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

www.nga.gov

Cover: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Desdemona's Death-Song, 1875/1880,

National Gallery of Art, Washington, New Century Fund and Paul Mellon Fund

The Sixty-fifth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

“Sixty-five, but not retiring”

National Gallery ofArt

2,594th Concert

National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble

Presented in honor of

The Artist’s Vision: Romantic Traditions in Britain

November 26, 2006

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Ciro Pinsuti (1829-1888)

In This Hour ofSoftened Splendor

Sir William Sterndale Bennett (1816-1875)

Come Live with Me

Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900)

Echoes

Arthur Somervell (1863-1937)

Under the Greenwood Tree

Samuel Wesley (1766-1837)

O Sing unto My Roundelay

Robert Lucas Pearsall (1795-1856)

Who Shall Have My Lady Fair

William Beale (1784-1854)

Come Let Us Join the Roundelay

Eric Harding Thiman (1900-1975)

Spring Wind

Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)

The Blue Bird

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

A Shepherd’s Carol

Gerald Finzi (1901-1956)

My Spirit Sang All Day
INTERMISSION

Edward Elgar (1857-1934)

As Torrents in Summer

In Haven

Charles Hubert H. Parry (1848-1918)

My Delight and Thy Delight

Elgar

Where Corals Lie

Parry

Music When Soft Voices Die

Elgar

It’s oh, to Be a Wild Wind

The Snow

There Is Sweet Music

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) 

Serenade to Music

4

The Musicians

This concert is the sixth by the National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble in its

reconstituted form as a chamber choir. Under the leadership ofits artistic 

director, Rosa Lamoreaux, the choir has presented special programs in honor

of Gallery exhibitions, including most recently an oratorio by baroque composer Matthew Thiele in honor of Rembrandt’s Late Religious Portraits and a

concert of plainchant and Renaissance choral music in honor of Masterpieces

in Miniature: Italian Manuscript Illuminationfrom the J. Paul Getty Museum.

5
Program Notes

Taking a cue from a phrase in Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music,

Rosa Lamoreaux has dubbed this program “In Sweet Harmony.” Each ofthe

composers was selected because ofhis place in or relationship to the romantic movement in Britain, to complement the exhibition The Artist’s Vision:

Romantic Traditions in Britain, on view in the West Building’s prints and

drawings galleries through March i8, 2007. Composed ofselections from

the Gallery's permanent collection, the exhibition highlights many fine British prints and drawings from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth

centuries. Trends in British romantic art ofthe time included a fascination

with the individual and the visionary, a revival ofinterest in medieval art

and subject matter, and a revolt against conventional ideas and styles. The

romantic artisfs passionate identification with nature led to new developments in landscape, an area particularly well represented in the Gallery’s

collection by the works of artists as varied as David Cox, Cornelius Varley, and

John Ruskin.

Romantic composers, no less fascinated with nature, frequently set

poetry on that subject to music, as found in this program in Ciro Pinsuti’s

ode to twilight entitled In This Hour ofSoftened Splendor, Arthur Somervell’s

Under the Greenwood Tree, Eric Harding Thiman’s Spring Wind, Charles

Villiers Stanford’s The Blue Bird, and Edward Elgar’s Where Corals Lie and

The Snow. In both music and art, romanticism peaked before the middle

ofthe nineteenth century, but many ofits major trends lingered to the end

ofthe century or reappeared in the twentieth century. Twentieth-century

artists such as F. L. Griggs (1876-1938) and the early Graham Sutherland

(1903-1980), both influenced by William Blake and Samuel Palmer, have

their counterparts in composers Gerald Finzi, Thiman, and Williams, whose

choral music owes a deep debt to the romantic masters Johannes Brahms,

Elgar, and Felix Mendelssohn.

6

Next Week at the National Gallery of Art

Shaun Tirrell, pianist

Scarlatti: Sonata in F Minor, K. 466

Chopin: Ballade in F Major

Liszt: Funerailles and Vallee d’Obermann

Rachmaninoff: Sonata no. 2

December 3, 2006

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court