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.

Music Department

National Gallery ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

www.ngfl.gov

cover: Paul Stevenson Oles, Conceptual Drawingfor the East Building,

National Gallery ofArt, 1971, National Gallery of Art Archives

The Sixty-ninth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,811th Concert

National Gallery ofArt Chamber Players

Howard Bass, lute

Tina Chancey, Renaissance violin, viola da gamba

Sarah Cunningham, viola da gamba

Barbara Hollinshead, mezzo-soprano

Tom Zajac, recorders,flute, sackbut, bagpipes

Presented in honor of

Arcimboldo, 1326-1593: Nature and Fantasy

November 24, 2010 

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

East Building Auditorium

Admissionfree
Program

Music ofsixteenth-century Italy

Giacomo Fogliano (1468-1548)

L’Amor, dona, ch'io te porto

Anonymous (c. 1550)

Paduana del re; Saltarello; El Tutu (saltarello)

Diego Ortiz (1510-1570)

Recercada ottava

Bartolomeo Tromboncino (c. 1470-c. 1535)

Ostinato vo’seguire

Giovanni Bassano (c. 1558-1617)

Ricercata quinta

Tromboncino

Che debofar che mi consigli amore

Francesco Canova da Milano (1497-1543)

Fantasia

Baldassare Donato (c. 1525-1603)

Chi la gagliarda

Anonymous (c. 1550)

Amando e desiando

Text by Benedetto Cariteo (1450-1514)

Anonymous (c. 1550)

Aime ch’a torto

Jacques Arcadelt (c. 1507-1568)

Ofelici Occhi miei

Vincenzo Ruffo (1508-1587)

La Danza

Marco Cara (c. 1470-1525)

Non e Tempo

The Musicians

HOWARD BASS

A much sought-after accompanist for vocal and instrumental ensembles

throughout the Washington area, lutenist Howard Bass has performed

throughout the United States as a soloist. A founding member ofthe early

music ensemble La Rondinella, with which he made three recordings for the 

Dorian label, he has also performed and recorded with the Baltimore Consort,

the Choral Arts Society ofWashington, the Folger Consort, hesperus, and

the Smithsonian Chamber Players. In recent years he has worked extensively

as an accompanist with Sephardic singer and composer Flory Jagoda, whom 

he accompanied on her latest recording, Arvolika; and mezzo-soprano

Barbara Hollinshead, with whom he recorded an album of Elizabethan lute 

songs and solos entitled Loves Lost... and Found. Along with Tina Chancey

and Susan Gaeta, he is a member ofthe recently formed Trio Sefardi,

dedicated to the performance of Sephardic music. Howard Bass is manager

for cultural arts at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum ofthe

American Indian.

TINA CHANCEY

As cofounder and director ofthe early and traditional music ensemble

hesperus, Tina Chancey has dedicated her career to bringing the past alive

through combinations of early music, film, theater, dance, and world music. 

She plays historic bowed stringed instruments, including the kamenj, the

rebec, the vielle, and the viola da gamba, as well as the old time and Irish

fiddle. Specializing in music that ranges from Sephardic and blues to early

European music and jazz standards, her instrument of choice is the fivestringed pardessus de viole—the smallest version ofthe viola. Chancey was

awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts to present pardessus 

concerts at Carnegie Recital Hall and the Kennedy Center, and has recorded 

on the instrument for the Dorian and Golden Apple labels. Her three-CD set.

Versatile Viol, includes sonatas by the eighteenth-century composer Jean-Marie

Leclair, Appalachian music, and Scots-Irish music. A member ofToss the

3
Feathers and Trio Sefardi, Tina Chancey is a former member ofthe Folger

Consort, La Rondinella, the early music/rock band Blackmore’s Night, and 

the multimedia music theater ensemble quog. She directs and teaches at

the SoundCatcher workshops, in which musicians learn to play by ear and

improvise. In June 2008 Chancey received a lifetime achievement award

from Early Music America.

