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the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:oo pm.

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is not permitted.

Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

Mailing address

2000B 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

2,541st Concert

National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble

Rosa Lamoreaux, artistic director

June 26, 2005

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission free
Program

Johannes Brahms (1833-1987)

Four Songs op. 17 (1859-1860)

For women’s chorus, two horns, and harp

Es tout tin voller Harfenklang

Lied von Shakespeare

Der Gartner

Gesang aus “Fingal”

Brahms

Liebeslieder op. 52 (1868-1869)

For four voices and piano four hands

Rede, Madchen, allzu liebes

Am Gesteine rauscht die Flut

O die Frauen

Wie des Abends schone Rote

Die grune Hopfenranke

Ein kleiner, hubscher Vogel

Wohl schon bewandt war es

Wenn so lind dein Auge mir

Am Donaustrande

O wie sanft die Quelle

Nein, es ist nicht auszukommen

Schlosser auf, und mache Schlosser

Vogelein durchrauscht die Lujt

Sieh, wie ist die Welle klar

Nachtigall, sie singt so schon

Ein dunkeler Schacht ist Liebe

Nicht wandle, mein Licht

Es bebet das Gestrauche

INTERMISSION

Ned Rorem (b. 1923)

From an Unknown Past (1953)

Seven settings of poetry from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 

The Lover in Winter Plainethfor the Spring

Hey Nonny No

My Blood So Red

Suspiria

The Miracle

Tears

Crabbed Age and Youth

Judith Weir (b. 1954)

Don’t Let That Horse (1990)

James Quitman Mulholland

How Do I Love Thee (1995)

(Text by Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

John Gardner (b. 1917)

Seven Songs op. 36 (1957)

Hark! Hark! The Lark (Shakespeare)

Crabbed Age and Youth (attributed to Shakespeare)

Gather Ye Rosebuds (Herrick)

Fear No More the Heat 0’ the Sun (Shakespeare)

Under the Greenwood Tree (Shakespeare)

It Is Not Growing Like a Tree (Jonson)

How Happy Is He Bom and Taught (Wotton)
Featured Musicians

This concert is the third appearance by the National Gallery Vocal Arts

Ensemble in its reconstituted form as a chamber choir. Its debut performance was a presentation of nineteenth-century vocal chamber music

in honor ofthe exhibition All the Mighty World: The Photographs ofRoger

Fenton, 1852-1860. In February 2005 the ensemble presented the St.

Matthew Passion by Johann Theile (1646-1724) in honor ofthe exhibition 

Rembrandt’s Late Religious Portraits. For this concert, the ensemble’s artistic 

director, Rosa Lamoreaux, has chosen a mix of established repertoire for

chamber choir, such as the Brahms Liebeslieder waltzes, and works that are

probably being heard for the first time by most members ofthe audience, 

such as the songs by Judith Weir and James Quitman Mulholland.

The singers participating in this concert are sopranos Rosa Lamoreaux

and Gisele Becker, altos Barbara Hollinshead and Roger O. Isaacs, tenors

Gary Glick and Robert Petillo, and basses Bobb Robinson and K. C.

Armstrong. Instrumental accompaniment is provided by Laurel Ohlson

and Kristin Davidson, French horn, Dotian Levalier, harp, and Bradford

and Maribeth Gowen, piano.

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Program Notes

Brahms’s Four Songs op. 17 is scored for three-part women’s voices (ssa), two

horns, and harp. In Es tont ein voller Harfenklang (A Full Sound ofthe Harp

Is Heard), the scoring for the harp embodies the lines from the text: “Deep

and quivering, they pierce my heart, /And leave my eyes o’er flowing.” Come

Away, Death, from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, beguiles the listener even

as the poet is beguiled by his morbidly humorous thoughts. Der Gartner

(The Gardener) is a tribute to the love of nature, with a second meaning that 

speaks ofthe temporality of all life. In the spirit ofromanticism, the music 

combines starkly and tragically with the strangely dark words. The Gesang

aus “Fingal” (Songfrom “Fingal”) is a Hebridean evocation in Gothic style,

attributed to the “legendary bard” Ossian, who is actually a creation ofthe

Scottish poet James MacPherson.

