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 ofthe 

West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

For the convenience of concertgoers, 

the Garden Cafe remains open for light refreshments

until 6:00 pm on Sundays.

Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

www.nga.gov

Concerts are made possible in part through the generosity of donors

to the National Gallery ofArt through The Circle. Reserved seating is

available in recognition oftheir support. Please contact the development 

office at (202) 842-6450 or circle@nga.gov for more information.

COVER: Jeanne Herron Richards, Iowa Landscape, etching,

National Gallery ofArt, Washington, Rosenwald Collection

23#^^

The Seventy-Third Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

3,024th Concert

The Ciompi Quartet of Duke University

Eric Pritchard and Hsiao-mei Ku, violins

Jonathan Bagg, viola

Fred Raimi, cello

November 23, 2014

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

American Landscapes

George Gershwin (1898-1937)

Lullaby (1919)

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)

String Quartet in B Minor, op. 11 (1936)

Molto allegro e appassionato

Molto adagio

Molto allegro (come prima)

Melinda Wagner (b. 1957)

My Tioga (2014)

1. Damsel Fly

2. Rock Run

3. Bug

4. Milkweed (memento mori)

5. Mad Bramble

6. Little Church in Nauvoo

INTERMISSION

Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)

String Quartet no. 12 in F Major, op. 96, “American” (1893)

Allegro ma non troppo

Lento

Molto vivace

Finale: vivace ma non troppo

The Musicians

The Ciompi Quartet was founded at Duke University in 1965 by the renowned

Italian violinist Giorgio Ciompi. Its members are professors at Duke and play

a leading role in the university’s cultural life, in addition to traveling widely for 

performances. Over its long career, the Ciompi Quartet has gained a reputation for performances of authentic intelligence and musical sophistication,

and for a warm, unified sound enhanced by each player’s strong individual

voice. With a maturity and insight bom ofwide experience, the Ciompi projects

the heart and soul ofthe music, in a repertoire that ranges from well-known

masterpieces to works by today’s most communicative composers.

Recent concerts have included the United States, France, Italy, Germany,

the Czech Republic, Serbia, and Albania. The quartet has made four visits to

China, most recently in December 2013. During summertime, the quartet

has performed at Monadnock Music in New Hampshire, the Great Lakes

Chamber Music Festival in Michigan, and North Carolina’s Eastern Music 

Festival and Highlands Chamber Music Festival. Collaborations have

included the distinguished talents of pianists Bella Davidovich, Menahem

Pressler and James Tocco, the Borromeo String Quartet, oboist Joseph

Robinson, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, soprano Susan Namcki, and jazz 

vocalist Nnenna Freelon. The latter four performed world premieres with

the Ciompi, reflecting the quartet’s commitment to creative programming,

which often mixes the old and the latest in exciting ways. The quartet’s

extensive record of commissions includes many strong works, and its close 

ties to composers Paul Schoenfield, Stephen Jaffe, Scott Lindroth, and

Melinda Wagner continue to furnish important contributions to the repertoire. In 2015 the quartet premieres Stephen Jaffe’s String Quartet no. j.

The group’s latest recording (2013) is on Toccata Classics, featuring a string

quartet by nineteenth-century violin virtuoso Heinrich Ernst. Naxos will

release a new quartet by Chiayu Hsu in 2015; Naxos online features a

recording ofthe quartets of Paul Schoenfield, including the popular Tales

from Chelm. Numerous other discs are on the cri, Arabesque, Albany,

Gasparo, and Sheffield Lab labels, with music from Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven,

and other composers to the present day.

3
Program Notes

GERSHWIN AND BARBER

George Gershwin was nineteen when he wrote Lullaby, a single movement

work, originally a composition assignment, and his only piece for quartet.

It was clear, even from that early age, that the young prodigy’s musical gift 

inhabited a different world from that ofhis contemporaries. He was unfettered by the conventions that guided them and instead moved firmly in the

world ofpopular music, which at that moment was being transformed by

jazz. IfAntonin Dvorak had lived long enough to know the young Gershwin,

he might have proclaimed him the “real thing”—a composer with a truly

American voice (see program notes below on Dvorak’s “American” quartet.)

Samuel Barber’s string quartet premiered in 1936 in Europe, where the

twenty-six-year-old was staying after receiving an American Academy in

Rome prize. When he completed the piece’s now famous slow movement,

he wrote to the cellist ofthe Curtis Quartet, for whom it was intended, that

it was “a knockout.” He was right, for the movement became one ofthe

most widely performed and beloved pieces ofAmerican music, most often

heard in the version for string orchestra known as Adagiofor Strings.

