77TH SEASON OF

CONCERTS

national gallery of art | march 17, 2019
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Parthenia

Beverly Au, treble and bass viol 

Lawrence Lipnik, tenor viol 

Rosamund Morley, treble and tenor viol 

Lisa Terry, bass viol

with Ryland Angel, tenor and countertenor

Celebrating Drawing in Tintoretto’s Venice and 

Venetian Prints in the Time of Tintoretto

Tomb Sonnets 

March 17, 2019 | 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Florentio Maschera (c. 1540 – 1584)

Canzon Quinta “La Maggia”

Bartolomeo Tromboncino (c. 1470 – 1535)

“Non val acqua al mio gran foco”

Anonymous, early 16th century

Gagliarda, “La cara cosa”

Vincenzo Ruffo (c. 1508 – 1587)

Capriccio, “La Gamba”

Marchetto Cara (c. 1465 – 1525)

“Non è tempo d’aspettare”

Selections from Musica Nova (Venice, 1540)

Giulio Segni da Modena (1498 – 1561)

Ricercare III

Adriano Willaert (c. 1490 – 1562)

Ricercare X

Giulio Segni da Modena

Ricercare XIII

PROGRAM Andrea Gabrieli (c. 1532 – 1585)

“Asia Felice”

Nicolò Corradini (1585 – 1646)

Canzon sexta: “La sincopata”

Andrea Gabrieli

Ricercar del secondo tono

Giovanni Gabrieli (1554 – 1612)

Canzon seconda a quattro

Carlo Gesualdo (1566 – 1613)

“Gagliarda del Principe di Venosa”

Cipriano de Rore (1515 – 1565)

“Ancor che col partire”

Gioseffo Guami (1542 – 1611)

Canzona Francese: “La Guamina”

Giovanni Cavaccio (c. 1556 – 1626)

“Pavana & Saltarello”

Martin Kennedy (2014)

Tomb Sonnets, for countertenor and viol consort

I. Sonnet Found in Laura’s Tomb

II. On Visiting the Tomb of Burns

III. Sonnet on Dante’s Divina Commedia

Girolamo Parabosco (c. 1524 – 1557)

“Da pacem”

Philippe Verdelot (c. 1470 – 1530)

“Italia mia”

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THE MUSICIANS

Parthenia

The viol quartet Parthenia brings early music into the present with its repertoire that 

animates ancient and newly commissioned contemporary works with a ravishing 

sound and a remarkable sense of ensemble. These “local early-music stars,” hailed by 

the New Yorker and music critics throughout the world, are “one of the brightest lights 

in New York’s early-music scene.” Parthenia is presented in concerts across America 

and produces its own series in New York City, collaborating regularly with the world’s 

leading early-music specialists. The quartet has been featured in prestigious festivals 

and series as wide-ranging as Music Before 1800, the Harriman-Jewell Series, Maverick 

Concerts, the Regensburg Tage Alter Musik, the Shalin Lui Performing Arts Center, the 

Pierpont Morgan Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Yale Center for British 

Art, Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. 

Parthenia’s performances range from its popular touring program “When Music & 

Sweet Poetry Agree,” which celebrates Elizabethan poetry and music with actor Paul 

Hecht, to the complete viol fantasies of Henry Purcell, the complete instrumental works 

of Robert Parsons, and commissions and premieres of new works annually. Parthenia 

has recorded As It Fell on a Holie Eve — Music for an Elizabethan Christmas, with soprano 

Julianne Baird, Les Amours de Mai, with Baird and violinist Robert Mealy, A Reliquary 

for William Blake, Within the Labyrinth, and The Flaming Fire, with vocalist Ryland Angel 

and keyboard player Dongsok Shin. Parthenia’s newest CD release features composers 

Kristin Norderval, Frances White, and Tawnie Olson: Nothing Proved: New Works for 

Viols, Voice, and Electronics. 

