Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

Mailing address

200ob South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-third Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art 

2,505th Concert

National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble

and National Gallery Orchestra

Samuel Gordon, guest conductor

Robert Petillo, tenor soloist

Luther Stovall, reader

October 17, 2004

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
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 concerts now begin at 6:30 pm.

Late entry or reentry after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

cover: Roger Fenton, The Cloisters, Tintem Abbey, 1854,

salt print, National Gallery of Art, Anonymous Gift

2,505th Concert

October 17, 2004, 6:30 pm

Presented in honor ofthe exhibition

All the Mighty World: The Photographs of

Roger Fenton, 1852-1860

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

Simple Symphony, Op. 4 (1933-1934)

Boistrous Bourree

Playful Pizzicato 

Sentimental Saraband

Frolicsome Finale 

National Gallery Orchestra

Charles Ives (1874-1954)

I Travelled among Unknown Men (William Wordsworth)

The Rainbow: So May It Be! (Wordsworth)

Steven Combs, bass-baritone

Francis Conlon, pianist

Nick Peros (b. 1963)

Fall, Leaves, Fall (Emily Bronte)

She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways (Wordsworth)

Arranged for voice and instrumental ensemble by Samuel Gordon

Rosa Lamoreaux, soprano
Thomas F. Walmisley (1783-1866)

Music, All Powerful (Henry Kirke White)

John Tavener (b. 1944)

The Lamb (William Blake)

Edward Elgar (1857-1943)

There Is Sweet Music, Op. 53, No. 1 (Alfred Lord Tennyson)

As Torrents in Summer (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Edwin Fissinger (1938-1990)

Music, When Soft Voices Die (Percy Bysshe Shelley)

Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)

The Blue Bird, Op. 119, No. 3 (Mary Coleridge)

Cupid and Rosalind (Thomas Lodge)

The National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble

Intermission

Benjamin Britten

Nocturne for Tenor, Seven Obbligato Instruments, and Strings

Op. 60 (1958)

On a Poet’s Lips I Slept (Shelley)

Below the Thunders ofthe Upper Deep (Tennyson)

Encinctured with a Twine of Leaves (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

Midnight’s Bell Goes Ting, Ting, Ting (Thomas Middleton)

But That Night When on My Bed I Lay (Wordsworth)

She Sleeps on Soft, Last Breaths (Wilfred Owen)

What Is More Gentle? (John Keats)

When Most I Wink (William Shakespeare)

Robert Petillo, tenor

The Musicians

SAMUEL GORDON

Samuel Gordon is director of choral studies and coordinator ofthe vocal and

keyboard divisions at the University ofAkron (Ohio). His singing and conducting career has included more than thirty performances at the National 

Gallery between 1985 and 2003, when he was a member ofthe National 

Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble and conductor ofthe Maryland Camerata. As

guest conductor, Gordon has appeared with the Taipei Philharmonic, the

Pennsylvania Ballet Orchestra, the Perugia (Italy) Chamber Orchestra, and

the Canton (Ohio) Symphony. He has been a vocal soloist with the National 

Gallery Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, and the symphony

orchestras of Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Saint Louis, and El Paso.

Concert tours outside the United States have taken him to the Salzburg,

Rheingau, Bregenz, Ljubljana, Flanders, and Spoleto International Festivals.

Currently the artistic director of Corofest Umbria, he has conducted and

taught at the Assisi Music Festival, the International Festival ofChoral

Singing in Castiglione del Lago, and the Gubbio International Festival.

Recipient ofthe doctor of music degree with highest honors from the

University of Indiana, Samuel Gordon has studied conducting under Julius

Herford and Robert Shaw. Gordon has recorded for Koch International

Classics and Telarc International and has published compositions for 

National Music Publishers.

ROSA LAMOREAUX

Soprano Rosa Lamoreaux is known for her sense of style, incandescent

presence, and “a voice whose pure beauty is one ofWashington’s richest

natural resources” (Washington Post). She is a frequent performer at music

festivals, including those of Carmel, California; Bethlehem, Pennsylvania;

and Leipzig, Halle, and Berlin, Germany. Orchestras with which she has

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sung include the Atlanta and Cincinnati Symphonies, both under Robert

Shaw, the National Gallery Orchestra under George Manos, and the

Washington Chamber Symphony at the Kennedy Center. Lamoreaux

frequently sings with Hesperus, the Folger Consort, and Musicians from

Marlboro. Her many concert tours abroad include performances at the

Rheingau Music Festival in Germany, concerts in Italy for La Fenice 

Chamber Music Festival, the Scandinavian Music Festival in Denmark,

and vocal chamber music recitals at the Louvre in Paris and in Central

and South America. Her performances with the Smithsonian Chamber

Orchestra, the Bethlehem Bach Festival, the Carmel Bach Festival, and

the National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble have been broadcast on National

Public Radio. Her CD recordings, all on the Koch Classics label, include

Luminous Spirit (chants of Hildegard von Bingen), Dancing Day (Christmas

music ofthe twelfth to the sixteenth centuries), and My Thing Is My Own

(bawdy songs ofseventeenth-century England). With pianist Betty Bullock,

she has recently recorded Classical Cabaret, a CD of American and French

music in a light vein.