Barber struggled to compose a suitable finale. He eventually abandoned

his plan for a full-sized third movement and reverted to the first movement’s rich material, which he telescoped into a short reprise for the ending.

The result is a quartet in large-scale A-B-A form that highlights the adagio as

its centerpiece—an effective choice.

Notes by Jonathan Bagg

MY TIOGA

Composing for string quartet can be a daunting project for any composer;

the ghosts of Beethoven, Bartok, and other illustrious artists hover in the

background. The quartet genre often brings to mind music of dignity and

gravitas, and indeed, when composing what would become My Tioga, I had

anticipated an extended, developmental work ofsubstantial breadth. Instead

4

I found myselfwriting music that became increasingly whimsical and

nostalgic as I went along. When the work was nearly finished, I realized that

certain memories I have ofthe Pennsylvania countryside, in particular Tioga

County where my mother grew up, had been whirling about in my mind. As

a result, each ofthe quartet’s six movements evokes for me a moment spent

in the hills and valleys of Pennsylvania’s Endless Mountains.

“Damsel Fly” begins with a sad melody that becomes entwined with the

other voices, then dissipates, reminding me a bit ofthe fleeting visits made

by delicate, cobalt-tailed damselflies as my brother and I fished for blue gills

and sunnies (my grandmother called these insects Devil’s Darning Needles). 

“Rock Run” is a part of a beautiful Pennsylvania stream that has, over the

years, carved chutes, slides, and ledges out ofthe bedrock, culminating in

various spectacular waterfalls. The music ofthis movement is appropriately

craggy and angular, ending with a receding pulse.

While “Bug” is never still, with many dynamic shifts and moments of

rhythmic complexity, I find it to be purposeful and stubborn, like a June bug

clinging to the porch screen. In contrast, the music of “Milk Weed (memento

mori)” is lilting and melancholy, bringing to mind the delicate parachutes

sent out by an expired milkweed. “Mad Bramble,” a rushing tangle ofnotes,

makes me remember the thicket ofweeds, burdock, and thistle out beyond the

barn. Finally, “Little Church in Nauvoo”—a hymn ofsorts—reminds me of

the white clapboard church that sits atop a nearby hill, surrounded by cornfields.

Notes by Melinda Wagner

DVORAK

In the summer of 1893, Dvorak and his family escaped from New York’s lower 

east side, where they had been living, to the open prairies and welcoming arms

of a Bohemian enclave in Spillville, Iowa. The change ofscenery profoundly

affected the composer’s mood and morale, and the music he wrote while

residing there bears the distinct imprint ofhis positive experience. One of

those pieces was the String Quartet, opus 96, nicknamed the “American.”

Dvorak had been lured to the United States to direct the fledgling

National Conservatory of Music (later reborn as the Juilliard School), which

5
came with a large salary. It was hoped that he would impart some of his 

European erudition to the Americans, but also provide leadership—as

exponent of Musical Nationalism—-for an “American style” of composition. 

Dvorak did his best, taking time to steep himselfin what he considered the 

indigenous American music: plantation spirituals from the South and Native

American melodies. Pentatonic tunes, drone accompaniments, rhythmic

ostinati, and syncopated rhythms were among the devices he latched onto

as appropriately American. All ofthese elements show up in the “American”

string quartet.

Dvorak sought a deliberately simplified style in the F Major quartet, 

hoping to reflect what he felt was something direct, even naive, in the young

nation’s character. In adopting this fresh approach, he was able to liberate 

something in himself—perhaps his lingering ties to Wagner’s heavy

chromaticism. Dvorak had made a career of balancing the simple cadences 

ofhis own native folk music with a pan-German cosmopolitan style, and

here, across the Atlantic on the prairies of Iowa, he found the courage and

the means to suppress his European academicism, allowing the folk element to dominate and even define the music’s harmonies and rhythms, as

well as its larger shapes. The format ofthe F Major quartet may be quite 

typical: four movements including a scherzo, but there is also something

new for Dvorak—a greater integration ofthe thematic material into every

musical parameter. In this way it is a true precursor to the modernism of

Janacek and Bartok, only a few years away.

Notes by Jonathan Bagg

6

Upcoming Concerts at the National Gallery ofArt

Carolyn Enger, pianist

Music by mid-20th-century

American composers

Presented in honor of

Modem American Drawings and Prints

from the Kainen Collection

November 30, 2014

Sunday, 3:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Empire Brass

Holiday Concert

December 6, 2014

Saturday, 3:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Spanish Brass

Holiday Concert

December 13, 2014

Saturday, 3:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court