Index to the Composer and Performer Biographies

Bartholomew, Marshall, arranger......................................27

Beach, Mrs. H. H. A., composer.......................................17

Benso, Beverly, contralto......................................................10

Beveridge, Thomas, conductor and composer................... 25

Bonds, Margaret, composer................................................. 22

Burleigh, Harry Thacker, arranger.................................... 23

Cadman, Charles Wakefield, composer.............................15

Chadwick, George Whitefield, composer...........................11

Conlon, Francis, pianist.......................................................11

Copland, Aaron, composer.................................................... 6

Dawson, William Levi, arranger......................................... 22

Foote, Arthur, composer.......................................................12

Gordon, Samuel, tenor..........................................................10

Hairston, Jester, arranger..................................................... 22

Handy, W. C., composer.......................................................16

Hayes, Roland, arranger....................................................... 23

Ives, Charles, composer.........................................................11

Johnson, Hall, arranger.................. 22

Kennedy, Robert, baritone....................................................10

Kroll, William, composer........................................................15

Lamoreaux, Rosa, soprano...................................................10

MacDowell, Edward, composer...........................................11

Manos, George, conductor..................................................... 5

Mosby, Beverly Joyce, soprano and music director........... 21

Nakai, R. Carlos, composer................................................15

Patterson, Michael, pianist................... 26

Persichetti, Vincent, composer............................................ 26

Rorem, Ned, composer..........................................................11

Schickele, Peter, composer....................................................12

Schwartz, Timothy, violinist................................................14

Sousa, John Philip, composer...............................................12

Still, William Grant, composer.............................................16

Stringer, Vincent Dion, bass-baritone, artistic director....21

Thompson, Randall, composer........................................... 27

Thomson, Virgil, composer.................................................. 26

Vlahopoulos, Sotireos, composer......................................... 6

Ward, Robert, composer......................................................... 5

Waxman, Donald, composer.................................................12

Weiser, Daniel, pianist...........................................................15

28

THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and 

E LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS

National Gallery of Art

FIFTY-FIFTH AMERICAN MUSIC FESTIVAL

Under the Direction of GEORGE MANOS

Presented in Honor ofthe Exhibition

Alexander Calder: 1898-1976

and the National Federation of Music Clubs’

National Music Week (May 3 through 10, 1998)

May 3 through 31, 1998

Sunday Evenings at Seven O’clock

West Building, West Garden Court

Admission Free
Alexander Calder’s career as an artist coincides with a period

when American composers were developing styles that were for

the first time distinguishable from the music of their European

counterparts. During the fifty years that he was active, from

the mid-1920s to the mid-1970s, Calder interacted with a number of American composers, including Edgard Varese and Earle

Brown. Calder’s experiments with the incorporation of random

movement into sculpture were destined to invoke a response

from the musicians and composers who encountered them and

to affect their own innovations.

In the early 1930s Calder formed a close association with Varese, 

and there are parallel works in the output of both men from that

period. Calder’s Volumes, Vectors, and Densities have their counterparts in Varese’s Hyperprism, Integrals, and Density 21.5. Both the

composer and the artist experimented with randomness as an element in their works, and they were a full generation ahead of

the trend in this regard. By the time randomness became an important element in musical composition in the early 1950s,

Calder’s mobiles had gained widespread recognition. Three of

the American composers who have frequently incorporated chance

into their scores, John Cage, Morton Feldman, and David Tudor,

have acknowledged both the music ofVarese and the art of their

time as important influences on their work.

In 1936 Calder was commissioned by the producers of a performance of Erik Satie’s symphonic drama Socrate to create mobiles for the stage set of that production. The shifting surfaces

of the mobiles and the play ofstage lights upon them enhanced

the drama, complementing the mood shifts of the libretto and

Satie’s music.

An example of a musical work directly inspired by Calder is

Brown’s Calder Piece (1963-1966), which seeks to imitate, in

Brown’s own words, “the integrated but unpredictable ‘flowing’

variations of a Calder mobile.” The composition can be said to

have been co-composed by Calder, since his mobile, Chef

d'orchestre, functions in the performance of the work as musical

instrument, conductor, and element in the musical score.

Concertgoers who have not yet seen Alexander Calder: 1898-

1916 are encouraged to include the East Building in their next

visit to the Gallery. The exhibition may be viewed until July 12,

1998 during the Gallery’s regular hours (Monday through Saturday 10:00 am to 5:00 pm and Sunday 11:00 am to 6:00 pm).

2

Another exhibition sure to be of interest for concertgoers is A

Collector's Cabinet, which opens May 17 and continues through

August 9 in the Dutch Cabinet Galleries near the West Building

Rotunda. Fashioned after the collections of paintings, graphic

arts, sculpture, and decorative arts that were the pride ofseventeenth-century Dutch burghers, the exhibition includes eight rare

seventeenth-century musical instruments, each designed and

decorated to be an object of visual as well as musical delight.

The first two concerts ofthe American Music Festival are presented in honor of the 75th annual observance of National Music Week, May 3 through May 10, 1998. National Music Week

was conceived in 1924 by Charles M. Tremaine, who coordinated public concerts and other musical events in 452 cities

throughout the United States. Mr. Tremaine was head of the

National Bureau for the Advancement of Music from 1924 to

1947. The first national chairman of the Music Week was Otto

H. Kahn, chairman ofthe board ofthe Metropolitan Opera from

1911 to 1931. In keeping with a tradition established by Calvin

Coolidge in 1924, president Clinton serves as honorary chairman.

