78TH SEASON OF

CONCERTS

national gallery of art | december 8, 2019
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PROGRAM

JACK Quartet 

Christopher Otto, violin 

Austin Wulliman, violin 

John Pickford Richards, viola 

Jay Campbell, cello

Modern Medieval

December 8, 2019 | 3:30 p.m.

West Building, West Garden Court

Rodericus (fl. 1400)

Arr. Christopher Otto

Angelorum Psalat (c. 1390)

Sky Macklay (b. 1988)

Many, Many Cadences (2015) 

Luca Francesconi (b. 1956)

String Quartet no. 4 (I voli di Niccolò) (2004) 

Intermission

Thomas Morley (1557/1558 – 1602)

Arr. Christopher Otto

Christes Crosse (c. 1597)

Solage (c. 1350 – 1403)

Arr. Christopher Otto

Fumeux fume par fumée (n.d.)

Helmut Lachenmann (b. 1936)

String Quartet no. 3 (Grido) (2001) 

THE MUSICIANS

Hailed by the New York Times as the “nation’s most important quartet,” the JACK

Quartet is one of the most acclaimed, renowned, and respected groups performing 

today. JACK has maintained an unwavering commitment to their mission of performing and commissioning new works, giving voice to under-heard composers, and 

cultivating an ever-greater sense of openness toward contemporary classical music. 

Most recently, they have been selected as Musical America’s 2018 “Ensemble of the 

Year,” named to New York radio WQXR’s “19 for 19 Artists to Watch,” and awarded an 

Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Through intimate relationships with today’s most creative voices, JACK embraces 

close collaboration with the composers they perform, leading to a radical embodiment 

of the technical, musical, and emotional aspects of their work. The quartet has collaborated with artists such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Julia Wolfe, George Lewis, Chaya 

Czernowin, and Simon Steen-Andersen, and with upcoming and recent premieres, 

including works by Tyshawn Sorey, Georg Friedrich Haas, Clara Iannotta, John Luther 

Adams, Catherine Lamb, and John Zorn. JACK also recently announced their new Fulcrum 

Project, an all-access initiative to commission six artists each year, who receive funding, 

workshop time, mentorship, and resources to develop new work to be performed and 

recorded by the quartet.

Committed to education, JACK is the quartet-in-residence at the Mannes School 

of Music, which will host JACK’s new Frontiers Festival, a multifaceted festival of 

contemporary music for string quartet. The musicians also teach each summer at New 

Music on the Point and at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. JACK has presented 

educational programs at the University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program, the 

Lucerne Festival Academy, Harvard University, New York University, Princeton University, 

and Stanford University.

Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford 

Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK operates as a nonprofit organization dedicated 

to the performance, commissioning, and appreciation of new string quartet music.

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PROGRAM NOTES

Angelorum Psalat

Angelorum Psalat is a strikingly original two-part Latin ballad from the Chantilly Codex, 

a collection of music from the ars subtilior style (more subtle art style). It is the only 

surviving work of Rodericus, known in the Codex as “S. Uciredor.” Many works of 

the ars subtilior experiment with rhythmic and notational complexity, and Angelorum 

Psalat is one of the most extreme examples, using no fewer than twenty different 

varicolored note shapes. For my arrangement, I have relied on the transcription of 

Nors S. Josephson, in whose interpretation the note shapes signify a radical expansion 

of rhythmic possibility, specifying a much richer variety of speeds and durations than 

most Western music before the twentieth century. I have given the first violin and viola 

the original two parts and added the second violin and cello parts to clarify the underlying grid of these complex rhythms. Program note by Christopher Otto

Many, Many Cadences

In this piece, I stretch the listeners’ perception of cadences by recontextualizing these 

predictable chord progressions in very fast cells that are constantly changing key and 

register. These lonely, disjunct ends-of-phrases eventually congeal and transform into 

new kinds of phrases and sound objects. Program note by the composer, Sky Macklay

String Quartet no. 4 (I voli di Niccolò)

About this work, the composer Luca Francesconi says, “It is unpredictable, like Paganini 

himself. Because it is acrobatic, yet at the same time very serious. Soaring, but complex. 

Rooted in the quartet tradition (and violinistic in particular), but also embedded in 

the Dionysian energy of folk music. Harsh at times, to be sure, but always with a story 

to tell. Also with a hint of irony (the second movement is subtitled Folk Dance, the 

last movement Dyonisian).” It is based on certain fragments of Paganini and built on 

intervals of a perfect fifth. Just one other curious detail: it is the first time Francesconi 

is presenting a work divided into movements. Program note by Roberta Milanacci and 

translated by Hugh Ward-Perkins

Christes Crosse

Thomas Morley was a widely influential composer, publisher, theorist, and performer 

of music in late sixteenth-century England, living in London at the same time as 

Shakespeare. As both a publisher and a composer, he is often seen as a leading voice in 

the introduction of Italian contrapuntal style into the native style of British vocal music, 

leading to a flowering of the madrigal in English composition of the time.

In 1597, Morley published his guide to novice musicians, A Plain and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, which contains instruction in music theory and composition. 

Included in this collection is his composition Christes Crosse, an exploration to the edge 

of the practical limits of the potentially infinite rhythmic proportions.

A steady, repeated vocal line (with text that mostly consists of the alphabet) supplies 

the constant pulse against which two florid lines (without text) articulate increasingly 

complex rhythmic subdivisions, creating an impression of changing tempos. The piece 

starts with familiar divisions of the beat into 2, 4, or 8 parts, and proceeds to introduce 

subdivisions of 3, 5, 7, and 9 parts, as well as various simultaneous combinations of 

them, which are known as polyrhythms. Many of these polyrhythms would not be seen 

in Western classical music again for nearly three hundred years.