SARAH CUNNINGHAM

Recognized as one ofthe world’s foremost viola da gambists, Sarah Cunningham was cofounder with Monica Huggett ofTrio Sonnerie, with whom

she toured on four continents between 1982 and 1997 and recorded most of

the important chamber music for violin and viol. Cunningham was invited

by Sir James Galway to collaborate on his CDs of Bach’s chamber music for

flute and continuo, and toured with him in Europe and the United States.

As a concerto soloist, she has recorded works by Georg Philip Telemann 

with The Orchestra ofthe Age of Enlightenment and has toured and recorded with early music specialists William Christie, John Eliot Gardiner, Ton

Koopman, Gustav Leonhardt, Roger Norrington, Trevor Pinnock, and Simon 

Rattle. In addition to this collaboration with the National Gallery Chamber

Players, Cunningham has played with numerous viol consorts, including

Fretwork, Hesperion xx, Parthenia, and the medieval ensembles Sequentia 

and Virelai. She founded and directed the East Cork Early Music Festival in

Ireland from 2003-2009. Having taught viola da gamba in Bremen, Germany, and at numerous summer academies and master classes worldwide,

she has shifted her focus in recent years to performances that include dance,

improvisation, and visual art; writing fiction and poetry. Cunningham’s solo

CDs are available on the asv and EMi/Virgin Classics labels.

BARBARA HOLLINSHEAD

A veteran of numerous concerts at the National Gallery as a member ofthe 

Gallery’s Vocal Ensemble, Barbara Hollinshead has also sung at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig and the Cathedral of Saint Mark in Venice. A member of

the New York City-based chamber group artek, Hollinshead has been a

4

guest artist with many ofthe East Coast’s finest early music groups, including 

Chatham Baroque, hesperus, The New York Collegium, Opera Lafayette,

and The Washington Bach Consort. Her discography includes recordings

of Bach masses, Renaissance Spanish and Sephardic music, and songs for

voice and lute with Howard Bass, as well as a soon-to-be-released disc of

music by Heinrich Ignaz Biber, Giacomo Carissimi, and Salamone Rossi.

When not performing, Hollinshead maintains a private voice studio and is

an adjunct professor and musician-in-residence at The American University.

She counts among the highlights of her career a recent performance ofthe

role of Mother in Giancarlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, in which 

her son Ned sang the role ofAmahl.

TOM ZAJAC

Multi-instrumentalist Tom Zajac is a member ofthe well-known Renaissance

wind band Piffaro, with which he has performed on two previous occasions

at the National Gallery, and the New York-based musical and theatrical group

Ex Umbris. He is a frequent guest with the Boston Camerata, the Folger

Consort, hesperus, the Newberry Consort, and other early music groups in

the United States, and has toured extensively, appearing in concert series

and festivals in Australia, Bolivia, Colombia, Guam, Hong Kong, Israel,

Mexico, and throughout Europe and the United States. He can be heard on 

more than forty recordings in repertoire that ranges from medieval dances 

to twenty-first-century chamber music. Among his more unusual assignments in early music, he has played the hurdy gurdy for the American Ballet

Theater, the bagpipe for an internationally broadcast Gatorade commercial, 

and the serpent in a pdq Bach piece that was broadcast on American Public

Radio’s “Prairie Home Companion.” Zajac also performs on the santur and

the zurna with the Boston-based Turkish ensemble, Dunya. A resident of

Boston, he teaches at recorder and early music workshops and directs the 

early music ensembles at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

5
Program Notes

The exhibition of paintings by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526-1593) currently

on view in the East Building has elicited surprise and sometimes bewilderment on the part ofvisitors, many ofwhom had been unfamiliar with his

work. The composite heads, created completely from flora and fauna, confront the viewer with visages that are at once grotesque and fascinating.

