and capture the spirit and joy of playing it.

Johannes Brahms chose the poems for Liebeslieder Walzer from the second volume of a two-volume collection ofinternational poetry (Polydora, ein

weltpoetisches Liederbuch), translated into German by Georg Friedrich Daumer. The poems Brahms selected had been translated from Russian, Polish,

and Hungarian. He began to work on the love-song waltzes shortly

6

after completing the Deutsches Requiem. The Liebeslieder do not constitute

a typical song-cycle, in which the order ofthe songs is critical to the telling 

of a story. Brahms is known to have performed these settings in a variety

of combinations.

Morten Lauridsen is professor ofmusic at the University of Southern

California’s Thornton School of Music. In his book Choral Music ofthe

Twentieth Century (Amadeus Press, 2005), Nick Strimple states that Lauridsen is “the only American composer in history who can be called a mystic

[whose] probing, serene work contains an elusive and indefinable ingredient

which leaves the impression that all the questions have been answered....

From 1993, Lauridsen’s music rapidly increased in international popularity,

and by century’s end he had eclipsed Randall Thompson as the most frequently performed American choral composer.” Nocturnes, commissioned

by the American Choral Directors Association and premiered at its 2005 

national conference in Los Angeles, is a set ofthree pieces for mixed choir.

The first and third are accompanied by piano, and the second is a cappella.

Lauridsen’s harmonic textures aptly evoke the texts in these songs oflove

and night.

Program notes by Peter Dennee

Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

David Hardy, cellist

Lisa Emenheiser, pianist

Music by Beethoven, Grieg, and Stravinsky

April 22, 2007

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court