Since 1958 National Music Week has been under the sponsorship of the National Federation of Music Clubs. The Federation also sponsors American Music Month in February of each

year, during which outstanding efforts on behalf of American

music are recognized. The National Gallery’s American Music

Festival was among the Federation’s honorees in 1997, receiving

an award of merit, first place.

The Fifty-fifth American Music Festival

is madepossible in part by agenerousgiftfrom

the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.

3
2269th Concert

May 3, 1998

NATIONAL GALLERY ORCHESTRA

GEORGE MANOS, conductor

PROGRAM

Sotireos Vlahopoulos Ode

(b. 1926) (1998)

Worldpremiereperformance

Robert Ward

(b. 1917)

Symphony No. 6

(1986)

Maestoso

Lento

Allegro

Washington premiereperformance

Aaron Copland

(1900-1990)

INTERMISSION

Appalachian Spring

(1944)

4

Conductor, composer, and pianist George Manos has been director of music at the National Gallery ofArt and conductor of the

National Gallery Orchestra since 1985. He is also artistic director

ofthe Gallery’s American Music Festival and the Gallery’s resident

vocal and chamber ensembles, which he founded. A native

ofWashington, Manos has been organizing and conducting orchestras and choirs since 1947, among them the New Washington

Sinfonietta, the Hellenic, Washington, and National Oratorio Societies, and the National Association of American Composers and

Conductors Chamber Orchestra. Manos directed the efforts ofthis

last ensemble toward the presentation of new works by American

composers.

Maestro Manos’ career as a teacher has included several years on

the faculty of Catholic University in Washington, D.C., where he

taught piano, conducting, and chamber music, and directorship of

theWilmington, Delaware School ofMusic, where he presented an

annual jazz festival and clinic. The inclusion ofjazz, bluegrass, and

gospel in the American Music Festival has been one of Manos’ innovations as National Gallery music director.

Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Ward is a native of Ohio. His

early musical training took place in the public schools ofCleveland

and continued at the Eastman School of Music, where he studied

composition under Bernard Rogers and Howard Hanson. Undertaking a graduate program at the Juilliard School of Music, Ward

studied composition with Frederick Jacobi and conducting with

Albert Stoessel and Edgar Schenkman. He has been a member of

the faculties of Queens College, Columbia University, and the

Juilliard School of Music; executive vice-president and managing

editor of Galaxy Music Corporation; president of the North Carolina School ofArts; and the Mary Duke Biddle professor ofmusic at

Duke University. Ward holds honorary degrees from Duke University and the Peabody Institute. He has garnered three Guggenheim

Fellowships, as well as grants from the American Academy ofArts

and Letters, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Besides receiving the Pulitzer Prize and the

New York Music Critic’s Citation for his opera, The Crucible, Ward

received the North CarolinaAward in Fine Arts, the Eastman School 

of Music Achievement Award, the Cleveland Arts Prize, and the

Morrison Award from the Roanoke Island Historical Society.

5
In observance of the fiftieth anniversary of the National Gallery

in 1991, Dr. Ward was one of four American composers commissioned by Gallery music director George Manos to write a work for

the National Gallery Orchestra. His composition, Bythe Way ofMemories, received its premiere performance in the Forty-ninth American Music Festival (April 7, 1991).

Ward’s Sixth Symphony was commissioned for the fiftieth anniversary of the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina, where it

received its world premiere in 1988. Commenting on this work, 

Ward states: “My symphony is scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, piano, and string quintet....The opening Maestoso is entirely

derived from the theme as stated in woodwinds in the first six

measures. Thereafter, variants of this theme are to be found in

almost every measure ofthe movement. The Lento...is in complete

contrast to the first movement. The bassoon sings a pensive melody,

which is taken over by the otherwinds in more elaborate forms....Just

when the movement seems at an end, a dance rhythm is heard,

building from the low strings to the high before bursting into a

phrase which suggests the folk-like first theme of the concluding

Rondo. Asymmetric rhythms characterize the first section [of the

Rondo.] The next section states a quiet melody which is interrupted

by a series of developments of the Rondo theme, which finally give

way to an intensely lyric restatement of the quiet melody. A coda

ensues, which hastens to a brilliant climax to end the symphony.”

Sotireos Vlahopoulos is a native of St. Louis, Missouri and a

graduate of the American Conservatory in Chicago, Indiana University, and the State University of New York. His teachers included Roy Harris and Virgil Thomson. Professor Vlahopoulos has

taught at Daemen College, New York’s New School for the Performing Arts, and the Washington Conservatory of Music, where

he holds the title of professor emeritus. In April of 1997 he was

honored by the American Hellenic Foundation with its lifetime

achievement award. Vlahopoulos’ compositions have been recorded

by RPC and EMS Records and are published by Dorn Publications.

