CONCERTS

77TH SEASON OF

national gallery of art | april 21, 2019
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PROGRAM

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Living Art Collective Ensemble (LACE) 

Twelve45

Elisa Monte Dance

Presented in anticipation of By the Light of the Silvery Moon: A Century of Lunar 

Photographs to Apollo 11, at the Gallery, July 14, 2019 – January 5, 2020

April 21, 2019 | 3:30

West Garden Court

Elfrida Andrée (1841 – 1929)

Piano Quartet in A Minor (1865)

Allegro molto moderato

Adagio con espressione

Finale: Allegro

Maurice Ravel (1875 – 1937)

Violin Sonata no. 1 in A Minor, “Sonate posthume” (1897, published 1975)

Arnold Schoenberg (1874 – 1951)

Pierrot Lunaire 

Part One

1. Mondestrunken (Drunk with Moonlight)

2. Colombine (Columbine)

3. Der Dandy (The Dandy)

4. Eine blasse Wäscherin (A Pallid Washerwoman)

5. Valse de Chopin

6. Madonna

7. Der kranke Mond (The Sick Moon)

Aaron Copland (1900 – 1990)

Duo for Violin and Piano (1971) 

Flowing

Poetic, somewhat mournful

Lively, with bounce

Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962)

Celestial Hymns (2001)

Loewy et Puiseux, Photographie Lunaire Rayonnement de Tycho - Phase Croissante, 1899, National Gallery of Art, 

Washington, Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon and Patrons’ Permanent Fund
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Elisa Monte Dance

Elisa Monte Dance (EMD) bridges cultural barriers through the universal language of 

dance. The company’s work emphasizes three main objectives: train and maintain a 

corps of professional dancers of multiethnic origin, capable of meeting the artistic and 

physical demands of the choreography; educate individuals in the art of movement 

and appreciation for live dance performance; and collaborate with distinguished artists 

across other disciplines.

Performing in today’s concert:

Daniela Funicello

Brynlie Helmich

Ashley LaRosa

JoVonna Parks

Sai Rodboon

Tiffany Rea-Fisher, choreography

Rachel Dozier-Ezell, costumes

Tiffany Rea-Fisher

Tiffany Rea-Fisher is in her fourteenth year with the New York City–based and internationally acclaimed dance company Elisa Monte Dance, as well as her third season 

as its artistic director. Rea-Fisher joined EMD in 2004 and was the company’s principal 

dancer until 2010. She was named Dance Magazine’s “On the Rise” person in their 

August 2007 issue, based on her 2006 performance at the Joyce Theater. As a 

choreographer, Rea-Fisher has had the pleasure of creating numerous pieces for the 

company, most notably meeting and having her work performed for the Duke and 

Duchess of Luxembourg. Recently, Rea-Fisher’s works have been seen in New York 

on the Joyce Stage, as well as at the Apollo, Joe’s Pub, Aaron Davis Hall, and New York 

Live Arts. Her talent extends beyond the stage, having created work for the film, 

fashion, theater, and the music industries.

Living Art Collective Ensemble (LACE)

The Living Art Collective Ensemble is a versatile group of female musicians, committed 

to contextualizing the human journey through vivid and engaging performances of 

classical music. Each program is specially crafted around a theme, and tells the stories 

of individuals who broke through the gender, social, and cultural barriers that continue 

to challenge us today. Each performance incorporates multiple facets of the arts and 

culture, including poetry, politics, fashion, and food.

Performing on today’s program:

Jacqueline Saed Wolborsky, violin

Mary Boone, flute

Adele Demi, clarinet

Amy Mason, viola

Kirsten Jermé, cello

Danielle DeSwert Hahn, piano

Brenda Patterson, mezzo-soprano

Ingrid Lestrud, conductor

Twelve45

Erica Blunt, also known as Twelve45, is a DJ and producer from New York. Known for 

her smooth transitions and blends, she believes a great mix reveals a special space 

where artists share the same musical frequency. Her talents have taken her to New 

York City’s Highline Ballroom and Joe’s Pub, as well as to Essence Street Style Block 

Party, as the featured DJ. Twelve45 is the official tour DJ with rapper Nappy Nina, who 

also works behind the scenes handling audio and music for Elisa Monte Dance and 

the S.L.A.P. Collective. Twelve45 wears another hat, managing and curating the Remy 

Rouge Culture Center in Brooklyn, New York.

