For the convenience of concertgoers

the Cafe Provencal 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

The Sixty-fourth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,564th Concert

Egidius Kwartet

Peter de Groot, alto, Marco van de Klundert, tenor

Hans Wijers, baritone, Donald Bentvelsen, bass

“Amorous Intrigues and Polyphonic Refinement”

Presented in Honor ofAmorous Intrigues and Painterly

Refinement: The Art ofFrans van Mieris

March 19, 2006

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission fee
This concert is made possible in part by a

grant from the Royal Netherlands Embassy.

Program

Anonymous 

Wy comen hier gheloopen

Nicolas Gombert (c. 1500-after 1556)

A him gran tort

Thomas Crecquillon (c. 1500-1557)

Fortune hellas

Mi levay pour ung matin

Ung gay bergier

Clemens non papa (c. 1510-1556)

Een Venus schoon

Gheerkin de Hondt (flourished 1520-1550)

A vous me rends

Het was my van te voren

Anonymous

Lessiez parlez

Sifayme mon amy

Johannes Ghiselin (fl. 1491-1507)

J’ayme hein mon amy

Anonymous

N’est ii point bien infortune

Anonymous 

Dese coxkens

Josquin Baston (fl. 1542-1567)

Een gilde jent

Lupus Hellinck (c. 1496-1541)

Nieuwe Almanack

Janne moye
INTERMISSION

Jacobus Arcadelt (1505-1567)

Robin par bois

Orlandus Lassus (1532-1594)

Orsus,filles

La nuictfroide et sombre

Matona mia cara

Anonymous

Een sotte cluyte

Ic weet een vrauken

Een boer

Ghisternavent was ick maegt

Mi heefi een piperken

Laurentius the Elder (dates unknown) 

Waer is by nu?

Josquin des Prez (c. 1440-1521)

Mille regretz

Jean de Richafort (c. 1480-c. 1547)

Tru tru trut avant, ilfault boire

Benedictus Appenzeller (c. 1485-c. 1558)

Buvons ma comeres

The Musicians

The Egidius Kwartet was founded in 1995 by four members of Ton Koopman’s Amsterdam Baroque Choir with the aim of performing Renaissance 

and contemporary music from the Low Countries. The quartet chose to

name itself after Egidius, an elegiac character from a Middle Dutch poem in

the Gruythuys Manuscript (Bruges, c. 1380 -c. 1390). Although the heart of

the quartet’s repertoire is music written during the reign ofthree Habsburg

monarchs (Charles V, Margaretha of Austria, and Philip 11), the ensemble

frequently sings and records music from other periods as well. It has performed works by composers as divergent as Franz Schubert and Kurt Weill,

and in 2005 it released a collection oftwentieth-century songs by Dutch 

and Flemish composers, entitled Egidius zingt Egidius. A favorite at the

famous Holland Early Music Festival, the quartet has also performed at

the Dubrovnik Early Music Festival, the Flanders Festival, and the Tagen

der alten Musik in Innsbruck, Austria, among many others.

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Program Notes

The Franco-Flemish composers ofthe sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 

were internationally admired and respected. In the course ofthe musical 

Renaissance they were responsible for many compositional innovations,

while still maintaining the elegant and refined standard for household music 

that prevailed during the Habsburgs’ rule ofwhat later became known as

The Netherlands and Belgium. A great many oftheir songs deal with the 

same themes that Frans van Mieris (1635-1681) depicts in his paintings:

love, deceit, vanity, and aberrations of human behavior. Like the paintings, 

the songs are intimate in scale, seldom lasting more than three minutes.

They were commonly played by the Dutch middle class, most frequently

as background music for banquets or as entertainment in taverns. The popularity ofthis music lasted for well over one hundred years, through the lifetime of Frans van Mieris and beyond.

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