Aaron Copland was enabled by a commission from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation to write Appalachian Spring as a

ballet for the Martha Graham Dance Company. The ballet was

written between 1943 and 1944 and was given its premiere performance on October 30, 1944 in the Coolidge Auditorium ofthe Library ofCongress. The music heard in this performance is a suite

ofmovements from the ballet as assembled by the composer. Played

6

without interruption, the movements are described as follows by 

Copland: “1. Very slowly'. Introduction ofthe characters, one by one,

in a suffused light; 2. Fast'. Sudden burst of unison strings in A Major arpeggios starts the action. A sentiment both elated and religious gives the keynote to this scene; 3. Moderate-. Duo for the bride

and her intended (scene of tenderness and passion);

4. Quitefast’. The revivalist and his flock. Folksy feelings (suggestions of square dances and country Fiddlers); 5. Stillfaster.

Solo dance ofthe bride (presentiment ofmotherhood, extremes

ofjoy and fear and wonder); 6. Very slowly (as at first): Transition

scene to music reminiscent ofthe introduction; 7. Calmandflowing’. Scenes of daily activity for the bride and her farmer-husband. There are five variations on a Shaker theme. The theme,

played by a solo clarinet, was taken from a collection of Shaker

melodies compiled by Edward D. Andrews, and published under the title The Gift To Be Simple...’, 8. Moderate (Coda)'. The bride

takes her place among her neighbors. At the end the couple are

left ‘quiet and strong in their new house.’ Muted strings intone

a hushed, prayer-like passage. The close is reminiscent of the

opening music.”

-Program notes by Robert Ward and Aaron Copland,

adapted and edited by Elmer Booze

The use ofcameras or recording equipment

during theperformance is not allowed.

Forthe convenience ofconcertgoers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30pm.

1
2210th Concert

May 10, 1998

NATIONAL GALLERY VOCAL ARTS ENSEMBLE

ROSA LAMOREAUX, soprano

BEVERLY BENSO, contralto

SAMUEL GORDON, tenor

ROBERT KENNEDY, baritone

FRANCIS CONLON, pianist

GEORGE MANOS, artistic director

PROGRAM

I.

Charles Ives Seven Songs

(1874-1954)

In the Mornin’

Rock of Ages

The Collection

Pictures

Slow March 

Karen

He is There

Ned Rorem

(b. 1923)

II.

Four Madrigals

(1947)

Parting

Flowers for the Graces 

Love

An Absent Friend

8

III.

Songs of Nineteenth-Century America

George W Chadwick Green Grows the Willow

(1854—1931) Adversity

The Stranger-Man

Edward MacDowell “Tyrant Love”

(1860-1908) from Three Songs, Opus 60

Arthur Foote It Was a Lover and His Lass

(1853-1937)

John Philip Sousa You’ll Miss Lots of Fun

(1854—1932) When You’re Married

INTERMISSION

Donald Waxman

(b. 1925)

IV

Four Songs of the Seasons

The May

When as the Rye

Autumn

Now Winter Nights Enlarge

Nancy Daley 

(b. 1953)

V

Five Amusements

(1998)

The Puzzle

Epitaph

Cinderella Goes to the Ball

A Contemporary Observation

The Greatest Marketing Idea Ever

Worldpremiereperformance

9
VI.

P. D. Q. Bach (1807-1742?) Liebeslieder Polkas

Lovingly edited by

Professor Peter Schickele

(b. 1935)

To His Coy Mistress

Who Is Sylvia?

It Was a Lover and His Lass

The National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble was founded

in 1986 as the resident vocal arts ensemble ofthe National Gallery ofArt by the Gallery’s music director, George Manos. Since

then the ensemble has appeared at the National Gallery twenty

times and has presented numerous concerts in other venues,

including the Louvre Museum in Paris, Germany’s Rheingau

Festival, and the 1989 Salzburg Festival. From each of its six

concert tours of Europe, the ensemble has brought home rave

reviews, as well as first prize from the 1988 Music at St. Donat’s

Festival in the former Yugoslavia.

The quartet’s soprano, Rosa Lamoreaux, is well known to

Washington audiences through her many appearances at the

Smithsonian Concert Series, the Kennedy Center, the Folger

Shakespeare Library, and the National Gallery. She also performs

frequently in other parts ofthe United States and was selected by

Robert Shaw to perform as soloist in the Cincinnati May Festival.

Contralto Beverly Benso is a uniquely gifted singer in her range.

Prior to her 1990 debut at Carnegie Hall, Ms. Benso had already

established an international reputation through her performances

in the Bach Tricentennial in Leipzig, the 1989 Salzburg and

Rheingau Festivals, and the 1986 Mahler Festival in Canada.

Tenor Samuel Gordon is professor of music at the University

ofAkron, Ohio. He is an award-winning conductor and composer,

as well as a singer. A number of Dr. Gordon’s original compositions

and arrangements ofAfrican American spirituals are in the quartet’s

standing repertoire.

Baritone Robert Kennedy is also much in demand as a soloist,

both as a recitalist and for his interpretations of opera and oratorio

roles. He has been heard as Colas in the National Gallery’s concert

production of Mozart’s Bastien undBastienne and in the role of Herr

Schlendrian in Bach’s Coffee Cantata.

10

Pianist FrancisCordon is one ofthe most sought-after ensemble

musicians in the greater Washington area, and he is on stage virtually every week of the year. His numerous concert tours have included Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Japan. Mr. Conlon has been a

winner of the National Society of Arts and Letters Competition

and the Jordan Awards Contest here in Washington, as well as the

Brewster-Allison Competition in Austin, Texas. A member of the

music faculty at George Washington University, Mr. Conlon is the

director ofmusic at the Church ofthe Annunciation in Washington

and Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, Virginia.

