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 East 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 ofArt

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

www.nga.gov

cover: Jacques Callot, Gobbi and Other Bizarre Figures, 1616/1617,

National Gallery ofArt, Washington, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund

The Sixty-ninth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,804th Concert

National Gallery of Art Orchestra

Gillian Anderson, guest conductor

October 31, 2010

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

East Building Auditorium

Admissionfree
Program

Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787)

Overture to Iphigenia in Aulis (1774)

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Symphony no. 92 in G Major (“Oxford”) (1789)

Adagio; allegro spiritoso

Adagio

Menuet and Trio

Finale: Presto

INTERMISSION

Christian Frederik Emil Horneman (1840-1906)

Overture to Aladdin (1864)

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Symphony no. 8 in B Minor, D. 759 (“Unfinished”) (1822)

Allegro moderato

Andante con moto

Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)

Danse macabre, op. 40 (1874)
The Musicians

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ORCHESTRA

Founded in 1943, the National Gallery Orchestra initially consisted oftwentyfive players drawn from the National Symphony Orchestra. Gradually growing in numbers, the Gallery orchestra eventually reached the size and status

of a large chamber orchestra. The ensemble has undertaken the full range

of chamber and symphonic repertoire and has frequently presented first

performances ofworks by American composers, most notably the 1953

premiere of Charles Ives’ Symphony no. 1 under the direction of Richard

Bales; the 1990 premiere of Daniel Pinkham’s Symphony no. 4 under George

Manos; and the 2007 premiere ofJohn Musto’s Later the Same Evening: An

opera inspired byfive paintings ofiEdward Hopper under guest conductor Glen

Cortese. In November 2009 the orchestra played the United States premiere

performance of Violin Concerto by James Aikman, under the direction of

guest conductor Vladimir Lande.

GILLIAN ANDERSON

Conductor and musicologist Gillian Anderson specializes in the relation

between music and moving images. She has reconstructed musical scores

and accompanied thirty-six silent films, among them Carmen (DeMille, 1915)

with the London Philharmonic Orchestra; Haxan (Christiansen, 1922) with

the National Gallery Orchestra; Nosferatu (Murnau, 1921) with the Brandenburg Philharmonic in Potsdam, Germany; and Pandora's Box (Murnau,

1928). In 2002 Anderson collaborated with painter Lidia Bagnoli to create

Inganni, a short film that was commissioned by and shown at the National

Gallery ofArt in conjunction with the exhibition Deceptions and Illusions:

Five Centuries ofiTrompe I’Oeil Painting. Together with New York University

film scoring director Ronald Sadoff, Anderson founded the journal Music

and the Moving Image, published by the University of Illinois Press.

4

She has participated in many important film festivals in Europe, South 

America, and the United States, including Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovata, Cine

Memoire in Paris, the DC Filmfest, the New York Film Festival, the Pordenone

Silent Film Festival, the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain, the Toronto Film

Festival, and the Tribeca Film Festival. In 1997 Anderson founded the group

Cinemusica Viva, which had its premiere concerts at the Louvre Museum. In 

2003 she contributed to the 75th anniversary celebration ofthe Academy of

Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Award with two performances of Wings

(Welman, 1927).

Anderson has written four books and numerous scholarly articles and

edited a number ofperforming editions. Fler most recent article, “Musical

missionaries: ‘Suitable’ music in the cinema 1913-1915,” was published in 2004

in the Italian journal, Civiltd musicale. A graduate ofThe Winsor School in

Boston; Bryn Mawr College; the University ofIllinois, Urbana; and the University of Maryland, College Park, she is a member ofthe Pi Kappa Lambda Music

Honorary Society. Her book, Freedoms Voice in Poetry and Song, was chosen as

the best reference book ofthe year by Choice Magazine, and her article “Putting

the Experience ofthe World at the Nation’s Command: Music at tire Library of

Congress 1800-1917” was awarded the Music Library Association’s Richard 

Hill Award for best article in 1989. From 1993-1995 she served as President of

the Sonneck Society for American Music (now the Society for American Music).

She is currently a board member ofthe Film Music Society and a member of

the Executive Committee ofthe Film Music Museum.

5
Program Notes

Born in Bohemia, Christoph Willibald Gluck was living and working as an

opera composer in Vienna in the early 1770s when the attache to the French

Embassy, Marie Francois Louis Gand Leblanc Roullet, showed him an opera

libretto that he had based on Racine’s tragedy Iphigenie cn Aulide (Iphigenia

in Aulis). Gluck set to work at once. He had never written an opera for

Paris before, but he had incorporated many features of French opera into

his Italian operas. Having an opera performed at the center ofserious opera,

the Academie Royale de Musique in Paris, was a logical, next step for the

composer. Judging from contemporary accounts, the several months of

rehearsals for Iphigenie en Aulide must have been quite a spectacle, with

the irascible sixty-year-old composer struggling to reform the bad habits of

the singers and players ofthe Academie Royale. The premiere in April 1774

was a triumph, but the run of performances was interrupted after just one

month, when all the Paris theaters were closed as the nation mourned the

death of Louis xv.

In 1789 Haydn embarked on the first ofseveral concert tours in London. 