Ryland Angel

Born on St. Cecilia’s day, the Grammy-nominated British countertenor Ryland Angel 

has built an international reputation on both the opera and the concert stages, in 

repertoire ranging from the Baroque to new operatic commissions at major opera 

houses, concert halls, and festivals throughout Europe and the United States. He has 

performed in Monteverdi’s Orfeo (London), Bryars’s Doctor Ox’s Experiment (English 

National Opera), Gluck’s Orfeo (Koblenz), Handel’s Amadigi (Karlsruhe), Blow’s Venus 

and Adonis (Flanders Opera), and Purcell’s Fairy Queen (Barcelona), Dido and Aeneas

(Opera Comique), and The Play of Daniel (Spoleto). Angel has sung on more than 

seventy recordings, including music of Buxtehude, Charpentier, Scarlatti, Stradella, 

Spears, O’Regan, Handel, Monteverdi, Purcell, and Bach, and also on the film soundtracks of Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, Zoolander 2, Freedom, Le Petit Prince, La Peau, 

Henry IV, Machete, The Mystery of Dante, and the PBS TV special Heavenly Voices. 

Recent engagements include Doux Mensonges (Paris Opera), Agrippina (New York City 

Opera), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Florentine and Kansas Operas), Julius Caesar

(Utah and Colorado Operas, Boston Baroque), Sant’Alessio (Paris, London, New York), 

Carmina Burana (Lincoln Center/Prague Proms with Czech National Symphony 

Orchestra), St. John Passion (Saint Thomas/Worcester Chorus), Classics and Rock

(Seoul Philharmonic), Tesla (Dartmouth), Striggio Mass (Edinburgh Festival), Acis and 

Galatea (Houston), and Messiah (Handel and Haydn Society/Masterworks Chorus/Musica 

Sacra). Recent recordings include The Flaming Fire (MSR), Heart and Soul (Centaur), 

La Sposa (Solo Luminus), and Now Fatal Change (NMC). Ryland is a fellow at the 

Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota.

Martin Kennedy

Martin Kennedy holds a master of music in composition degree from the Jacobs 

School of Music and a doctor of musical arts degree from the Juilliard School, where 

he was a C. V. Starr Doctoral Fellow. He is currently an associate professor and director 

of composition and theory at Central Washington University, having previously served 

as a member of the academic faculty at Washington University in St. Louis. Kennedy’s 

music has been performed internationally by numerous artists and ensembles, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, 

the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, the 

Wisconsin Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, the Bloomington 

Camerata, the Symphony in C, and the Tuscaloosa Symphony. He is the recipient of 

several prestigious prizes, including the ASCAP Foundation Rudolf Nissim Prize, the 

Suzanne and Lee Ettleson Award, the ORTUS International New Music Competition, 

the ASCAP Raymond Hubbel Award, an Aaron Copland Award, and fellowships at the 

MacDowell and Yaddo artist colonies. His music is available on the Ancalagon, Anbardy, 

Azica, Centaur, and Riax labels and is published by the Theodore Presser Company and 

G. Schirmer Inc. 
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The most enduring musical influences came from the Basilica of San Marco, which 

was the Doge’s chapel. Adrian Willaert was the church’s organist and choir master for 

thirty-five years, from 1527 until his death in 1562. Although from Belgium, Willaert is 

credited with being the founder of the “Venetian School.” The basilica had two choir 

lofts on either side of the main altar, each with its own organ. Willaert divided the choir 

into two sections, one in each loft, and had them sing both together and in response 

to each other across the vast space. This grand antiphonal style for both instrumental 

and choral music became the trademark of Venetian music and was imitated by 

composers throughout Europe. The style was also used for the more intimately scaled 

music, heard most clearly in Giovanni Gabrieli’s Canzon seconda, which would have 

been played and sung in the city’s many palaces. 

Willaert’s choristers, students, successors, and colleagues included Cipriano de 

Rore, Gioseffo Guami, Girolamo Parabosco, Claudio Merulo, and Andrea Gabrieli, who 

in turn taught his nephew Giovanni Gabrieli, who went on to succeed him as organist. 