The son of an accomplished band leader in Danbury, Connecticut, Charles Ives was exposed as a youth to a wide range ofsmalltown American musical repertory, in particular folk songs, marches,

hymns, and anthems. Eventually, these musical genres became the

inspiration for Ives’ own compositions. Because ofhis use ofdissonance

and other innovations that were unheard ofat his time, Ives’ music did

not become part ofthe mainstream ofconcert repertory until the 1950s,

some twenty-five years after he had stopped composing.

Born in Richmond, Indiana, Ned Rorem was raised and educated in Chicago. Later he studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and at the Juilliard School ofMusic in NewYork. His mentors included Leo Sowerby and Virgil Thomson. Rorem is widely

considered to be America’s leading composer of art songs.

George Whitefield Chadwick lived most of his life in Boston,

where he was active as a teacher, conductor, pianist, and organist, as 

well as a composer. He was a leading figure in what came to be

called the Second School of New England composers, otherwise

known as the “Boston classicists.” The group also included Arthur

Foote, Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, and John Knowles Paine. Chadwick

was instrumental in reorganizing the New England Conservatory

of Music, ofwhich he was the director.

Although possessed of only modest means, Edward

MacDowelTs parents saw to it that he received musical training

in Paris at a time when few young Americans had that privilege.

He showed considerable talent as a painter and was offered free

instruction by Carolus Duran, but he declined the offer on the advice of his Parisian piano teacher, Antoine-Fran^ois Marmontel.

MacDowell’s concert tours would have brought him to Washington

in March of 1888, but he withdrew from participation in the concert

upon learning that it was being presented as an “all-American” program.

11
Boston was the center of the universe for Arthur Foote, as it

was for his fellow Second New England School composer, George

Chadwick. Foote also served for a time as director of the New

England Conservatory, where he had been an honors student. His

style, marked by broad, lyrical melodies and classical forms, was 

shaped by the music of late romantic German composers, especially Brahms and Wagner.

John Philip Sousa earned the nickname “March King” while

serving as director of the United States Marine Band, which he

conducted from 1880 to 1892. The son of a Portuguese immigrant

who had been in his own time a trombonist in the Marine Band,

Sousa enlarged and reshaped the ensemble and took it on extensive concert tours throughout the nation. Upon retiring from the

Marine Corps in 1892, he formed a band of his own and continued

the tours, which featured such innovations as breaking into the

applause to play the encores. Sousa concerts were a highlight of

the musical life of hundreds of middle-sized American cities until

1930, when the collapsed world economy forced them to cease.

A native of Baltimore, Donald Waxman was enrolled in the

Peabody Conservatory at an early age and has degrees from that

school and from the Juilliard School of Music. Best known as a

composer of chamber and vocal music, he is also a pianist, a lecturer, and the managing editor of Galaxy Music Corporation.

Peter Schickele may be said to have had a double or even a

triple career as a composer ofserious music, a whimsical radio show

host, and as “P. D. Q. Bach,” a persona through which he has lampooned baroque and classical music and musicology with hilarious

results. Among the works he has published and performed under

the Bach pseudonym are such anomalies as Iphegeniain Brooklyn and

Blaues Gras, a bluegrass cantata.

The use ofcameras or recording equipment

during theperformance is not allowed.

Forthe convenience ofconcertgoers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30pm.

12

2211st Concert

May 17, 1998

THE UPPER VALLEY DUO

TIMOTHY SCHWARZ, violinist

and DANIEL WEISER, pianist

Aaron Copland

(1900-1990)

PROGRAM

“Hoe-down” from Rodeo

(1942)

William Kroll

(1901-1980)

Banjo and Fiddle

(1945)

R. Carlos Nakai

(b. 1946)

Shaman’s Call

Charles Wakefield Cadman Sonata for Violin and Piano

(1881-1946) (1930)

II. Andante Grazioso

WC. Handy

(1873-1958)

St. Louis Blues (1914)

arr. by Joseph Cali-Livolsi

William Grant Still

(1895-1978)

Suite for Violin and Piano

(1943)

Majestically/Vigorously

Slowly and expressively

Rhythmically and humorously

INTERMISSION

13
Amy Beach (Mrs. H. H. A.) Sonata in A Minor

(1867-1944) for Violin and Piano, Opus 34

(1896)

Allegro moderato

Molto vivace

Largo con dolore

Allegro con fuoco

The Upper Valley Duo consists of two graduates of the

Peabody Conservatory of Music who formed a partnership in September of 1994. The artists have dedicated themselves to rediscovering and revitalizing American chamber music, with a special

emphasis on exploring the various cultural heritages that make

American music so exciting. As winners of the 1996 Artistic Ambassador Program Competition, they represented the United States

in a tour of the Middle East and East Asia in performances that

showcased American music. The nine-week educational and performance tour took them to Israel, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Thailand,

Laos, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Qatar, and Sri Lanka. The

Upper Valley Duo’s debut compact disc, entitled An American Affair, has been released by Marquis Classics. It includes violin sonatas by Charles Ives and John Corigliano, Aaron Copland’s Hoe-down,

a Brazilian lullaby by Camargo Guanieri, and the African American

spiritual, Deep River.