Brahms’s Liebeslieder op. 52 (Love Songs) are unique in nineteenthcentury chamber music in their scoring—a musical sextet for soprano,

alto, tenor, bass, and two pianists. Brahms originally conceived the set of

eighteen waltzes for performance by a solo vocal quartet. Even when

performed by a larger ensemble, they require clear German diction, effortless breathing, easy transitions from legato to staccato, and a wide range 

of emotions from the singers.

Words and music are inextricably linked for Ned Rorem. Time magazine has called him “the world’s best composer of art songs.” He is also

the author of fourteen books, including five volumes of diaries and collections oflectures and criticism. About his experience as a composer, Rorem

writes: “My music is a diary no less compromising than my prose. A

diary nevertheless differs from a musical composition in that it depicts the 

moment, the writer’s present mood, which, were it inscribed an hour later,

could emerge quite otherwise. I don’t believe that composers notate their

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moods, they don’t tell the music where to go—it leads them... .Why do I

write music? Because I want to hear it—it’s simple as that. Others may 

have more talent, more sense of duty. But I compose just from necessity,

and no one else is making what I need.”

Judith Weir is one of Britain’s most wide-ranging and prolific composers 

working today. She studied composition with John Tavener and Robin

Holloway and later taught composition at Glasgow University, Oxford, and

Princeton. Her interest in theater, narrative, and folklore has resulted in three

full-length operas, A Night at the Chinese Opera, The Vanishing Bridegroom,

and Blond Eckbert, all of which have been televised and widely performed in

the United Kingdom and Germany. Works Weir has composed for specific

artists include womanXi^e.song, a song cycle commissioned and performed by

Jessye Norman in Carnegie Hall and at the BBC Proms; We Are Shadows, written for Sir Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra 

and its three choruses; and an extended series of chamber works for the composer’s longtime collaborators, the Schubert Ensemble.

James Quitman Mulholland is a professor of music at Butler University

in Indianapolis and was the director of music at First-Meridian Heights

Presbyterian Church there. A graduate of Louisiana State University, he

completed the doctor of musical arts degree in performance and literature

at the University of Indiana. His compositions are included in the required

repertoire on more than forty state high school choral lists and have been

performed at the last four national conventions ofthe American Choral

Directors Association. Some of Mulholland’s works have become standard

repertoire for children's choirs throughout the country, and others are in

the libraries of many collegiate and professional ensembles.

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John Gardner was born in Manchester, England, and spent his childhood in Ilfracombe on the Devonshire coast, where for three generations

his family had practiced medicine. He began to learn the piano from age

five and later took up the cello. He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford,

where he was the Sir Hubert Parry organ scholar. Among the Oxford

professors who greatly influenced Gardner was the aesthetic historian and

philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, who had studied composition with both

Schoenberg and Webern. From 1952 to 1976 Gardner conducted the choir 

and taught music appreciation at Morley College in London, succeeding

in that post such adventurous teachers and composers as Gustav Holst,

Michael Tippett, and Matyas Seiber. This experience further enhanced

Gardner’s innate ability to compose for voices. His works for that medium

include, in addition to Seven Songs op. 36, the cantata Cantiones sacrae,

operas The Moon and Sixpence (1957), The Visitors (1972), and Tobermory

(1977), and Herrick Cantata for tenor, mixed chorus, and orchestra (1961).

Concerts at the National Gallery of Art

There will be no Sunday concerts at the National Gallery in July, August,

and September. On Friday evenings from Memorial Day through Labor Day,

visitors to the Sculpture Garden can enjoy live jazz performed by an eclectic

mix oftop Washington-area artists. Please check the Gallery’s bimonthly

Calendar of Events for details.

Sunday concerts will resume on October 2, 2005, at 6:30 pm, with a

concert by the National Gallery Orchestra, Christopher Kendall, guest conductor. The program will feature music by Elgar, Wagner, Stravinsky, and

Schoenfield, with solo violinist Nicolas Kendall.

For detailed information, please visit the Gallery’s website (www.nga.gov)

or call (202) 842-6941.