THE ARTISTS
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PROGRAM NOTES

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, the National Gallery of Art will 

present an exhibition of photographs taken of and from the surface of the moon. This 

exhibition, originally scheduled to open today, has been postponed, and will now be on 

view from July 14, 2019, through January 5, 2020. In anticipation of the exhibition, today’s 

concert takes inspiration from its photographs. Corresponding to four seminal periods 

of advancement in lunar photography, our program traces the evolution of 150 years in 

music and culture, revealing that while we have made great strides in technology and 

innovation, history continues to repeat itself. 

Sound bites play periodically throughout the program, highlighting significant 

cultural events during these four periods of photography, along with their corresponding musical selections. The first sound bite is of sound’s first recording, captured in 

Paris in 1860 by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, nearly two decades before Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone call (1876) and Thomas Edison’s phonograph (1877). 

The ten-second recording is of a woman’s voice singing “Au claire de la lune” (In the 

light of the moon), which we find uncannily coincidental. 

1860s

The earliest photographs in the National Gallery of Art’s exhibition are albumen prints 

from the 1860s. The albumen print was the first commercially exploitable method of 

producing a photographic print on a paper base from a negative. It used the albumen 

found in egg whites to bind the photographic chemicals to the paper. It was the 

dominant form of photographic positives from 1855 to the beginning of the twentieth 

century, with a peak in the 1860 – 1890 period. 

Lewis Rutherfurd, a lawyer and astronomer, performed pioneering work in 

celestial photography, inventing his own instruments, including the first telescope 

designed specifically for astrophotography. His albumen prints captured the moon’s 

different phases, taken from an observatory he built in the garden of his house in 

lower Manhattan.

The 1860s, while not without strife, were innovative years. While the United States 

fought a Civil War, Alfred Nobel was patenting dynamite, Lewis Carroll was writing 

Alice in Wonderland, and, in addition to numerous weapons developments, the U.S. 

Transcontinental Railroad was completed by the end of the decade. In 1869, Susan B. 

Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Women’s Suffrage Association, and in December of that year, Wyoming granted women the right to vote.

Corresponding to the image of the moon from 1865 is the Piano Quartet in A 

Minor by Swedish composer Elfrida Andrée, written the same year. Andrée was born 

in Visby, into a liberal and professional family. Thanks to her father’s support of her 

Charles le Morvan, Carte photographique de la lune, planche VI.A, 1914, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 

Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund
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education, she was able to pursue her musical career. She was the first woman in 

Sweden to graduate as an organist and to become a cathedral organist. In 1867, she 

became the organist of Gothenburg Cathedral and remained in that position until her 

death. As a composer of chamber music and symphonic works, she was a female 

pioneer in Sweden, and the same goes for her activity as an orchestral conductor. 

While we are aware of several female composers of the nineteenth century, the 

pursuit was mostly discouraged for women. Clara Schumann (1819 – 1896), a virtuosic 

concert pianist, the wife and mainstay of Robert Schumann, and an excellent composer in her own right, once wrote, “I once believed that I possessed creative talent, 

but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose — there has never 

yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?” It was the era’s general 

consensus that music composed by women was either inferior to that written by men, 

or was only good enough for parlor music. 

1890s

In the 1890s, Maurice Loewy and Pierre Puiseux began to take images of different areas 

of the lunar surface. These stunning results, made with the photogravure technique, 

were published in 1899 under the title, Atlas photographique de la lune.