Violinist Timothy Schwartz began his musical training at age

four, and by age seven had already been a soloist with the

Jenkintown, Pennsylvania Chamber Orchestra and the Bucks

County Symphony Orchestra. He received the master of music

degree from the Peabody Conservatory and was awarded the Rose

and Lou Beker Prize for excellence in violin performance. He has

won first prizes in the 1994 Maryland Council ofthe Arts Classical 

Music Competition, the WGUC Classical Radio Competition, and

the Starling International Scholarship Competition. Mr. Schwarz

has performed solo recitals in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.

Besides appearing as soloist with the Richmond Philharmonic and

the Cincinnati Concert Orchestra, he has performed with such

outstanding American chamber musicians as Earl Carlyss, Paul

Coletti, Ruth Inglefiedl, and Sandra Rivers. As a fellow at the

Tanglewood Music Festival for two years, he was principal second

violin under Seiji Ozawa and Leonard Bernstein.

14

Daniel Weiser began his piano studies at the New England

Conservatory Preparatory Division at age five. A Phi Beta Kappa

graduate of Columbia University with a degree in American history, Mr. Weiserspent a year at Harvard Law School before immersing himselfin the world ofmusic. He has the PeabodyConservatory’s

master’s degree in ensemble arts and was awarded the Richard

Franko Goldman Prize for outstanding contribution to Peabody’s

musical and educational life. His principal teachers were the noted

accompanists Samuel Sanders and Robert MacDonald. Mr. Weiser

is a founding member of the Adirondack Ensemble, which in 1966 

won a Chamber Music America award for inventive programming

and outreach.

In 1942 Copland composed Rodeo, a colorful ballet about cowboys, with choreography by Agnes de Mille. The Hoe-down, which

Copland transcribed for violin and piano, constitutes the final dance

sequence of the ballet. It is based on the square-dance tune,

Bonyparte, with additional material from the Celtic McLeod's Reel.

Banjo andFiddlewas written byWilliam Kroll as an encore piece.

Its ingratiating appeal charmed even Jascha Heifetz, who performed

it often in his recitals. Kroll was born in New York and studied

violin at the Berlin HochschulefiirMusik in the yearsjust beforeWorld 

War I. He was a member of the resident quartet of the Library of

Congress’ Coolidge Auditorium from 1936 to 1944, after which he

founded and played first violin in the Kroll Quartet until 1969. His

compositions include works for string quartet, chamber orchestra,

and solo violin.

R. Carlos Nakai was born in Flagstaff, Arizona, the son of

parents of the Navajo-Ute tribe. After graduating as a trumpet

major from the University of Northern Arizona, he turned to arranging and performing NativeAmerican flute music as his primary

artistic activity. Shaman's Call is a transcription for violin of music

for the Native American flute, and reflects what the composer describes as “the powerful influence his southwestern surroundings

and his culture have on his musical writings.”

Charles Wakefield Cadman was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania into a musical family. His grandfather, Samuel Wakefield,

built the first pipe organ west ofthe Allegheny Mountains. He was

greatly influenced by his fellow composer, Arthur Farwell (1872-

1952), who established a publishing company dedicated to the dissemination of music that was more in touch with American life

than that which had been composed before the turn of the twentieth century. The company was called Wa-Wan Press, and much of

15
the music it published under Farwell’s guidance had NativeAmerican

melodies as basic materials. Among the works Cadman produced for

Wa-Wan Press are the Sonatafor Violin andPiano, FourAmerican Indian

Songs, and an opera, Shanewis, all ofwhich use NativeAmerican themes.

He also concertized with a Cherokee singer, Tsianina Redfeather.

Cadman’s Sonatafor ViolinandPiano is a large work in three movements, each ofwhich contains fragments ofNativeAmerican tunes

recorded by the composer during a visit to Omaha and Winnebago

reservations in the summer of 1909. The second movement, Andante grazioso, features a simple but hauntingly beautiful Indian

melody on the violin. The melody is developed through a series of

harmonic alterations into a highly romantic theme that finds its

way into the piano part, surrounded by a cavalcade ofruns.

William Christopher Handy was the son ofex-slaves who disapproved strongly ofsecular music. During his childhood and adolescence he limited himselfto study ofthe organ and sacred music,

but as a high school student, he defied his parents’ wishes andjoined

the brass band as a trumpeter. Eventually he earned a reputation

as one ofthe best trumpeters in America. He started a publishing

company, which in 1912 issued sheet music editions of Memphis

Blues and St. LouisBlues, ofwhich the latter became one ofthe most

widely performed American songs in history. These works opened

a new era in popular music, transforming what had been ragtime

gaiety into balladlike nostalgia. They were distinguished by special intonation of the lowered third, fifth, and seventh degrees of

the scale, popularly known as “blue” notes.

William Grant Still, who is often called the “Dean of AfroAmerican Music,” was the first black American to conduct a major

orchestra, the first to have a symphony played by a leading orchestra, and the first to have an opera performed by a leading company.

Born in Mississippi and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, Still originally majored in medicine at Wilberforce University before pursuing a career as a musician and composer. In 1916 he met W C.