Instead of eyes, mouths, noses, and cheeks, one finds flowers or cherries,

peas, cucumbers, peaches, broken branches, and dozens of other objects

and creatures. Ever since being rediscovered in the 1930s, Arcimboldo’s

paintings have been considered a source ofinspiration for the surrealists and

their successors. Art historians have also seen him as a typical representative

ofmannerism, a term used to describe an artistic style fashionable at European

courts in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Mannerist painters

rejected the rational, harmonious approach ofmuch Renaissance art in favor 

of ambiguity, virtuosity, and elegance. Along with their patrons, they prized

artifice, cleverness, obscure symbolism, and intellectual puzzles—all qualities

found in Arcimboldo’s paintings.

6

Studies in music history find similar characteristics in Italian music of

the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, noting that both painters

and musicians were inspired by the poetry of Giambattista Marino (1569 —

1625), Alessandro Tesauro (1558-1621), and Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano

Tori, better known as 11 Bronzino (1503-1572), who were in turn inspired by

the iconic Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374). Italian mannerist poets, musicians,

and artists borrowed from each other as they explored nature with touches

ofmagical fantasy. In 1591 the Milanese cleric Gregorio Comanini, an associate and friend ofArcimboldo, wrote: “The art ofmusic and the art of painting walk along the same path and follow the same laws of creation.” With the

sixteenth-century Italian music chosen for this program, the National Gallery

ofArt Chamber Players explore the phantasm-filled world ofArcimboldo

and the Renaissance mannerist philosophers and poets who inspired him.

The exhibition Arcimboldo, 1526-1593: Nature and Fantasy remains on

view until January 9, 2011.

Program notes by Stephen Ackert, head, music department, National Gallery

ofArt

7
Song Texts and Translations

November 24, 2010

L’amor, dona, ch’io te porto

L’amor, dona, ch’io te porto

Volentier vorla scoprite,

El mio affanno vorla dire

Che per te pena soporto.

Io non so come ti posa

Descoprir l’ardente foco

Che me bruza fmo al ossa

E non vedo tempo e loco;

E che, haime, bruzo infocho

Senaz aver alcun conforto.

Non me fido mandar meso

Per che temo esser gabato;

S’io te passo per apreso

Tu te volti in altro lato;

Chiusi son piu giomi stato

E son anche a pergior porto.

Ostinato vo’seguire

Ostinato vo’ seguire

La magnanima mia impresa

Fa mi amor qual voi offesa

S’io dovessi ben morire.

Fame ciel, fame fortuna

Bene o mal como a te piace

Ne piacer ne ingiuria alcuna

Per avilirmi o far piu audace

Che d l’un non son capace

L’altro piu non po fugire.

Che debo far che mi consegli amore

Che debo far che mi consegli amore?

Tempo e ben da morire,

Et ho tardato piu che non vorrei.

Madonna e morta e ha seco el mio core

E volendol seguire

Interromper convien questi anni rei,

Perche mai veder lei

Di qua non spero e l’aspetar m’e noia.

Poscia ch’ogni mia gioia

Per il suo dipartir in pianto e volta,

E ogni dolcezza di mia vita e tolta.

L’amor, dona, ch’io te porto

The love, Lady, that I bear you!

Gladly would I reveal it 

And tell you ofthe sufferings

I bear because of you.

I know not how might

Perceive the raging fire

That bums me to the core

And prevents my sensing time and place;

And by which—alas!—I am consumed

Altogether without a single hope.

I do not tmst myselfto send a messenger

Because I fear being cheated,

And ifI myself come into your presence

You turn aside.

Many days have gone by,

Yet my position is still worse.

Ostinato vo seguire

Stubbornly I follow you;

My great magnanimous enterprise

Is to do, my love, whatever offends you

In order to die well,

Stubbornly I pursue you...

Give me heaven, give me [bad] fortune;

Good or bad, as you please;

Neither pleasure nor any injury

To relieve me or to make me more bold

Ofthe one I’m incapable;

The other I cannot escape.

Che debo far, mi consigli amore

What should I do? Love, what do you advise?

