For the convenience of concertgoers 

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:oo pm.

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 of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, dc

Mailing address

2000b South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

cover: Card Fabritius, Vie,win Delft, 1652,

The National Gallery, London, Presented by The Art Fund, 1922

The Sixty-seventh Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art 

2,711th Concert

National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble

and National Gallery Chamber Players

Presented in honor of

Pride ofPlace: Dutch Cityscapes ofthe Golden Age

March 8, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfixe
Program

Performed without intermission

Hubert Waelrant (1517-1595)

Als ick u vinde

Orlando di Lasso (1532-1594)

Bonjour mon coeur

Matona mia cara

Anonymous (late 16th century)

Ic truere

Irasmus Widmann (1572-1634)

Wohlauf ihr Gaste

Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687)

Ne Grains point le serein

Orlando di Lasso

Audite nova

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621)

Chantez a Dieu

Huygens

Psalm 129— De profundis

Anonymous (c. 1650)

Nu zijt wellekome

Theo Evertz (dates unknown)

Ontweet van slape (c. 1570)

Servaes van der Muelen (1525-1592)

Altijt so moet ic tmeren

Lasso

Quand mon mari vient de dehors

Lupus Hellinc (16th century)

Neiuwe almanack

Sweelinck

Yeux, qui guidez mon ame

Huygens

Riposta dalla finestra

Jacques Vredeman de Vries (1558-1621)

Pae om Pae

Jacobus Clemens non Papa (1500-1595) 

Ik zeg adieu

Joannes de Latre (c. 1505-1569)

Al hadden wij vijfenveertich bedden
The Musicians

NATIONAL GALLERY VOCAL ARTS ENSEMBLE

The National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble is now in its fifth season as a

chamber choir under the leadership ofits artistic director, Rosa Lamoreaux.

The choir has presented special programs in honor of Gallery exhibitions,

including part-songs and anthems by nineteenth-century English composers in honor of The Artist's Vision: Romantic Traditions in Britain (2006). In

January the singers were guest artists at the Sonora, Mexico, Music Festival,

where they sang a program of Spanish and Hispanic choral music.

Members ofthe National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble participating in

this concert are:

Rosa Lamoreaux, artistic director and soprano

Gisele Becker, soprano

Barbara Hollinshead, mezzo-soprano

Roger Isaacs, countertenor

Stephen White, tenor

Ole Hass, tenor

Steven Combs, baritone

NATIONAL GALLERY CHAMBER PLAYERS

The newest ofthe resident ensembles at the Gallery, the National Gallery 

Chamber Players specialize in the interpretation ofinstrumental music

written before 1750. They first appeared in concert at the end ofthe 2006 -

2007 season, performing “A Musician’s Travels in Sound, 1430-1700” in

honor of the exhibition Fabulous Journeys and Faraway Places: Travels on

Paper, 1450-1700. In June 2008 they were invited to perform music of

Johann Sebastian Bach at the Washington Early Music Festival, and last

November they joined the National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble in a program honoring Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered.

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National Gallery Chamber Players participating in this concert are:

Risa Browder, baroque violin

Grant Herreid, lute, theorbo, recorder

Vera Kochanowsky, virginal

Ms. Kochanowsky plays a virginal by Lynette Tsiang, 1982, after an original

by Jan Ruckers ofAntwerp, 1620, now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Program Notes

Like the Dutch painters of the Golden Age, composers who made the

lowlands of Northern Europe their home in the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries were internationally admired and respected. In the course of the

Renaissance and early baroque periods they created a wealth ofmusical

gems in two traditions—refined sacred and chamber music, most ofwhich

was written during the period when the region was ruled by the Spanish

Hapsburgs (1518-1581), and household music that expressed the independence

and folk traditions ofthe Dutch nation, which emerged as the period of

Spanish domination ended. A great many of the songs ofthe period explore 

the same themes that are depicted in the genre paintings that are included

in the exhibition Pride ofPlace: Dutch Cityscapes ofthe Golden Age, currently

on view in the West Building. These include the celebration ofthe good 

tilings in life, family ties, love of nature, and pride of place. Like the paintings, the songs and the instrumental pieces are intimate in scale. They were

commonly played by the Dutch middle class, frequently as background

music for banquets or as entertainment in taverns, but also in the context

of house concerts. The popularity ofthis music lasted for well over one

hundred years, through the Golden Age and beyond.

Two of the composers represented on this evening’s program deserve

special mention. Constantijn Huygens was a statesman, scholar, and art

patron of note as well as a composer. In addition to Dutch, he was able to
read at least three other languages, as evidenced by his three songs on this 

evening’s program. His collection Pathodia sacra et profana (Sacred and

Profane Songs of Pathos) was published in 1647. It is dedicated to Utricia

Ogle, the niece of an English diplomat, who was a gifted amateur musician

and with whom Huygens was rumored to have a clandestine relationship.

He refers in his writings to having composed more than 1000 songs and

psalm settings for solo voice, with basso continuo accompaniment, but most

ofthese have been lost.

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck is believed to have spent his entire life in

Amsterdam, playing from his teen years until his death at the Oude Kerk, (the

Old Church), where his father had been organist before him. Sweelinck was

born Catholic, but his family converted to Calvinism in the late sixteenth 

century, along with the congregation ofthe Oude Kerk and much of the

population ofAmsterdam. His reputation was such that in his later years

he was referred to as the “Orpheus of Amsterdam.”

One ofthe most significant surviving musical documents from the

Golden Age in The Netherlands is a collection of Dutch liedekens (short 

songs) fromTylman Susato’s Musyck boexen (Music Boxes) (1551). This 

multi-volume compendium is the source for the last three songs on this 

evening’s program, and its preface includes a passage that is appropriate for

the occasion: “A few years ago I began publishing various types ofmusic,

such as masses, motets, and certainly many French, chansons.. .yet I have

always had the intention ofbringing to light the noble, heavenly art ofmusic

in our Netherlandish mother tongue, as is the case with music in the Latin,

French, and Italian languages, which is well known and has been disseminated in all countries.”

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Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

Peter Vinograde, pianist

Music by Corigliano, Flagello, Hutcheson, Laufer, and Ruggles

Second concert ofthe 63rd American Music Festival

March 11, 2009

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

CX5

Harmonious Blacksmith

Music by Huygens, Sweelinck, and van Eyck

Presented in honor of

Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes ofthe Golden Age

March 15, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court