Although it cannot be proved that other composers on today’s program had a direct 

association with Willaert, they may well have been known to him through their published 

madrigals, motets, and canzoni, which have survived thanks to Venetian printers.

Petrarch’s sonnets that expressed the poet’s love for Laura, were central to the 

development of the madrigal in sixteenth-century Italy, and they continue to inspire composers today, including Martin Kennedy who wrote the following about his Tomb Sonnets:

[The work] takes its inspiration from a subgenre of sonnet in which the poet 

reflects at the final resting place of a beloved figure. The poet pays homage 

at the foot of the tomb, commenting upon the weight of the impression that 

has been left by the departed. Thus the three odes in Tomb Sonnets — 

Petrarch’s famous paean to his beloved Laura, Keats’s reverent address to 

Burns, and Longfellow’s reflections on Dante’s Inferno — each present the 

listener with a rumination on the ghosts of the poets’ past. 

Program notes by Parthenia

PROGRAM NOTES

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Tintoretto’s Venice was a proud, prosperous, and cosmopolitan city, famous in many 

ways — for its dominance on the seas and trade with the East, for its independence 

from the Pope in Rome, for the beauty of its people, and for its music and musicians. 

It was governed with remarkable stability from the Doge’s Palace by a council of elected 

aristocratic officials, headed by an elected Doge subject to detailed laws that prevented 

a single family from dominating Venetian society. Venetian patricians were expected 

to enshrine the virtues of integrity, prudence, gravity, charity, and eloquence, and they 

were notoriously thrifty. Venice was also home to a large and diverse community of 

foreigners — princes, ambassadors, and merchants from Europe, the Mediterranean, 

and even Japan. Traders, artists, travelers, refugees, and exiled citizens of Florence, 

other Italian cities, and foreign nations came to Venice. The Miracle of the Cross on 

the Rialto, a painting in the Accademia Gallery by Vittore Carpaccio made a few years 

before Tintoretto’s birth, attests to Venice’s bustling multiculturalism at this time. The 

city was a fertile environment for all the arts.

Patrician families were not the only Venetians with the resources to patronize 

the arts. By 1575, the city’s population had risen to 175,000, and included many wealthy 

citizens who were excluded from political power but were members of confraternities 

known as Scuole Grandi. Through these associations, they could influence Venetian 

society. The civic work of the scuole was primarily to distribute food and money to 

the poor and to sponsor religious festivals; however, by the sixteenth century these 

groups had become important patrons of musicians and artists. The richest of the 

Scuole Grande was San Rocco, in which the meeting room and chapel walls had been 

decorated by Tintoretto with scenes from the Bible and the life of San Rocco. Concerts 

were played in these rooms. Thomas Coryat, an English traveler to Venice in 1608, 

attended a concert at the Scuola di San Rocco and wrote, “musicke so good, so 

delectable, so rare, so admirable, so excellent, that it did even ravish and stupifie all 

those strangers [foreigners] that never heard the like.” 

Vasari, the sixteenth-century biographer of Renaissance artists, tells us that 

Tintoretto played the lute and other instruments. Was the viol perhaps one of these 

instruments? Venice was a renowned center of instrument building, and it is likely that 

the first viols to be built in Italy were made by Lorenzo da Pavia in Venice. Isabella 

d’Este, the most important patron of the frottole genre composers Marco Cara and 

Bartolomeo Tromboncino, had a long correspondence with Lorenzo da Pavia about 

the viols she commissioned from him. She also asked him to procure books of music 

published in Venice, for at that time Venice dominated Europe’s printing industry for 

music, and composers came to Venice to supervise their publications. Such trips by 

Italian and foreign composers helped to spread Venetian musical styles.
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“Asia felice”

Asia felice hor ben posso chiamarmi

Ch’è vint’in mar di me l’empio nemico.

Ma più sarò quando con gaudio l’armi

De’ figli miei faransi ogn’un amico.

Et io più all’hor felice Affrica piene

Havrò di frutti e fior l’aride arene

E, per campagne più che mai feconde

Porterà il Nilo al mar d’argento l’onde.

