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 ofthe 

West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

For the convenience of concertgoers, 

the Garden Cafe remains open for light refreshments

until 6:00 pm on Sundays.

Music Department

National Gallery ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

www.nga.gov

Concerts are made possible in part through the generosity of donors

to the National Gallery ofArt through The Circle. Reserved seating is

available in recognition oftheir support. Please contact the development 

office at (202) 842-6450 or circle (a) nga.gov for more information.

COVER: El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos), Christ Cleansing

the Temple, probably before 1570, National Gallery ofArt,

Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection

The Seventy-Third Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

3,028th Concert

The Baltimore Consort

Mary Anne Ballard, treble, tenor, and bass viols

Mark Cudek, guitars, recorder, crumhorn, bass viol, and percussion

Jose Lemos, countertenor

Larry Lipkis, tenor and bass viol, recorders, and crumhorn

Ronn McFarlane, lute

Mindy Rosenfeld, flutes, recorders, and crumhorn

Presented in honor of El Greco in the National Gallery ofArt and

Washington-Area Collections: A z\ooth Anniversary Celebration

December 14, 2014

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court
Program

Adio Espana: Romances, Villancicos & Improvisations of Spain, circa 1500

Anonymous Sephardic 

Morena me llaman

Avrix me galanica

Juan del Encina (1468-1529), Cancionero de Palacio, c. 1505

lQu’es de ti, desconsolado ?

Levanta, Pascual

Diego Ortiz, Trattado de Glosas, 1553

Recercada La Spagna

Francisco de la Torre, Cancionero de Palacio

Danza Alta

Anonymous, Cancionero de Palacio

Ora baila tu

Calabaga, No se, buen amor

Anonymous Sephardic 

Tu madre cuando te pario

Anonymous, Villancicos de diversos autores, 1556

Yo me soy la morenica

Alonso Mudarra, Tres libros de musica en cifra para vihuela, 1546

Tiento

Triste ‘stava el rey David

Anonymous, Villancicos de diversos autores

Riu, riu, chiu

INTERMISSION

Juan del Encina, Cancionero de Palacio

Una sanosa porfia

Diego Pisador, Libro de musica de vihuela, 1552

La manana de Sant Juan

Anonymous, Cancionero de Palacio

Tres Morillas

Miguel de Fuenllana, Libro de Musica... Orphenica lyra, 1554

Morenica, dame un beso

Pedro Guerrero, Cancionero de Medinaceli, c. 1569

Di, perra mora

Anonymous, Cancionero de Palacio

Sagaleja del Casar

Juan del Encina, Cancionero de Palacio

Cucu, Cucu, Cucucu

Diego Ortiz, Trattado de Glosas

Quinta pars (sobre Ruggiero)

Recercada primera (sobre el passamezzo antiguo)

Recercada segunda (sobre el passamezzo moderno)

Juan del Encina, Cancionero de Palacio

Ay, triste que vengo

Oy comamos y bebamos

This concert is sponsored by the Billy Rose Foundation.
The Musicians

Founded in 1980 to perform the instrumental music of Shakespeare’s time,

the Baltimore Consort has explored early English, Scottish, and French

popular music, focusing on the relationship between folk and art song and

dance. Its members’ interest in early music of English and Scottish heritage

has also led the group to delve into the rich trove oftraditional music preserved in North America. Recently, they have developed a program ofmusic

from Renaissance Spain. Recordings on the Dorian label have earned them

recognition as Top Classical-Crossover Artist ofthe Year (Billboard). Besides 

touring in the United States and abroad, they often have performed on syndicated radio broadcasts such as Saint Paul Sunday, Performance Today, and

Harmonia Early Music. They have been teachers-in-residence at elementary

and secondary schools, as well as at the Madison Early Music Festival.

A resident ofIndiana and New York City, Mary Anne Ballard researches

many ofthe consort’s programs. She also plays with Galileo’s Daughters,

Brio, Mr. Jefferson’s Musicians, and Fleur de Lys. She is on the faculty of

Oberlin’s summer Baroque Performance Institute.

Mark Cudek is director ofthe early music program at the Peabody 

Conservatory and also artistic director ofthe Indianapolis Early Music

Festival. He has regularly performed with Apollo’s Fire, the Catacoustic

Concort, and Hesperus.

A native of Brazil and Uruguay, Jose Lemos won the 2003 International

Baroque Singing Competition in Chimay, Belgium. He has since appeared

in operas throughout the world.

Larry Lipkis is composer-in-residence and director of Early Music at

Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He has also served as

director of Pinewoods Early Music Week and is a longtime music director

for the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival.

4

Ronn McFarlane has released over thirty cds on Dorian and Sono 

Luminus, including solo collections, lute songs, Elizabethan lute music and

poetry, and Baltimore Consort albums. His original compositions are the

focus ofhis solo CD, Indigo Road, which received a Grammy Award nomination in 2009.

Fluent in a wide range ofmusical styles, Mindy Rosenfeld is a founding

member ofthe Baltimore Consort. She is also a longtime member of San 

Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.

