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 of

the West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

Music Department

National Gallery ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

Mailing address

2000b South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

cover: Felicien Rops, Gaspard de la Nuit (detail), 1868,

National Gallery of Art, Washington, Rosenwald Collection

The Sixty-eighth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell

and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,739th Concert

Chiara String Quartet

Rebecca Fischer and Julie Yoon, violin

Jonah Sirota, viola

Gregory Beaver, cello

Presented in honor of

The Darker Side ofLight:

Arts ofPrivacy 1850-1900

October 14, 2009

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

Admission free
Program

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

String Quartet no. 1 in B Minor, op. 50

Allegro

Andante molto 

Andante

Anton Webern (1883-1945)

Five Piecesfor String Quartet, op. 5

Heftig bewegt

Sehr langsam

Sehr lebhaft 

Sehr langsam

In zarter Bewegung

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

String Quartet

Anime et tres decide

Assez vif et bien rythme

Andantino, doucement espressif

Tres modere-Tres mouvemente

The Musicians

Described by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as “vastly talented, vastly resourceful, and vastly committed to the music oftheir time,” the Chiara String 

Quartet reaches from the concert hall into clubs, bars, and galleries, expanding the places to hear live classical music while returning chamber music to

its roots in intimate spaces. In addition to traditional concert venues, such

as Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Harris Hall in Aspen, Colorado, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, and New York’s Weill Recital Hall, the Quartet has

performed at Caffe Vivaldi in New York’s West Village, Kansas City’s The 

Brick, Houston’s Mucky Duck, and Chicago’s The Hideout.

The Chiara Quartet has been quartet-in-residence at the University of

Nebraska-Lincoln since 2005, and was recently named Blodgett Artists-inResidence at Harvard University. The Quartet founded the Red River Chamber Music Festival, a summer study and performance festival in Grand Forks,

North Dakota, and participates in Greenwood Music Camp, the University of

Nebraska-Lincoln’s Chamber Music Institute. Recently awarded the Guameri

Quartet Residency Award for artistic excellence by Chamber Music America,

the Quartet’s other honors include a top prize at the Paolo Borciani International Competition, winning the Astral Artistic Services National Audition,

and winning first prize at the FischoffChamber Music Competition.

Outside the United States, the quartet has performed at the American

Academy in Rome, in Sweden with clarinetist Hakan Rosengren, and at

Munich’s Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat, performing Different Trains by

Steve Reich. Chiara has premiered works by Gabriela Lena Frank, Jefferson

Friedman, Nico Muhly, Randall Snyder, and Michael Wittgraf. Its discography

includes the Mozart and Brahms clarinet quintets with Hakan Rosengren

and the world premiere recordings of Robert Sirota’s Triptych and Gabriela

Lena Frank’s Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout. The Chiara String Quartet

appears at the National Gallery by arrangement with Artspromo of Shutesbury, Massachusetts.

3
Program Notes

The art ofthe late nineteenth century largely connotes impressionism,

paintings of cafe-concerts and the open air that invoke the entertainments of

city life and the pleasures ofthe landscape. A less familiar side to the story 

exists, one in a realm ofsober contemplation and recherche. These sometimes enigmatic and often melancholy subjects explore an altogether different dimension of aesthetic experience and appreciation. In this discreet

world ofindividual collecting, prints, drawings, and small sculpture were

kept aside in portfolios or stored away in cabinets for more purposeful,

private study, much like taking a book from the shelffor quiet enjoyment.

The Darker Side ofLight: Arts ofPrivacy 1850-igoo, the exhibition currendy on view in the National Gallery’s prints and drawings galleries,

includes more than a hundred works in the Gallery’s extensive collections

that reflect this late-Romantic sensibility. Such an encounter with art was a

private affair that often encouraged the investigation of highly suggestive,

sometimes disturbing subject matter. These complex states ofmind and

symptoms ofdeep social tension surfaced in opium dreams, obsessions over

a lover, despairing contemplations ofsuicide, and abject meditations on

violence and death. By no means restricted to the visual arts, this somber

aesthetic found voice in poetry, prose, theater, and, not least, music. This

milieu attracted the talents of academically trained artists, realists, impressionists, and especially symbolists. Much like their musical counterparts,

symbolist artists in particular sought to dissolve any simple equation between

the experience of art and the empirical world.

