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74TH SEASON 

OF CONCERTS

NOVEMBER 15, 2015 • NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
Louise Bourgeois, Paris Review, 1994, National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Gift of Carolyn Kaplan, © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, NY

PROGRAM

3:30 • West Building, West Garden Court

National Gallery of Art Wind Quintet

Sara Nichols, flute

Fatma Daglar, oboe

Christopher Hite, clarinet

Eric Dircksen, bassoon

Mark Hughes, horn

Paul Taffanel (1844-1908)

Quintet in G Minor

Allegro con moto

Andante

Vivace

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)

La Cheminee du Roi Rene, op. 205

Cortege

Aubade

Jongleurs (Jugglers)

La Malousinglade

Joutes sur I'arc (Jousts on the Arc)

Chasse a Valabre (Hunting at Valabre)

Madrigal — Nocturne

Eugene Bozza (1905-1991)

Scherzo, op. 48

Jean Francaix (1912-1997)

Quintet No. 1

Andante tranquillo; Allegro assai

Presto; Trio 

Tema; Andante

Var. 1 L'istesso tempo

Var. 2 Andante con moto

Var. 3 Lento

Var. 4 Vivo 

Var. 5 Andante

Tempo di marcia francese

George Gershwin (1898-1937),

arranged by William Hoyt

Three Preludes

Allegro ben ritmo e deciso 

Andante con moto e poco rubato

Allegro ben ritmato e deciso

74th Season • 3
The Musicians

National Gallery of Art Wind Quintet

Since the enthusiastic public reception of its first concert in 1995, the National Gallery of 

Art Wind Quintet has become a regular feature of the Gallery's popular Sunday evening 

concerts. Founded by former National Gallery of Art music director George Manos, the

ensemble explores and presents masterpieces of chamber music that are rarely heard, as

well as the standard classics for wind quintet. In 2007, the quintet was a featured resident

ensemble at the Amalfi Coast Music and Arts Festival in Vietri sul Mare, Italy, and in 2012 it

represented the Gallery in an exchange of resident ensembles with the Phillips Collection. In

2013, the quintet performed nineteenth-century French repertoire for winds in honor of the

exhibition Color, Line, Light: French Drawing, Watercolors, and Pastels from Delacroix to Signac.

4 • National Gallery of Art

Program Notes

French-American artist Louise Bourgeois (1911 - 2010) quoted Jean-Paul Sartre in interviews

and argued that she was an existentialist, not a surrealist. Bourgeois even titled one of her

works after Sartre's renowned play, No Exit. Based on that title, the Gallery's current exhibition

looks at both sides of Bourgeois, existentialist and surrealist, in a select group of about thirty

works, mainly drawings, prints, and illustrated books. Among the most exemplary of the

illustrated books is an extremely rare copy of He Disappeared into Complete Silence (1947),

comprised of nine seminal engravings and nine spine-chilling parables. Other key works in the 

exhibition will include semi-abstract ink drawings from 1947 and 1950; My Hand (1997), a

drawing of a knobby red hand on a page of blank sheet music; M is for Mother (1998), an image

of the letter M drawn in threadlike red lines; and The Family (2007), a drawing that reveals the

artist's distinctive vision of motherhood and family. Displayed at the center of this constellation of works on paper will be Germinal (1967), an alluring marble sculpture that speaks to the 

very essence of creativity.

Bourgeois was born in Paris, but spent much of her life and career in New York. In

2008, the Guggenheim Museum in New York presented a full career retrospective of her art,

and along with it, a concert entitled Songs Remembered. The concert featured some of the

artist's favorite French classical composers and songs, as well as traditional Parisian street

music. The wind quintet has selected pieces for today's concert that represent the music 

that Bourgeois enjoyed, as well as music that she would have heard both in Paris during her

youth, and in the United States as she worked.

Paul Taffanel, a celebrated composer, conductor, and professor, is considered the

founder of the French Flute School, which transformed flute playing in the mid-twentieth

century. He reintroduced the performance of baroque and classical masterpieces that

had been largely ignored for decades. A strong advocate of historic chamber works of

composers throughout Europe, Taffanel founded the Societe de musique de chambre pour

instruments a vents (Society of Chamber Music for Wind Instruments), a vital force in

the revival of the woodwind quintet. As a composer, Taffanel represents the final phase

of the great French romantic flute tradition. The style of the Quintet in G Minor represents

Taffanel's widely cosmopolitan embrace of elements beyond the borders of France.