Photogravure is an intaglio printmaking or photomechanical process whereby 

a copper plate is grained (adding a pattern to the plate), coated with a light-sensitive 

gelatin tissue that has been exposed to a film positive, and then etched, resulting 

in a high-quality intaglio plate that can reproduce the detailed continuous tones of 

a photograph. The earliest forms of photogravure were developed by two original 

pioneers of photography — France’s Nicéphore Niépce in the 1820s and England’s 

Henry Fox Talbot in the mid-century. Photogravure in its mature form was developed 

in 1878 by Czech painter Karel Klíč, who built on Talbot’s research. This process, the 

one still in use today, is called the Talbot-Klíč process. Because of its high quality 

and richness, photogravure was used for both original fine art prints and for photoreproduction of works from other media, such as paintings. 

The 1890s saw a second industrial revolution: a bicycle craze leading to more 

paved roads, Henry Ford’s first car in 1896, and the rotary dial telephone. The 1890s 

also saw the first country to grant women the vote — New Zealand — while in the 

United States, state-sponsored segregation became legal with the Supreme Court’s 

passage of the “separate but equal” doctrine. 

Meanwhile at the Paris Conservatoire, Maurice Ravel was developing an entirely 

new musical language. Vastly different from Elfrida Andrée’s rich, romantic style, 

and evoking far-away places with exotic sonorities, Ravel’s single-movement Violin 

Sonata “Posthume” was composed in 1897 while he was still a student. Following the 

traditional sonata form, and showing some influence from his predecessors, Gabriel 

Fauré and César Franck, the harmonic language was the beginning of what would 

be Ravel’s signature sound. Described by the composer as “Basque in color,” it was 

probably performed only at the conservatory, as Ravel decided it was too flawed for 

publication. It was finally published in 1975.

1910s

The next important grouping of photographs from the National Gallery of Art’s 

exhibition is Charles le Morvan’s Carte photographique et systematique de la lune

(1914). This project, begun in 1899, was fifteen years in the making, and systematically 

photographed the entire visible surface of the moon and all its phases, increasing 

and decreasing, using the photogravure technique.

This first decade of the twentieth century witnessed the beginnings of commercial 

aviation, the assembly line, and the First World War. It also produced some of the 

most innovative music ever composed. Arnold Schoenberg, a leading composer of the 

Second Viennese School, completely pulled away from any sense of tonality previously 

used in classical music. His Pierrot Lunaire, composed in 1912, uses a series of poems 

written by the Belgian poet Albert Giraud in 1884, and was modeled after the popular 

“melodramas” of the late nineteenth century that featured spoken text accompanied 

by a musical ensemble. Schoenberg took this model into the twentieth century, 

combining a new tonal — or rather, atonal — structure with “sprechstimme,” in which 

the vocalist uses the specified pitches and rhythms, but doesn’t sustain the notes, 

making the sound more like speech. The “Pierrot” instrumentation of flute, clarinet, 

violin, cello, and piano, became an important ensemble in the following years, and 

many pieces were written for this combination. 

1969

The year 1969 was full of memorable cultural and political milestones and continued 

progress in technology. President Nixon pulled the first U.S. troops out of Vietnam, the 

Beatles played their last performance, the first Boeing 747 “Jumbo Jet” took flight, 

Woodstock attracted more than 350,000 music fans, and Apollo 11 landed on the 

moon. Diane Waggoner, Gallery curator who produced this year’s Silvery Moon 

exhibition, explains:

During the 1960s, as NASA planned where to land Apollo 11, the unmanned 

American Ranger and the Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter spacecrafts journeyed 

to the moon and transmitted lunar images, creating literally otherworldly 

photographs not only of the areas visible from the earth but also of the 

moon’s previously unseen far side. Each of these spacecrafts used different 

imaging systems, providing vital information to NASA. With the success of 

the 1969 mission, more images of the moon from Apollo 11 flooded into the 

public sphere.
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The Gallery’s exhibition will include a selection of Ranger photographs, 

Surveyor pictures, and Lunar Orbiter images. From Apollo 11, glass stereographs taken by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin show close-up views of 3 cm2

areas of the lunar surface, conveying a sense of being in the astronauts’ 

shoes. Also on view will be several NASA photographs of the astronauts on 

the moon widely disseminated by the press.”