Full time it is to die:

And I have delayed longer than I desired

My mistress is dead, and my heart withers;

And ifI wish to follow her,

I must interrupt these guilty years,

Because to see her again

I have no hope, and it is irksome ' to wait.

Since my every joy

By her departure is turned to tears,

And every sweetness ofmy life has been stolen.
Amor tu ‘1 senti ond’io teco mi doglio

Quanto e il danno aspro e grave 

Et so che del mio mal ti pesa e dole

Anzi del nostro, per che ad uno scoglio

Havem rotto la nave

Et in un punto ne e obsucrato il sole.

Qual ingegno a parole

Poria aguagliar il mio doglioso stato?

Ai orbo mondo ingrato

Gran cagion hai di dever pianger meco

Che quel ben che era in te perduto hai seco.

Chi la gagliarda

Chi la gagliarda, donne, vo'imparare,

Venite a noi, che siamo maestri fini;

Che di sera e de matini mai manchiamo di sonare:

Tan tan tan ta ri ra ti ra ri ra.

Provance un poco cance vuoi chiamare,

A passa dieci volte che salimo;

Che di sera e de mattina mai manchiamo di sonare:

Tan tan tan ta ri ra ti ra ri ra.

Amando e desiando

Amando e desiando i’vivo e sento

\0la doglia che se sente nel morire,

Amore mi fa viver in tormento,

Ne mi vuol vivo, ne mi vuol finire.

O felic’ occhi miei, felici voi

O felic' occhi miei, felici voi,

Che sete car' al mio sol

Perche sembianz' havete

De gli occhi che gli fu si dolc'e rei.

Voi ben voi sete voi,

Voi, voi felici et io,

Io no, che per quetar vostro desio,

Corr' amirar l'onde mi struggo poi.

Thou, Love, dost feel, therefore to thee I plain

How grievous is my loss;

I know my sorrows grieve and weigh thee down,

E'en as our common cause: for on one rock

We both have wreck'd our bark;

And in one instant was its sun obscured.

What genius can with words

Rightly describe my lamentable state?

Ah, blind, ungrateful world!

Thou hast indeed just cause with me to mourn;

That beauty thou didst hold with her is fled!

Chi la gagliarda

Whoever wishes to learn the galliard, ladies,

Come to us who are fine teachers

Who night and day never cease to play:

Tantira rira rira.

Practice a little and bring your friends:

After ten steps we make a leap,

Who night and day never cease to play:

Tantira rira rira.

Amando e desiando

Loving and desiring I live and feel

The sadness one feels in dying,

Love makes me live in torment,

I neither wish to be alive, nor desire my end.

O felici occhi miei

Oh, my happy eyes, happy you,

That can behold dearly my sun,

For [this is what appears to] the face,

To the eyes, to which it was so sweet and regal. 

You are beautiful, glowing,

You are happy, and I,

I am not, for to quiet my longing desire for you,

I look up at you, whereby then I suffer.
Non

e tempod’aspettare

Non

e tempod’aspettare

Quandos’ha bonazae vento

Che si vede in un momento

Ogni cosa variare.

None tempod’aspetare

Quandos’ha bonazae vento.

None tempo

This is not the time to wait

When one has good luck and wind

What one sees ina moment

Every thing will change.

This is not the time to wait

When he had good luck and wind.

Sia purl’homo taleo quale

Sempre tema el precipitio

Perche el ben va drieto el male

Se non substa nel initio

Perho faccia benl’officio

Chi ha la rotaa govemare.

It is also certain men who

Always fear the precipice

Because everything good goes to bad,

Perhaps not at the start.

So take advantage ofthe office

When it is your turn to govern.

Se tu sali fa pur presto

Lassa dire chi dir vole

Questo

e notoe manifesto

Che non duran le viole E la neve al caldo sole

Sole in aqua ritomare.

If you go up, please do it soon,

Let people say what they will;

This is well-known and obvious

That the pansies do not last

And the snow in the sun's warmth

Returns to water.