Felice Europa anch’io godo non meno

Che più che mai con gloriose prove

Hor sotto un vero Dio, non falso Giove

Havrò del mond’ un’altra volta il freno.

“Anchor che co’l partire”

Anchor che co’l partire Io mi senta morire, 

partir vorrei ogn’ hor, ogni momento, 

tant’il piacer ch’io sento,

de la vita ch’acquisto nel ritorno 

et cosi mill’e mill’e volt’ il giorno, 

partir da voi, da voi vorrei, 

tanto son dolci gli ritorni miei.

“I, Asia, happy”

I, Asia, can call myself happy with good reason,

For my wicked enemy has been vanquished at sea.

Yet even happier shall I be when with joy

My sons’ arms make everyone their friend.

I, Africa, happier still, shall have my sandy wastes

Filled with fruits and flowers

And the Nile, flowing through lands more fertile 

Than ever seen before, will bear its waters to 

the silver sea.

I, Europe, happy too, rejoice no less

That more irresistibly than ever, thanks to 

glorious feats,

Now guided by a true God, not by false Jove,

Once again I shall take the reins of the world in 

my hands.

“Although when I part from you” 

Although when I part from you I feel like dying,

I would be glad to leave you every hour, every 

moment,

so much is my pleasure

as life comes flooding back to me on my return:

and so a thousand times a day

I would that I could part from you:

for so my heart leaps when we are reunited.

“Non val acqua al mio gran foco”

Non val acqua al mio gran foco, 

Che per pianto non si amorza . . . 

Anzi ognhor più se rinforza

Quanto più con quell mi sfoco.

Non val aqua . . . 

El mio foco ha tal usanza 

Che per pianto ognhor più crescie

E magior prende possanza

Se ‘l mio intent non riescie.

El mio foco è come el pescie

Che ne l’acqua ha el proprio loco.

Non val acqua . . . 

“Non è tempo d’aspettare”

Non è tempo d’aspettare 

Quando s’ha bonazza e vento. 

Che si vede in un momento 

Ogni cosa variare.

Non è tempo d’aspettare . . . 

Se tu sali fa pur presto,

Lassa dir che dire vuole. 

Questo è noto e manifesto 

Che non durano le viole,

E la neve al caldo sole

Sòle in acqua ritornare.

Non è tempo . . . 

“Water will not quench this fire”

Water will not quench this fire

that tears leave quite untouched . . . 

Rather does it burn more strongly

the more I seek that same relief.

Water will not quench . . . 

The nature of this fire is such

that tears but feed the flames

and it ever grows in strength

each time I seek to quell it.

This fire is like a fish, to whom 

water is a natural element.

Water will not quench . . . 

’Tis no time for waiting

’Tis no time for waiting 

When wind and weather are set fair. 

For everything can change

In the twinkling of an eye. 

‘Tis no time for waiting . . . 

If you are leaving, go quickly,

Let what needs to be said, be said. 

’Tis all too well-known

That violets do not live forever, 

And that beneath a hot sun

Snow is apt to turn back into water. 

’Tis no time . . . 

TRANSLATIONS
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And lamentations from the crypts below

And then a voice celestial that begins

With the pathetic words, “Although your sins

As scarlet be,” and ends with “as the snow.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882)

“Da pacem”

Da pacem, Domine, in diebus nostris

Qia non est alius

Qui pugnet pro nobis

Nisi tu Deus noster.

“Italia mia”

Italia mia, ben ch’el parlar 

Sia indarno a le piaghe mortali

Che nel’ bel corpo tuo spesse veggio

Piacem’ almen’ ch’ e’ mia sospir’ sien quali

Sper’ il Tever’ et l’Arno

E’l Pove doglioso et grave hor seggio.