STEVEN COMBS

An active concert artist and a winner ofthe competition sponsored by the

National Association ofTeachers of Singing and the Metropolitan Opera

National Council Auditions, Steven Combs has appeared as soloist with

many ensembles, including the Cathedral Choral Society, the Washington

Bach Consort, The Fairfax Choral Society, and the Master Chorale of

Washington. He has sung at Lincoln Center, the Washington National

Cathedral, and the Kennedy Center. With the Master Chorale ofWashington,

he was featured in the world premiere performance and broadcast of Daniel

Gawthrop’s In Quiet Resting Places. Other recent performances include

the role ofAdam in Haydn’s Creation with the Cathedral Choral Society of

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Washington under the baton of Leonard Slatkin. Combs made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1991 under the baton ofJames Levine in the world

premiere ofJohn Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles. In 1993 he sang

the title role in Colin Graham’s first staging of Britten’s Billy Budd at the

Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. He has performed other principal roles with

the Minnesota Opera, the Florentine Opera, and the Boston Lyric Opera.

NATIONAL GALLERY ORCHESTRA

The National Gallery Orchestra was founded in 1943 and consisted initially 

of approximately twenty-five players who were also members ofthe National 

Symphony. Gradually growing in size, it eventually reached the size and

status of a symphony orchestra. The ensemble undertakes the full range of

chamber and symphonic repertoire and has frequently presented first performances ofworks by American composers, most notably the 1953 premiere

of Charles Ives’ First Symphony under the direction of Richard Bales.

NATIONAL GALLERY VOCAL ARTS ENSEMBLE

Sopranos Tenors

Rosa Lamoreaux Robert Petillo

Gisele Becker Gary Glick

Mezzo-soprano Baritones

Barbara Hollinshead Steven Combs

Robb Robinson

Countertenor

Roger 0.Isaacs Bass

ICC. Armstrong

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The National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble appears for the first time in this

concert in its reconstituted form as a chamber choir. It was founded in 1985

as a vocal quartet by former Gallery music director George Manos, who

presented it regularly in that form until his retirement in 2003. Under its

new artistic director, Rosa Lamoreaux, the ensemble will participate in a

performance on February 6, 2005, ofthe Saint Matthew Passion of baroque

composer Johann Ludwig Thiele, with the Smithsonian Chamber Players 

under the direction of Kenneth Slowik, and on June 26, 2005, in a program

of Renaissance a cappella choral music.

THE READER

Luther M. Stovall (Lou) is an artist, printmaker, and curator of collections

specializing in Washington-area artists. In 1968 he founded Workshop,

Inc., a studio for silkscreen printmaking. Since then, Stovall has collaborated with more than sixty artists to make limited edition fine art prints. A

member ofthe National Gallery of Art’s Trustees’ Council, Stovall has given 

several prints to the Gallery: Jacob Lawrence, Revolt on the Amistad, 1989;

David Driskell, Dancing Angel, 2002; and Sam Gilliam, Ars, 2003. Mr.

Stovall is also a member ofthe PEN/Faulkner Foundation.

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Program Notes

ALL THE MIGHTY WORLD: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF

ROGER FENTON, 1852 - i860

This major exhibition of one ofthe most important nineteenth-century photographers opens today at the Gallery, presenting approximately ninety photographs that survey all aspects of Roger Fenton’s short but groundbreaking

career. Born in 1819, Fenton studied law and painting before turning to

photography, probably in 1851. During the next decade, he produced a body of

work that represents some ofthe greatest accomplishments in the history

ofthe medium. He made ambitious studies ofthe English countryside, country houses, and cathedrals, as well as portraits ofthe royal family, a series of

still lifes, and studies offigures in Asian costume. While several of Fenton’s

photographs are distinguished by their daring formal compositions, others

are notable for their evocative depictions oflight, atmosphere, and place.

All the Mighty World, the exhibition title, is a phrase from William Wordsworth’s poem about Tintern Abbey, where Fenton frequently photographed,

and is suggestive of his great ambition for both his own photographs and

the medium itself.

Composers tended to turn to poetry even more frequently than visual

artists to give context and meaning to their work, and this program is an

exploration of poems ofWordsworth and other great English poets as they

were set to music. One American poet, Longfellow, is included, thanks to

the interest in his work on the part ofthe English composer Edward Elgar.

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All the Mighty World: The Photographs ofRoger Fenton, 1852-1860, is

the first exhibition in the National Gallery’s newly dedicated photography

galleries, a suite offive rooms where photographs will be displayed on a

rotating basis. The exhibition was organized by the National Gallery of Art,

Washington, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Metropolitan 

Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition at the National Gallery ofArt

is made possible through the generous support ofthe Trellis Fund and The 

Ryna and Melvin Cohen Family Foundation. The exhibition is supported by

an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Program notes by Stephen Ackert

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