Handy and went to Memphis to help with orchestration ofHandy’s

increasingly popular tunes. His work was interrupted by service in

the Army in World War I. Upon his return, he settled in New York

City, where he became a leading figure in the “Harlem Renaissance,” a flowering of black American culture in the 1920s. Wishing to refine his compositional skills, Still went back to school, taking courses at the Oberlin and New England Conservatories and

working with EdgarVarese and George Chadwick. In 1930 he completed his first symphony, the Afro-American Symphony, which received its Washington premiere at the National Gallery’s Fourth

American Music Festival in 1947.

16

Still’s Suitefor Violin andPiano is made up of three movements,

each ofwhich was inspired by a work by an African American sculptor: Richmond Barthe’s African Dancer, SargentJohnson’s Motherand

Child’ andAugusta Savage’s Gamin. The work demonstrates throughout a successful synthesis ofAfrican American musical idioms and

classical structure.

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach, or Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, as she

preferred to be known, was the first American woman to win recognition as a composer of classical music. As her works were being

published and performed, it was still the norm for men in the field

ofmusic to assume that theirwomen counterparts were dilettantes.

She and one other woman, Ruth Crawford Seeger, are primarily

responsible for the fact that, by the middle of this century, this

assumption was neither valid nor fashionable in America. There is

unintended significance in a letter she received from her fellow

Second New England School composer, George Chadwick, shortly

after he heard the premiere of her Gaelic Symphony in 1896. He

wrote: “Your symphony was thrilling. You will now have to be

counted as one of the boys.”

The opening movement of Beach’s Sonatafor Violin and Piano,

Opus 34 follows the classic sonata form, with contrasting themes

that are muscular, melodious, and well integrated. TheMolto vivace

(second movement) has the character ofsalon music and provides

jocularity to contrast the passion of the other movements. The

third movement, Largo con dolore, is the dramatic centerpiece of

the work and reveals the influence of both Bach and Brahms. The

final Allegro confuoco contains the same tightly wrought structure as

the previous movements, and with its buoyant spirit brings the

sonata to a triumphant close.

-Program notes by The Upper Valley Duo

adapted and edited by Elmer Booze

The use ofcameras orrecording equipment

during theperformance is not allowed.

Forthe convenience ofconcertgoers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30pm.

17
2212d Concert

May 24, 1998

THE NEW ENGLAND SPIRITUAL ENSEMBLE

VINCENT DION STRINGER, artistic director

BEVERLY JOYCE MOSBY, music director

FREDERICKA KING, pianist

Margaret Bonds, arr.

(1913-1971)

PROGRAM

Prelude

Troubled Water

Ms. King

Processional

John Andrew Ross, arr. Guide Me, 0 Thou Great Jehovah

(b. 1949)

Mrs. Parker-Brass

I.

John Andrew Ross, arr. Go Down, Moses

Wade in the Water

Hall Johnson River Chant

(1888-1970)

Mr. Stringer

Jester Hairston, arr.

(b. 1901)

Dis ol’ hammer

18

Medley of Spirituals

Hall Johnson, arr. I’ve been buked an’ I’ve been scorned

Traditional Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child

Mr. Scott

Traditional Dere is trouble all over dis worl’

Traditional Nobody knows de trouble I see

Mr. Stringer

Traditional Ain’ gwine lay my ‘ligion down

John Andrew Ross, arr. You Must Have That True Religion

Ms. Mosby

II.

John Andrew Ross, arr. Nobody’s Fault but Mine

William Dawson, arr. King Jesus is a-listening

(1899-1990)

Ms. Gonzales

Margaret Bonds, arr. He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand

Mr. Gillyard

William Dawson, arr.

Jester Hairston, arr.

In his care-o 

Hold On!

INTERMISSION

19
Jester Hairston, arr.

Roland Hayes, arr.

(1887-1977)

III.

Poor man Laz’rus

Lit’l boy

Mr. Stringer

Jester Hairston, arr. Elijah Rock

John Andrew Ross, arr. Witness

Ms. Harmon

John Andrew Ross, arr. Joshua fit de battle

Houston Bright, arr.

(b.1955)

H.T. Burleigh, arr.

(1866-1949)

IV

I hear a voice a-prayin’

Ev’ry time I feel de spirit

Ms. Mosby

William Henry Smith, arr. Ride the Chariot

Hall Johnson, arr.

Ms. Gonzales

Ain’t got time to die

Ms. Harmon

Warren Martin, arr. Great Day

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New England Spiritual Ensemble

Sopranos

Beverly Joyce Mosby

Rayanne Gonzales

Tenors

Richard Gillyard

Stacy Scott

Altos

Cynthia Harmon

Myran Parker-Brass

Basses

Vincent Dion Stringer

Milton Wright

The New England Spiritual Ensemble was founded by

Vincent Dion Stringer, its artistic director, and BeverlyJoyce Mosby,

its music director. The ensemble has been heard nationally on

CBS Sunday Morning and on National Public Radio’s Performance

Today. Its first compact disc recording, Cornin' up shouting features

arrangements of spirituals and works by John Andrew Ross. The

music critic of the Boston Globe has pronounced the ensemble

“excellent-blessed with performers who own good voices...daringly

expressive,” and reported that the performance “brought a hush to

the hall.” On another occasion the Globe critic reported that “the

New England Spiritual Ensemble offered sophisticated arrangements that never disturbed the brilliant simplicity ofthe spirituals.