Darius Milhaud —a violinist-turned-composer —left southern France to study

at the Paris Conservatoire, where he excelled in harmony and counterpoint. He was a

member of the group of composers known as Le Six, which considered their works to be

a reaction against the musical style of Richard Wagner and the impressionist music of 

Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy. Milhaud moved to California during World War II

and taught composition at Mills College, where his students included Dave Brubeck and

Burt Bacharach. Milhaud was a prolific composer who worked in a wide variety of styles

and genres, including soundtracks for film. La Cheminee du Roi Rene, a suite adapted from

a film score written for five instruments, is one of the most celebrated wind quintet works

of the twentieth century. Each movement evokes Milhaud's fascination with King Rene I

(1409-1480), who lived in a castle in Aix-en-Provence near the composer's birthplace,

and was known for his code of chivalry and legendary tournaments.

74th Season • 5
Eugene Bozza was a marvelously capable composer who came of artistic age in Paris

and composed in a lyrical, accessible, and elegant style. While he wrote large-scale stage

works, he is best known for his well-crafted solo and chamber works, which were sensitive

to the idiom of each instrument. Born in Nice, Bozza was an outstanding student at the Paris

Conservatoire, and later became a conductor at Paris's Opera Comique and the director of 

the Ecole Nationale de Musique e d'Art Dramatique in Valenciennes. This Scherzo artfully

employs rapid chromatic runs against harmonic planing in the style of Claude Debussy.

Jean Francaix was born of musical parents and by the age of six was composing

music in Ravel's style. At age ten, Francaix was introduced to the renowned composer

Nadia Boulanger, who later considered Francaix one of her best students. A brilliant pianist,

he debuted many of his own piano works and wrote prodigiously in a variety of forms,

including symphonic, ballet, choral, opera, and chamber music. Hallmarks of his work are

lightness, wit, and a conversational style between voices, all of which are charmingly

exhibited in his Quintet No. i. Francaix was highly skilled in the art of orchestration and able

to create a wide array of tonal colors and textures.

George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist, whose works encompassed popular tunes, jazz, and classical idioms. He later composed highly successful 

Broadway theater works. Beginning his studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, he later

asked to study with Stravinsky and Ravel, both of whom replied: "You're better off being 

a first-rate Gershwin than a second-rate Ravel or Stravinsky." Gershwin moved to Los

Angeles and composed movie scores, collaborating with the great stars of the golden age

of film. These preludes were first written for piano and later arranged for orchestra and a

variety of instrumental chamber music combinations.

Program notes on Louise Bourgeois contributed by Judith Brodie, curator and head of Modern

Prints and Drawings Department, National Gallery of Art.

Program notes on composers by Sara Nichols.

6 • National Gallery of Art

Upcoming events of the SeventyFourth Season of The William

Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot

Belin Concerts

National Gallery of Art

New Music Ensemble

Music by Morton Subotnick

Presented in honor of

The Serial Impulse at Gemini G.E.L.

November 22, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

National Gallery of Art Orchestra

Gillian Anderson, guest conductor

Cine-concert featuring Way Down East

Copresented with the Department of Film

November 29, Sunday, 2:00

East Building Auditorium

Mark O'Connor

An Appalachian Christmas

December 6, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

General Information

Admission to the National Gallery of Art

and all of its programs is free of charge,

except as noted.

The use of cameras or recording equipment

during the performance is not allowed.

Please be sure that all portable electronic

devices are turned off.

Concerts are made possible in part

through the generosity of donors to the

National Gallery of Art through The Circle.

Reserved seating is available in recognition

of their support. Please contact the

development office at (202) 842-6450 or

circle@nga.gov for more information.

www.nga.gov

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www.twitter.com/ngadc

www.facebook.com/nationalgalleryofart

The department of music produced these

program notes. Copyright © 2015 Board of

Trustees, National Gallery ofArt, Washington

Cover Heinrich von Forster, The Music Room

ofArchduchess Margarete, Princess ofSaxony,

in Schloss Ambras (detail), 1870s, National

Gallery of Art, Washington

Back cover West Building, East Garden Court,

National Gallery of Art, Gallery Archives

© Dennis Brack/Black Star