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: Jacob van Ochtervelt, Street Musicians in the Doorway ofa House,

1665, Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Eugene Perry in memory

ofher mother, Mrs. Claude Kilpatrick

The Sixty-seventh Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,709th Concert

Ellen Hargis, soprano 

Paul O’Dette, lutenist

Presented in honor of

Pride ofPlace: Dutch Cityscapes ofthe Golden Age

March 1, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Performed without intermission

Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687)

Aubade (le reveil de Calliste)

Serenade (ne crains point le serein)

Nicolas Vallet (c. 1583-after 1642)

Fantasie

Pavane enforme de complainte

Carillon de village

Huygens 

Orsa bella

Serenata (a dispetto de’ venti)

Riposta dallafinestra

Va, donna ingrata

David Petersen (1650-1737)

Schreit niet meer (1715)

Vallet

Ainsi qu'on oyt le cerfbruire (Psalm 42)

O Pasteur d’Israel (Psalm 80)

Vallet

Onse Vader im Hemelryck

Bouree d’Avignon 

Gaillarde du comte Essex

Nicholas Lanier (1588-1666)

Love and I ofLate Did Part

Weep No More, My Wearied Eyes

No More Shall Meads Be Deck’d with Flowers

The Musicians

Ellen Hargis and Paul O’Dette bring an incomparable spirit of drama, vivid

musical imagination, and sheer fun to their voice and lute collaborations.

Friends and frequent musical partners for more than twenty-five years, their

communication with audiences is enhanced by their mutual commitment

to authentic performance practice and an avid interest in discovering new 

elements ofthe early music repertoire. The duo has toured around the 

globe, performing to rave reviews in Austria, Canada, England, France,

Japan, Russia, and Spain as well as throughout the United States. Hargis

and O'Dette have two cds on the Noyse Productions label in addition to

dozens ofrecordings with leading American and European early music

ensembles. The duo’s performances ofJohn Dowland’s (1563-1626) Flow

My Tears and music of Giulio Caccini (1551-1618) are featured in the new

edition ofthe Norton Anthology of Western Music.

Soprano Ellen Hargis is recognized as one ofthe world’s foremost interpreters ofseventeenth- and eighteenth-century music. Called “the baroque

music diva” by New Yorker magazine, she appears with many leading ensembles, including as The King’s Noyse, the Mozartean Players, The Newberry 

Consort, Piffaro, Theatre ofVoices, and Tragicomedia. A frequent performer

at the Boston Early Music Festival, she has sung leading roles in every baroque

opera production at the festival since 1987. Hargis’ discography embraces

repertoire from medieval to contemporary music and comprises more than

forty recordings. She teaches voice at Case Western Reserve University in 

Cleveland, Ohio.

Paul O’Dette has been called “the clearest case of genius ever to touch

his instrument” by Toronto’s Globe and Mail. Best known for his recitals and 

recordings of virtuoso solo lute music, O’Dette maintains an active international career as an ensemble musician and is a member ofthe acclaimed 

continuo ensemble Tragicomedia. He also performs with William Christie, 

Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Christopher Hogwood, Gustav Leonhardt, Nicholas

3
McGegan, Sylvia McNair, Andrew Parrott, Nigel Rogers, and Jordi Savall as

well as The Parley of Instruments and Tafelmusik. O’Dette has directed 

baroque orchestras on both sides ofthe Atlantic and conducted baroque 

operas at the Boston and Utrecht Early Music Festivals, the Drottningholm

Court Theatre, Festival Vancouver, and Tanglewood. He can be heard on

more than one hundred CDS, and his solo recordings have won prizes and

rave reviews. He has served as director of early music at the Eastman School

of Music since 1976 and is artistic director ofthe Boston Early Music Festival. He plays this concert on a ten-course lute made in 1984 by Ray Nurse 

ofVancouver, British Columbia.

4

Program notes

Like the Dutch painters ofthe 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 of musical

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 ofthe songs ofthe period deal

with 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 celebration ofthe 

good things 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 of this music lasted for well over one

hundred years, through the Golden Age and beyond.

Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) was a major figure in the seventeenth

century in The Netherlands. Statesman, scholar, and art patron of note as well

as a composer, his collection Pathodia sacra et profana (Sacred and Profane

Songs of Pathos), from which the two French airs that begin this program are

drawn, 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 had a clandestine relationship.

Nicolas Vallet, as his name implies, was born in France. He settled in

The Netherlands around 1613 and in his early years in Amsterdam published

four lute books, which appeared under various Latin, French, and Dutch 

titles. After 1620 Vallet concentrated on performing and teaching. A number

of contracts between him and other musicians throw light on the work and

5
social conditions in Amsterdam in the first half ofthe seventeenth century.

On several occasions he hired musicians to assist him in his musical duties

and in operating a dancing school, providing them with room and board as

well as fees for playing in public with him. The last known archival reference to Vallet, on 30 April 1633, makes it clear that he had been forced to

give up all claim to his possessions, furniture, and clothing, because he was 

unable to pay his rent.

David Petersen was also an immigrant, having been born in Lubeck,

Germany. His first music study took place in Lund, Sweden, where he was 

employed as a university musician during the early 1670s. The first record

of Petersen’s presence in Amsterdam dates from 1679. He published two

volumes ofsongs and a collection oftwelve Speelstukken (toccatas), which

feature many polyphonic passages, rapid scales, and the use of high positions on the fingerboard, all ofwhich indicate that he must have been a

skilled performer. He also wrote numerous songs to Dutch poems by his

friend Abraham Alewijn (1664-1721).

Nicolas Lanier was an English singer, lutenist, and composer, whose

music was widely popular in The Netherlands. He wrote some ofthe earliest

English examples of declamatory song. When Charles I succeeded to the

English throne in 1625, he created the post of Master ofthe King’s Music

and appointed Lanier to it. Lanier was also a talented artist, as evidenced by

a surviving self-portrait, and one ofthe perquisites of his position in the

English court was having his portrait painted by Jan Van Dyck. That portrait

is now one ofthe prize possessions ofthe Kunsthistorisches Museum in

Vienna. Lanier traveled to Italy to purchase art works on behalf of King

Charles, and some ofthe paintings he acquired still hang at Hampton Court.

He was later appointed Master ofthe King’s Miniatures. During the English

Civil War (1642-1649), his royal appointments disappeared, but he made a

living trading in both drawings and musical instruments.

Program notes by Stephen Ackert

6

Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

David Amram, composer and pianist

Music by Amram

First concert ofthe 63rd American Music Festival

Presented in honor of Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans”

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble

and

National Gallery Chamber Players

Music by Huygens, Sweelinck, and other

sixteenth- and seventeeth-century composers

Presented in honor of Pride ofPlace: Dutch Cityscapes ofthe Golden Age

March 8, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court