They built volume and emotion as one voice, keeping the melodies

centerstage.” The ensemble focuses on performing Negro spirituals in both traditional arrangements and in arrangements by more

modern African American composers. The ensemble, which made

its debut at Boston Symphony Hall in 1994, routinely schedules performances outside New England, including an annual national tour.

Described as having a “first-class bass-baritone voice” by the Boston

Globe, New England Spiritual Ensemble artistic director Vincent

Dion Stringer has a flourishing international career in opera and

festival appearances, and is currently receiving high critical praise

for his recitals of German Lieder.

Music director Beverly Joyce Mosby, soprano, also has an international performing career and has won a number of operatic

competitions. Her most recent European appearance was with

21
the Vienna Chamber Orchestra in Mozart’s Exultate,jubilate.

Margaret Bonds began her musical studies in Chicago under

the guidance of her mother, whose home was a gathering place for

many ofthe city’s young black writers, artists, and musicians. Her

piano teachers included Florence Price and William Dawson, and

she studied composition under Robert Starer and Roy Harris, among

others. In 1933 she became the first black pianist to appear with

the Chicago Symphony. When she moved to New York in 1939,

she continued herstudies at the Juilliard School ofMusic, directed

musical theater productions, and organized a chamber society to

foster the work of black musicians and composers. The last phase

of her career took her to Los Angeles, where she taught at the Inner City Institute.

(Francis) Hall Johnson was born in Athens, Georgia, where

his outstanding skill as a violinist earned him scholarships to attend

the University of Pennsylvania, the Juilliard School of Music, and

the University of Southern California. In 1925 he organized the

Hall Johnson Choir, which in later years was known as the Festival

Negro Chorus of Los Angeles and the Festival Negro Chorus of

NewYork. He composed and arranged all ofthe music for his choir,

resulting in a large body of published spiritual arrangements and

compositions, most ofwhich were published by Carl Fisher.

Jester Hairston is best known to the public as the spry octogenarian Roily Forbes in the long-running NBC sitcom Amen. Born in

North Carolina at the turn of the century, Hairston went to Tufts

University and sang in the Hall Johnson Choir, one of the nation’s

foremost proponents ofAfrican American spirituals. His achievements as a composer and arranger have been recognized in the form

ofhonorary doctorates from his alma mater and from the University

of the Pacific and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

William Levi Dawson was born in Anniston, Alabama and attended that state’s Tuskegee Institute. He pursued further music

studies at the Horner Institute of Fine Arts in Kansas City and the

American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. He returned to

Tuskegee to become director of the institute and lead its worldfamous choir. In addition to numerous choral and solo arrangements of spirituals, Dawson has composed two symphonies, a piano trio, and a violin sonata.

22

Roland Hayes died in Boston on January 1,1977,just six months

short of his 100th birthday. His slender but remarkable tenor voice

was first discovered by teachers in his native Georgia, who sent him

to Chattanooga for private study and to Fisk University in Nashville. His vocal studies eventually took him to Boston, where he

gave his debut recital in 1917. In 1920 he went for the first time to

Europe, where he studied and gave highly successful recitals in

London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Vienna. His singing career

lasted for more than fifty years, and he developed a large repertoire

of European art songs as well as spirituals. His own spiritual arrangements were published in 1948 in a volume entitled My Songs.

Harry Thacker Burleigh, a native ofErie, Pennsylvania, studied at the National Conservatory in New York from 1892 to 1895,

during which time one ofits directors was Antonin Dvorak. For the

first quarter ofthe twentieth century, he was the baritone soloist at

two ofNewYork’s most prestigious centers ofworship: St George’s

Church and Temple Emanu-El. His prolific output includes 265 

vocal compositions and 187 choral arrangements. He was a pioneer

in the arrangement of spirituals for solo voice and piano, and his 

arrangement of Deep River has been famous ever since it was published in 1917.

The use ofcameras or recording equipment

during theperformance is not allowed.

Forthe convenience ofconcertgoers

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30pm.

23
2213d Concert

May 31, 1998

WASHINGTON MEN’S GAMERATA

THOMAS BEVERIDGE, conductor

MICHAEL PATTERSON, pianist and associate conductor

PROGRAM

Thomas Beveridge, arr.

(b. 1938)

Virgil Thomson

(1896-1989)

Thomas Beveridge

Vincent Persichetti

(1915-1987)

Charles Ives

(1874-1954)

Aaron Copland, arr.

(1900-1990)

Marshall Bartholomew, arr.

(1885-1978)

William Steffe

(arr. Thomas Beveridge)

The National Anthem

Tiger! Tiger!