Despite the extreme complexity of the rhythms relative to the norms of the time, 

Morley evidently considered the piece to have pedagogical value, as he recommends, 

“Take this song, peruse it, and sing it perfectly; and I doubt not but you may sing any 

reasonable hard pricke-song that may come to your sight.” But far from a mere rhythmic 

exercise, the song is delightfully mercurial, by turns elegant and mischievous. 

Christes crosse be my speede, 

in all vertue to proceede, 

A, b, c, d, e, f, g, 

h, i, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s & t, 

double w, v, x, with y, 

ezod & per se, con per se, 

title, title, est Amen, 

When you have done begin againe begin againe. 

Program note by JACK Quartet
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Fumeux fume par fumée 

Solage lived in the late fourteenth century in France, but this is little more than a name 

we have to put to a number of pieces retained in the Chantilly Codex — as mentioned previously in the program note for Angelorum Psalat, a collection of works that exemplify 

the style called ars subtilior. Solage is likely a nom-de-plume, a variant spelling of solace

meaning joy, entertainment, or consolation.

In Fumeux fume par fumée (approximately translated as “The smoker smokes 

through smoke”), Solage offers what seems to be a lampoon of an ostentatious group 

of poets who named their clique after the poet Jean Fumeux. They are known for their 

outrageous dress and bohemian lifestyle. Interpreting their name and work is up for 

debate: is the smoke of the fumeux simply the “smoke in the brain” (referring to a 

mental confusion or “vapors” that might be broken up by the morning drink), or are 

they referring to the literal smoking of hashish or opium, as tobacco was not known 

in Europe at that time?

Solage takes this haziness to the brink in this rondeau, using some of the most 

outré chromaticism and lowest vocal range of the period. Christopher Otto has 

adapted this piece to highlight its extremes. He has taken the major and minor thirds 

that run through the harmonies of the work and retuned them, widening and compressing them by the “septimal” interval or seventh partial of the harmonic series. By 

the end of his microtonal adaptation, after winding through some perception-altering 

modulations, the refrain is presented in its original low range in the viola and cello. By 

now, the smoke has clouded our usual grasp of pitches and harmonies we imagined 

familiar. Where are we, exactly? Or when?

Fumeux fume par fumée, 

Fumeuse speculacion. 

Qu’antre fummet sa pensee, 

Fumeux fume par fumée, 

Quar fumer molt li agree’ 

Tant qu’il ait son entencion’. 

Fumeux fume par fumée, 

Fumeuse speculacion.

The smoker smokes through smoke, 

A smoky speculation. 

While others smoke in thought, 

The smoker smokes through smoke, 

Because smoke pleases him greatly 

As he meditates. 

The smoker smokes through smoke, 

A smoky speculation.

Program note by JACK Quartet

String Quartet no. 3 (Grido)

Introducing his Third Quartet, Lachenmann recalled how he had at the start, like 

Robinson Crusoe, come upon a raw world (of instrumental noises in Gran Torso) and 

cultivated it. What should the castaway do next? Find another desert island? The 

question is left in the air. Yes, Lachenmann seems to suggest, every composition is a 

fresh start. And no, previous achievements cannot be gainsaid.

Lachenmann’s Third Quartet by no means denies the achievements — precarious 

achievements — of its predecessors. Sounds are still being discovered at the limits, 

in muted whisperings, in harmonics, in eighth-tones, and in other small intervals used 

to generate acoustic beats, in grating sonorities and even, on a couple of occasions 

(including the very end), in spoken phonemes. The music is still fine-spun and fragile, 

and yet also solidly compelling. (The paradoxical title, meaning “I shout” in Italian, is 

a homage to the members of the Arditti Quartet at the time of the first performance: 

Graeme Jennings, Rohan de Saram, Irvine Arditti, and Dov Scheindlin).

More particular to this work is the sense of hearing an immensely slow melody, 

which begins from a high E-flat that shines through the scurrying texture of the 

opening, sustained by one or more of the players, and ends on a middle-register D-flat, 

having passed through many other points where the music tentatively and impermanently stabilizes around a single note or, more rarely, a consonant chord. The slow 

progress — not essentially changed in the central part of the work, where movement 

is almost continuous in jittery fast notes — suggests the music is proceeding with great 

difficulty, against almost insuperable odds. We are, again, traversing a cliff-face. Danger — 

the danger, in particular, of repeating what has already been achieved and also the 

danger of incoherence — is everywhere. But that, of course, is what makes the momentto-moment continuity of this quartet, as of its predecessors, so gripping. Program 

note by JACK Quartet
NGA.GOV/MUSIC

Upcoming Events of the SeventyEighth Season of The William Nelson 

Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin Concerts

Unless otherwise noted, concerts 

are held in the West Building, West 

Garden Court.

Xaverian High School Choir

Joseph Loposky, Director

Caroling in the Rotunda

December 14, 1:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m.

West Building Rotunda

Calmus Vocal Ensemble

Carols from around the World 

December 15, 3:30 p.m.

East of the River

Solstice: Darkness Is Your Candle

Music of the Mediterranean, Balkans, 

Armenia, and the Middle East. 

December 21, 3:30 p.m.

Inscape Chamber Orchestra 

DC Youth Orchestra

Music by Beethoven, Respighi, and 

Stravinsky. 

December 22, 3:30 p.m.

Eunice Kim, violin

Xavier Foley, bass 

The program includes baroque, Irish, 

Latin, and contemporary music, with 

works by Bach, O’Carolan, Piazzolla, 

and Foley himself.

January 5, 3:30 p.m.

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 Mildred E. Bent, Design from Gray, 

Maine 1800 (no. 1): From Proposed 

Portfolio “Maine Wall Stencils,” 1935/1942, 

National Gallery of Art, Washington, 

Index of American Design, 1943.8.18116