One ofthe scores he took with him was the Symphony no. 92, which he

conducted at his first London concert on March 11,1791. Soon thereafter, he

was invited to receive an honorary doctorate from Oxford University. For his

degree, he had to compose a canon and conduct three concerts at the university’s Sheldonian Theater, where the degree was presented. He included the

Symphony no. g2 in the program for one ofthose concerts—hence the nickname ofthe symphony (“Oxford”). Haydn was greatly honored and pleased

to fulfill those requirements, but he was not so pleased by some ofthe other

stipulations imposed by the university: In letters he wrote in later years, he

grumbled that, ifhe had known the degree involved paying a fee of 50 pounds

sterling, he would have managed without one. What is more, Haydn had to

pay the bell-ringer ofthe theater out ofhis own pocket and on the spot, which

he found quite unworthy ofthe occasion.

6

The Danish composer Christian Frederik Emil Homeman studied at the

Leipzig Conservatory in the late 1850s with Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870) and 

Moritz Hauptmann (1792-1868). During his time in Leipzig, he met Edvard

Grieg, who became a lifelong friend. Homeman’s early compositions include

two string quartets and the “Aladdin” overture (1864), perhaps his best-known

work. The overture was first performed by the musical society Euterpe, which

Homeman founded in 1865 with other musicians, including Grieg, who

wanted to promote modern Danish music. The full opera Aladdin was not

completed until 1888, and was not well received at its premiere, but it met with 

some success when it was performed again in 1902. Musically, Aladdin is

distinguished by spectacular chomses, colorful harmony, and rhythmic variety,

showing the influence of Beethoven, Weber, and Berlioz. Homeman’s gifts

as a composer went largely unrecognized in his lifetime. Interest in his music

revived after his death, due in large part to the efforts of a more famous Danish

composer, Carl Nielsen (1865-1931), who was one of Homeman’s pupils.

Historical research has yielded no firm answer to the question, “Why 

did Schubert's Eighth Symphony remain unfinished?” He presented the

manuscript in its unfinished form (two movements complete, and some

sketches for a third) as a gift of gratitude to a friend, Anselm Hiittenbrenner

(1794-1868), who had arranged for Schubert to have an honorary membership in a prestigious music society. Hiittenbrenner kept the score without

making any effort to have it performed until 1865, when the Viennese conductor Johann Herbeck (1831-1877) persuaded him that it was high time to

arrange for a first performance ofthe symphony. Herbeck conducted the first 

performance in Vienna, played by the Society of Friends ofMusic Orchestra.

7
Danse macabre was first published in 1872 as a song for voice and piano,

with music by Saint-Saens and lyrics by the symbolist poet and physician

Henri Cazalis (1840-1909). The poem was included on the title page ofthe

score when Saint-Saens' arrangement for full orchestra appeared in 1874:

Zig et zig et zag, la mort cri cadence 

Frappant une tombe avec son talon,

La mort a minuit joue un air de danse, 

Zig et zig et zag, sur son violon.

Le vent d’hiver souffle, et la nuit

est sombre,

Des gemissements sortent des tilleuls;

Les squelettes blancs vont a travers

l’ombre

Courant et sautant sous leurs grands

linceuls,

Zig et zig et zag, chacun se tremousse,

On entend claquer les os des danseurs,

Un couple lascifs’asseoit sur la mousse

Comme pour gouter d’anciennes

douceurs.

Zig et zig et zag, la mort continue

De racier sans fin son aigre instrument.

Un voile est tombe! La danseuse est

nue!

Son danseur la serre amoureusement.

La dame est, dit-on, marquise ou 

baronne.

Et le vert galant un pauvre charronTap, tap, tap—Death rhythmically 

Taps a tomb with his heel,

Death at midnight plays a gigue,

Tap, tap, tap, on his violin.

The winter wind blows, the night

is dark,

The lime trees groan aloud;

White skeletons flit across the gloom,

Running and leaping beneath their

huge shrouds.

Tap, tap, tap, everyone’s astir,

One hears the bones ofthe dancers

knock,

A lustful couple sits down on the moss, 

As ifto savor past delights.

Tap, tap, tap, Death continues,

Endlessly scraping his shrill violin.

A veil has slipped! The dancer’s naked!

Her partner clasps her amorously.

They say she’s a baroness or

marchioness,

And the callow gallant a poor 

cartwright.

Horreur! Et voila qu’elle s’abandonne

Comme si le rustre etait un baron!

Zig et zig et zig, quelle sarabande!

Quels cercles de morts se donnant

la main!

Zig et zig et zag, on voit dans la bande

Le roi gambader aupres du vilain!

Mais psit! tout a coup on quitte la

ronde,

On se pousse, on fuit, le coq a chante

Oh! La belle nuit pour le pauvre monde! 

Et vive la mort et l’egalite!

Horrors! And now she’s giving herself, 

As though the bumpkin were a baron!

Tap, tap, tap, what a saraband!

Circles of corpses all holding hands!

Tap, tap, tap, in the throng you can see

King and scoundrel dancing together!

But shh! Suddenly the dance is ended, 

They jostle and take flight—the cock

has crowed;

Ah! Nocturnal beauty shines on the 

poor!

And long live death and equality!

9
Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

New York Chamber Soloists

Music by Delius, Elgar, Sullivan, and Vaughan Williams

November 3, 2010

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

lerry Waldo, pianist

Early American Jazz

November 7, 2010

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

East Building Auditorium