Rector’ del ciel’, io cheggio

Che la pieta che ti conduce in terra

Ti volgha al tuo dilect’ almo paese:

Vedi, Signor’ cortese,

Di che levi cagion che crudel guerra

I cor’, ch’ indur’ et serra

Marte superb’ et fero

Apri tu, padr’ e’ntenerisci et snoda;

Ivi fa ch’el tuo vero

Qual’ io mi sia per la mia lingua s’oda.

“Give peace”

Give peace, O Lord, in our time

Because there is no-one else

Who will fight for us

If not you our God.

“My Italy”

My Italy, though words cannot heal

the mortal wounds

so dense, I see on your lovely flesh,

at least I pray that my sighs might bring

some hope to the Tiber and the Arno,

and the Po, that sees me now sad and grave.

Ruler of Heaven, I hope

that the pity that brought you to earth,

will turn you towards your soul-delighting land.

Lord of courtesy, see

such cruel wars for such slight causes:

and hearts, hardened and closed

by proud, fierce Mars,

and open them, Father, soften them, set 

them free:

and, whatever I may be, let your Truth

be heard in my speech.

Tomb Sonnets

I. Sonnet Found in Laura’s Tomb [1348]

Here peaceful sleeps the chaste, the happy shade

Of that pure spirit, which adorn’d this earth:

Pure fame, true beauty, and transcendent worth,

Rude stone! Beneath thy rugged breast are laid.

Death sudden snatch’d the dear lamented amid!

Who first to all by tender woes gave birth,

Woes! That estranged my sorrowing soul to mirth,

While full four lustrous times completely made.

Sweet plant! That nursed on Avignon’s sweet soil,

There bloom’d, there died; when soon the weeping Muse

Threw by the lute, forsook her wonted toil.

Bright spark of beauty, that still fires my breast!

What pitying mortal shall a prayer refuse,

That Heaven may number thee amid the blest?

Petrarch (1304 – 1374), anonymous translation, 1777

II. On Visiting the Tomb of Burns [1818]

The town, the churchyard, and the setting sun,

The clouds, the trees, the rounded hills all seem,

Though beautiful, cold — strange — as in a dream

I dreamed long ago, now new begun.

The short-liv’d, paly summer is but won

From winter’s ague for one hour’s gleam;

Through sapphire warm their stars do never beam:

All is cold Beauty; pain is never done.

For who has mind to relish, Minos-wise,

The real of Beauty, free from that dead hue

Sickly imagination and sick pride

Cast wan upon it? Burns! with honour due

I oft have honour’d thee. Great shadow, hide

Thy face; I sin against thy native skies.

John Keats (1795 – 1821)

III. Sonnet on Dante’s Divina Commedia [1866]

I enter, and I see thee in the gloom

Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!

And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine.

The air is filled with some unknown perfume;

The congregation of the dead make room

For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;

Like rooks that haunt Ravenna’s groves of pine,

The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.

From the confessionals I hear arise

Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,
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NGA.GOV/MUSIC

Upcoming Events of the SeventySeventh Season of The William Nelson 

Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin Concerts

Unless otherwise noted, concerts 

are held in the West Building, West 

Garden Court.

Eya

Sound Sketches 

Location will be posted the day 

of the concert.

Medieval music for women’s voices 

March 22, 3:30

Natalie Clein, cello 

Dina Vainshtein, piano

Clein’s debut United States tour, with 

works by Nadia Boulanger, Frank Bridge, 

Rebecca Clarke, and Elisabeth Lutyens

March 24, 3:30

Fauré Quartett

Works by Fauré, Mahler, and Frank Bridge

March 31, 3:30

Haimovitz-Iyer Duo

Cellist Matt Haimovitz collaborates with 

pianist and composer Vijay Iyer.

April 7, 3:30

East Coast Chamber Orchestra

An Ancient Walkabout

Featuring works by Bach, Purcell, 

and Britten 

April 14, 3:30

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.

—

The department of music produced 

these program notes. Copyright © 2019 

Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, 

Washington

Cover Jacopo Tintoretto, Doge Alvise 

Mocenigo and Family before the Virgin 

and Child (detail), c. 1575, National Gallery 

of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress 

Collection