Composers, too, responded to the various moods ofsymbolism, especially 

in their chamber music. The most famous music of Gabriel Faure (1845 —

1924), Cesar Franck (1822-1890), and Flenri Duparc (1848-1933), for example, 

is characterized by balance, pleasant sonorities, and flowing lines, but these

composers also explored the darker side ofmusical expression. One thinks

ofthe contemplative Andante from Faure’s String Quartet, op. 121, the enigmatic Scherzo from Franck’s String Quartet in D Major, or such Duparc

4

songs as Chanson triste (Sad Song), La Vie anterieure (The Former Life) and

Soupir (Sigh).

Several comparisons can be made between the music on this program

and prints on display in The Darker Side ofLight: Arts ofPrivacy 1850-1900.

As described in the exhibition catalogue, many European artists ofthe late

nineteenth century sought to draw attention to unsettling social problems

lurking beneath the shining veneer of a new industrial era. In the case of

Sergei Prokofiev’s String Quartet no. 1 in B Minor, the quartet opens with a

cheerful, dance-like Allegro arranged in rondo form. A playful, comic mood

prevails in the second movement, Andante molto, which contrasts a lyric

primary theme against crisp pizzicato accompaniment. But the third movement, Andante, contains a fascinating juxtaposition ofmoods in which lush

tranquility gives way to stormy tribulation. In the end, Prokofiev achieves a

sense offinality without an ostentatious finish; the music simply dies away.

A proponent of neoclassical and modernist styles, Prokofiev in this movement recalls the moodiness oflate romanticism.

The joviality ofthe first and second movements of Prokofiev’s String

Quartet no. 1 may be compared to the naive bourgeois eroticism of Max

Klinger’s etchings At the Gate and In the Park from his series Eine Liebe (1887)

which depict lovers flirting coyly in a garden. It could also be viewed as a reference to the passing of a nostalgic and sentimental era, just as Louis-Ernest

Barrias’ bronze sculpture Nature Unveiling Herselfbefore Science (1900) mourns

the loss ofinnocence in the modern age.

In 1909 Anton von Webern composed Five Movementsfor String Quartet,

op. 5, one year after completing his formal studies with Arnold Schoenberg.

Webern arranged the work for string orchestra in 1928 and completed a further revision the following year. The score often calls for muted strings and

employs a variety ofbowing techniques ranging from col legno (with the wood 

ofthe bow) to am steg (at the bridge). Throughout the work, Webern uses the

term zart to indicate that the music should be played tenderly, yet a general

mood ofinner discontent and torment prevails over tenderness. Only the final 

movement brings the hope ofsolace, and even that is tentative.

5
When Claude Debussy’s String Quartet in G Minor received its first performance in 1893 at the Societe Nationale de Musique, Debussy was as yet

unrecognized by French critics and the public. The work was received by

only a small group offriends and supporters, much like the drawings and

sculptures in the exhibition. The vigor ofthe main theme ofthe opening

movement, Anime et tres decide (lively and very decisive), is contrasted by a

delicate second theme, stated in a soft dynamic at a slower tempo. After the

return ofthe principal theme, the movement concludes with a pentatonic

flourish—a testament to the influence ofIndonesian gamelan music, which

Debussy heard at the Paris Exposition in 1889.

Pizzicato is employed liberally in the second movement, Assez vifet bien

rhythme (fairly lively and rhythmic). The muted strings and soaring lead

melody ofthe third movement, Andantino doucement expressif(slightly slower 

than andante, sweet and expressive), evoke a quintessentially romantic experience. It is this movement that perhaps best embodies the intimate, erotic

atmosphere ofthe fin de siecle Parisian boudoir, elegantly depicted in Albert

Besnard’s etching Woman with a Vase (1894) and Mary Cassat’s drawing The

Coiffure (1891), both included in the exhibition.

In the final movement of Debussy’s quartet, Tres modere (greatly moderated), a state oftension is highlighted by a tonally ambiguous theme and

tremolo effects. According to Debussy scholar Deirdre Donnellon, the quartet exhibits the influence ofCesar Franck, who was Debussy’s organ instructor at the Paris conservatory. In turn, Debussy’s string quartet provided a

model for Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major, composed between

1902 and 1903.

Program notes by Matthew Thomas

6

Upcoming Concerts at the National Gallery ofArt

National Gallery ofArt Piano Trio

Music by Franck, Jongen, and Vieuxtemps

October 18, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Presented in honor of

The Darker Side ofLight: Arts ofPrivacy, 1850-1900

cxs

Carmina

Instrumental music from the Golden Age ofThe Netherlands

October 21, 2009

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall 

Presented in honor of

Judith Leyster, 1609-1660