(1953)

Agnus Dei

(1925)

Drop, Drop, Slow Tears

(1954)

Pied Beauty

(1987)

Song of Peace

(1962)

General William Booth Enters

into Heaven (1914)

Simple Gifts (Shaker Tune)

Shenandoah

The Battle Hymn of the Republic

24

INTERMISSION

Randall Thompson The Testament of Freedom

(1899-1984) (1943)

I. The God Who Gave Us Life

II. We Have Counted the Cost of This Contest

III. We Fight Not for Glory

IV. I Shall Not Die without a Hope

The Washington Men’s Gamerata was founded in 1984 to

perform, promote, and preserve the rich repertoire ofmusic for men’s

voices that is largely neglected in today’s choral programs. Under

the musical direction ofThomas Beveridge, the Camerata performs

a wide variety ofmusic, including pieces from the Renaissance and

romantic periods, traditional folk songs, spirituals, and contemporary compositions. It has provided three concerts for National Gallery audiences, the most recent of which was one of the concerts

presented in 1997 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the

birth of Franz Schubert. In addition, it has appeared with the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of guest conductor

Christopher Hogwood. Under Mr. Beveridge’s direction, the

Camerata has presented annual concerts at the Kennedy Center, as

well as performances at the Smithsonian Institution, the White

House, and Harvard and Princeton Universities. The chorus has

been featured on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Performance Today, and Pipe Dreams, and on WETA-FM’s Musicfrom

Washington. In February of this year it was featured in a “headliner

concert” at the national convention of the American Choral Directors Association in Providence, Rhode Island.

Thomas Beveridge, who has directed the Washington Men’s

Camerata since 1988, has a multi-faceted career as a singer, composer, arranger, teacher, keyboard player, and conductor. He attended Harvard, studying composition with Randall Thompson

and Walter Piston and choral conducting with G. Wallace

Woodworth. His vocal study took place at the Longy School of

Music in Boston, with Mesdames Olga Averino and Mascia

Predit. He studied composition and conducting in France with

the legendary Nadia Boulanger. Mr. Beveridge has received com25
missions from such distinguished sources as Harvard University,

Harvard Divinity School, UnionTheological Seminary, and the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation at the Library ofCongress. His

recorded works can be found on various labels, includingTurnabout/

Vox, Centaur, RCA, Crystal, and Gothic. Thomas Beveridge conducts the 175-voice New Dominion Chorale and is director ofmusic at Western Presbyterian Church in Washington. He also serves

on the faculty of the Levine School of Music.

Pianist and conductor Michael Patterson received the doctor

ofmusical arts degree in piano performance from The Catholic University of America. His principal mentor was Bela Nagy. He has

performed as soloist, accompanist, and chamber musician throughout the United States, including concerts at the Kennedy Center,

the Phillips Collection, the Corcoran Gallery, the Organization of

American States, the German and French Embassies, and The

National Gallery.

Known to the American public as a sharp-tongued music critic as

well as a composer, Virgil Thomson produced a highly original 

and diverse body ofmusic, rooted in American speech rhythms and

hymnbook harmonies. He received his first musical instruction in

his native Kansas City, Missouri, where he lived until he enlisted in

the Army in World War I. In 1919 he entered Harvard University,

where his music studies included orchestration and modern French

music. He spent the 1921-1922 school year in Paris, where he

studied with Nadia Boulanger and metJean Cocteau and Erik Satie,

whose music influenced him deeply. After a short return to the

United States, which included composition studies at Juilliard,

Thomson returned to Paris, where he lived from 1925 until 1940.

He met Gertrude Stein in 1926, and they collaborated on several

projects, of which Four Saintsin ThreeActs was destined to become

the most famous.

Born in Philadelphia, Vincent Persichetti studied and taught

music there until 1947, when he joined the faculty of the Juilliard

School ofMusic in NewYork. His music has a propensity for lucid

textures, polytonal harmony, playful rhythmic vitality, and a pervasive geniality of spirit. Dedicated throughout his life to the improvement of music education, Persichetti composed many works

for beginners and high school bands. These works, though technically simpler than his other compositions, retain the characteristic

qualities of the composer’s style.

26

A 1908 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Marshall

Bartholomew also studied at the Hochschulefur Musik in Berlin

under Engelbert Humperdinck, Horatio Parker, and Albert Croates.

A choral conductor by training, he joined the faculty ofYale University in 1921 and established the Yale Glee Club, which he conducted until 1953. He returned to the campus on the occasion of

his ninetieth birthday in 1975 to conduct 2,000 former Glee Club

members in a celebratory concert.

A Bostonian and Harvard graduate, Randall Thompson was a

teacher as well as a composer throughout most of his career. Students atWellesley College, the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley, 

the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, the University of Virginia, 

Princeton, and Harvard were the beneficiaries of his expertise.

Among them were three who went on to make significant contributions to American music: Samuel Adler, Leonard Bernstein, and

Lukas Foss. He is best known for his choral works, which include a

mass, a requiem, and a passion. He also composed several works for

the stage, three symphonies, and numerous chamber works.

- Program notes by Elmer Booze and Stephen Ackert

Concerts at The National Gallery of Art

June 1998

7 National Gallery

Orchestra

George Manos, conductor

14 Natsuki Fukasawa,/)^/#

21 National Gallery Chamber

Players String Quartet

George Manos, artistic

director

28 National Gallery Chamber

Players Woodwind Quintet

George Manos, artistic

director

Haydn: Symphony No. 100

Brahms: Symphony No. 3

Works by Schumann, Brahms,

Janacek, and Busoni

Mozart: “Dissonant” Quartet

Shostakovich: Quartet No. 7 in F

Minor

Frank Bridge: QuartetNo. 2

Works for wind quintet by Paul

Taffanel, Anton Reicha,

Percy Grainger, and

JacquesIbert

27