Program Notes

In observance ofthe 400th anniversary ofthe death ofthe Greek-born

Spanish painter El Greco (1541-1614), the National Gallery ofArt—with one

ofthe largest number ofthe artist’s works in the United States —is currently

presenting a commemorative exhibition ofhis paintings. Attesting to El

Greco’s special importance to American collectors ofthe last century, the

exhibition continues in the West Building, Main Floor galleries, until

February 16, 2015. Noting that El Greco lived and worked in Spain during

the final third ofhis career, the Baltimore Consort has made selections for

tonight’s concert from its extensive repertoire of Spanish Renaissance

music. All ofthe pieces selected were written before or during El Greco’s

lifetime, and he may have heard some ofthem while he was living and

working in Toledo (1577-1614).

For nearly eight centuries, Muslims and Christians lived together in the

Iberian Peninsula through alternating periods ofpeace and conflict. There

were large Jewish communities in the Christian kingdoms ofCastille, 

Aragon, and Navarre, as well as in the Moorish caliphates of al’Andalus.

Paintings from the court ofAlfonso X depict Christian, Jewish, and Arabic

musicians playing together.

The 1469 marriage ofIsabella, heiress to the Kingdom ofCastille, and

Ferdinand, prince ofAragon and Catalonia and king of Sicily, would put an end

to this mixing ofcultures. With the sanction ofthe papacy and the Inquisition,

Ferdinand and Isabella expelled all of Spain’s Jews from the region.

5
The Sephardim scattered across the Ottoman Empire and other parts 

of Europe, resettling in North Africa and in European safe havens, such as

Amsterdam, Venice, and Ferrara, where they preserved their Judeo-Spanish

language (Ladino) and a wealth ofbeautiful folk music. The program opens

with Morena me llaman and Avrix me galanica, traditional songs collected

in the Balkans and published by Isaac Levy in his Chants Judeo-Espagnols,

1970-1973. Sephardic melodies have a long oral tradition; the Spanish scholar

Ramon Menendez Pidal once said that this music “lives in its variants.”

Evidence of Moorish influence in Spain is seen in the instruments

themselves. Percussion such as the riq (Egyptian tambourine) and strings

like the rehah (rebec) came into Spanish courtly culture with the Moorish

musicians and instrument makers. The predecessor ofthe lute (oud or al’ud)

was introduced into Europe by way of Sicily and southern Spain. Due to its

Moorish origin, the role ofthe lute diminished in Christian Spain during

the later Middle Ages— Spaniards replaced it with the guitar-shaped vihuela,

an instrument with stringing, tuning, and notation identical to the lute.

Lutenists and vihuelists undoubtedly played each other’s music, and several

examples of European lute pieces can be found in books for the vihuela. In 

tonight’s program, Ronn McFarlane performs Fuenllana’s vihuela setting 

of Morenica, dame un heso, a three-part villancico by Juan Vasquez, on solo

lute. Even the “tablature” notation for lute and vihuela derives from the 

Moors. Using both numbers and letters to indicate fingerings, it is a graphic 

representation ofthe strings on the fingerboard. According to the lute

historian Douglas Alton Smith, such notation was known as early as the

ninth century in al’Andalus. The bulk ofsecular and non-liturgical Spanish

vocal music from the Renaissance can be found in a handful ofmanuscripts

called cancioneros. The Cancionero de Palacio, the palace songbook from the

court of Ferdinand and Isabella, is a monumental collection of nearly five

hundred pieces in three and four parts. It is extraordinary for its large and 

diverse repertory: salacious villancicos (Cucu, Cucu, Cucucu, and Calabaga)

appear alongside non-liturgical religious pieces and heroic romances.

6

Juan del Encina was a master ofthese forms, and his Cancionero (Salamanca, 1496) was the first Spanish publication devoted entirely to the works

of a single author. In all, sixty-two compositions are found in the Cancionero

de Palacio, forty-five ofwhich are by Encina. Diego Ortiz was director ofthe 

Spanish viceroy’s choir in Naples, and his Trattado de Glosas, a treatise on 

improvisation, was published in Rome. The music ofthe cancionero ofthe 

Duke ofCalabria (Ferdinand of Aragon, exiled in Valencia) was published in 

Venice in 1556 under the title Villancicos de diversos autores. It is now known

as the Cancionero de Uppsala, after the library in Sweden where it is housed.

These publications mirror the close relationship between Spain and Italy

that developed through the Spanish popes and through the Aragonese court

at Naples.

Improvisation pervaded the instrumental practice of Renaissance Spain,

indeed, of all of Europe. In addition to embellishing cadences, performers

routinely expanded upon, or “glossed,” preexisting tunes, using them as

repeating tenors or foundation melodies for ornamental improvisation.

We present two distinct genres ofimprovisation in tonight’s program: the 

fifteenth-century basse dance, in which a single, lengthy bass line lies

beneath a newly spun-out melody, and sixteenth-century pieces based on

repeating chord progressions, not unlike the modern twelve-bar blues.

Ortiz’s Recercada primera and segunda are based on the minor mode passamezzo antiguo and major mode passamezzo modemo, respectively. Elis basse 

dance La Spagna and De la Torre’s Danza Alta are each settings of an old

tune called variously La Spagna, Re di Spagna, La baixa de Castilla, and

Spanier Tantz. It was such a popular tune in its day that it formed the basis 

for more than two hundred pieces, including an entire Mass by Heinrich

Isaac (1450-1517).

We end tonight’s program with Juan del Encina’s popular Oy comamos y

bebamos, written as a deshecha finale to his carnival play, Egloga representada la

mesma noche de antruejo 0 camestollendas. Its message is “live for the moment,”

a sentiment that we hope will inspire spontaneity in our performance.

Program Notes by Mark Cudek