We chose an American composer to correspond with this period, as an example 

of what was happening stylistically in American classical music during this time of 

immense change. Aaron Copland, often referred to as the “Dean of American Music,” 

expressed during his lifetime his desire to convey the most complicated music in the 

simplest of terms. Not to say that his music was simplistic. On the contrary, his 

influences were eclectic and representative of a combination of folk music and the 

most avant-garde and progressive idioms of the time. His goal of creating a uniquely 

American identity with his music led to collaborations with choreographers, dancers, 

librettists, and soundtrack composers, which produced popular and critically 

acclaimed works. 

In 1969, a group of seventy students and friends of the late William Kincaid, the 

former principal flutist in the Philadelphia Orchestra and an influential educator, 

commissioned, in his honor, a duo for flute and piano by Copland. The duo, completed 

in 1971, went on to become one of the most widely performed such works in the 

repertoire. A few years later, Copland asked Robert Mann, a violinist in the Juilliard 

String Quartet, to help him transcribe it for violin and piano. It premiered in 1978 in this 

form. The composer described the work as “a work of comparatively simple harmonic 

and melodic outline, direct in expression, and meant to be grateful for the performer.”

2001 and Beyond

Stanley Kubrick’s science-fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey draws on themes 

of progress in technology and man’s tendency to use these developments for destruction instead of for building a better world. Though an original score was commissioned 

for the film, Kubrick chose instead to use classical music to accompany his epic. In 1968, 

as NASA was preparing for the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, people were watching 

a fictional spacecraft docking at a space station to The Blue Danube waltz, composed 

by Johann Strauss II in 1866. The piece that Kubrick chose as the soundtrack to the 

“sunrise,” or first entry of man’s consciousness into the universe, was Richard Strauss’s 

1896 tone poem, Also sprach Zarathustra. 

Tying together the photography and music from the 1860s, 1890s, 1969, and the 

first years of the twenty-first century, we end the program with Jennifer Higdon’s 2001 

composition Celestial Hymns. Higdon is a Pulitzer Prize– and Grammy Award–winning 

composer, whose ethos is similar to that of Aaron Copland’s stated mission, for her 

goal is to communicate with everyone in the audience with her music, instead of 

composing for complexity’s sake. This makes her music accessible to listeners whether 

or not they have experience in contemporary classical music. The composer’s note on 

the piece says:

While working on another work, I came upon a book with some wonderful 

paintings by Monet, which turned out to be studies of cathedrals. I started 

thinking about the way painters often will do many studies of one scene or 

subject. This fascinated me, because composers don’t really use this process 

in composing. So, I decided to try replicating this process through music. I 

took musical materials for a work of mine called “blue cathedral” and created 

a new work using some of those materials. And I decided that I would focus 

my attention on a visual detail from the overall picture that I imagined while 

writing the earlier work. I wanted to create the beauty and intensity of what 

I imagined to be the stained-glass windows that one might find in a glass 

cathedral in the sky. I had pictured the figures in the window to actually be 

singing a heavenly music, and that became the basis for Celestial Hymns.

Program notes by Danielle DeSwert Hahn, Head of Music Programs, National Gallery 

of Art

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.

Duo Sonidos

Sound Sketches

West Building Lecture Hall

April 26, 12:10

The Brandee Younger Trio

Harpist Brandee Younger performs in 

the avant-garde tradition of her forebears, 

Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane.

April 28, 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
NGA.GOV/MUSIC

cover Lewis M. Rutherfurd, Photographie de la lune a son 

1er Quartier (detail), 1865, Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon 

and Patrons’ Permanent Fund. back cover National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration, Earth from Moon

(detail), July 1969, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 

Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon