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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 ofArt

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 circk@nga.gov for more information.

cover: Cariani, A Concert, c. 1518-1520, National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Bequest of Lore Heinemann in memory of her husband, Dr. RudolfJ. Heinemann

The Seventy-second Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,967th Concert

Lucidarium

November 20, 2013

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

“La Istoria de Purim” (The Story ofPurim)

Tin Chamocha /Shema Israel

Text: Traditional, Gorizia (Ashkenazi/Italian rite)

La Cara Cosa (La Folia)

Text: “Les Caterines” Joan Escriva (Catalan, c. 1500)

Music: Anonymous (Sixteenth-century Italian)

Dos lidfun der sreyfe in Venedig (A Song About The Fire in Venice)

Text: Elia Bachur Levita

Music: Tzur Mishelo (Fourteenth century)

Anello

Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro (c. 1420-after 1484)

Selectionsfrom the “Bofo-Bukh”

Text: Elia Bachur Levita (1469-1549)

Music: Traditional, Venice, adaptation by Enrico Fink (b. 1969)

Selectionsfrom “Buovo dAntona”

Text: Anonymous (editor: Caligola de’ Bazalieri 1497)

Music: Traditional Tuscan, adaptation by Gloria Moretti (b. 1957)

Moresca (sulX Aria d’ottava)

Giovanni Lorenzo Baldano (1576-1660)

Ishena at ani geor venodad

Text: Joseph Sarphati (d. 1527)

Music: Bartolomeo Tromboncino (c. 1470-1535)

Tu dormi, io veglio e vo perdendo i passi

Tu dormi, io veglio a la tempesta e vento

Text: Serafino Aquilano (1466-1500)

Music: Anonymous, Petrucci IX

Tu dormi, io veglio a la tempesta e vento

Text: Anonymous

Music: Tromboncino

Pass’e mezo a la bolognesa, Saltarello a la bolognese

Giovanni Maria da Crema (fl. 1540-1550)

La Cansonetta da Purim

Text: Anonynous (Fifteenth century)

Music: Traditional Emilian, adapted by Gloria Moretti

La Istoria de Purim io ve racconto

Text: Mordekay Dato (1525-c. 1590)

Music: Traditional Venetian, adapted by Anna-Pia Capurso (1976)

Meghillat Ester

Music: Traditional Florentine

Mfl Nishtana/Avadim Hainu

Traditional Florence

Fuggi,fuggi,fuggi (La Mantovana)

Attributed to Giuseppino dal Biabo (c. 1600)

Had Gadiya— Un Caprett

Text: Traditional Hebrew

Music: Traditional Ferraran

Had Gadiya

Text: Traditional Hebrew

Music: Traditional Florentine
The Musicians

LUCIDARIUM

Based in Milan and Geneva, the early music ensemble Lucidarium specializes in discovering little-known repertoire from the Renaissance and Middle 

Ages and presenting it to contemporary audiences in entertaining and

engaging ways. Under the leadership ofcodirectors Avery Gosfield and Francis 

Biggi, the ensemble has released six prize-winning CDs and produced

dozens ofradio recordings and documentaries for Dutch, French, Italian,

and Swiss television.

In addition to hundreds of concerts at important early music festivals, 

Lucidarium makes frequent “crossovers” into Jewish and other world music

venues. Recent performances include “Hombres de Maiz,” featuring Mexican

harpist-vocalist Barbara Ceron for the Festival Caminos at the Quai Branly 

Ethnographic Museum in Paris; “Ninfale” at the Boston Early Music Festival;

and “The Babel Project” with the Latvian Yiddish psychedelic rock band

Forshpil at Yiddish Summer Weimar. The creation ofthis evening’s program—“La Istoria de Purim”—and Lucidarium’s current United States tour

have been made possible in part by grants from the European Association

for Jewish Culture, the Republic and Canton ofGeneva, the Swiss Performers’ Collective, and the Kulturverein Lucidarium. The ensemble appears

at the National Gallery by arrangement with Shupp Artists Management,

www.shuppartists.com.

Members of Lucidarium appearing in tonight’s concert are:

Gloria Moretti, Anna-Pia Capurso, and Enrico Fink, voice

Avery Gosfield and Marco Ferrari, Renaissance winds

Paul Kieffer, lute, colascione, and mandora

Massimiliano Dragoni, hammer dulcimer, percussion

4

Program Notes

Of all the groups that have contributed to the identity ofthe Italian people

over the centuries, the Jews are rarely mentioned. However, the Italian Jewish 

community is the oldest in Europe, with its establishment on the peninsula

dating back two centuries before the Common Era. Two thousand years of

coexistence between Italian Jews and Christians have produced—despite

some dark and often tragic moments—a continuous exchange ofideas and

culture. The Jewish communities participated actively in the great cultural,

economic, and political movements of Italian history. Cosmopolitan by

vocation as well as by necessity, learned Jews were an important force in the

development of Humanist and Renaissance ideas. During the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries, they were an important and active presence at the princely

courts, their lives a balancing act between exclusion and appreciation. Many 

ofthe most important choreographers and theoreticians ofthe hallo di corte

(dancing at court), an integral part of a gentleman’s upbringing, were Jews.

Others were esteemed musicians, famous playwrights, or respected physicians. In daily life, although the Jewish communities defended their particular cultural and religious traditions with ardor, they never lived in isolation

from the world around them. Assimilating and transmitting customs and

music, they were Jews, but also Tuscans, Piedmontans, or Venetians.

Even today, their music bears witness to this sense of belonging. The

ancient musical traditions ofthe Italian community, and those brought to

Italy by Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews, form a vast repertoire that often uses

the same melodies and expressive language as the music ofthe Gentiles. These

universally beloved themes bear witness to a deep-rooted shared tradition

that goes beyond misunderstanding and hostility. We hear Renaissance and

Baroque dance tunes borrowed for the liturgy, shared lullabies and nursery

rhymes, and formulas for the declamation ofpoetry in the style ofthe Italian

Courts. The eight-syllable quatrain form, still used today in Italy for singing

the traditional Maggio, appears in the sixteenth-century anonymous poem “La

Cansonetta da Purim” in a colorful combination of Northern Italian dialect

5
(transliterated into Hebrew characters) and Hebrew. Sometimes dubbed “Jewish

Carnival,” Purim is an annual holiday that commemorates the deliverance of

the Jewish people in the ancient Persian Empire from a plot to destroy them,

as recorded in the Biblical Book ofEsther.

During the sixteenth century, Mordechai Dato, an intellectual from Emilia,

composed “La Istoria de Purim,” a poem in Italian (again in Hebrew characters) for the members ofthe community who didn’t understand Hebrew

(women and children in particular). He chose that most Italian ofmeters,

the ottava rime—that of Orlando Innamorato, Orlando Furioso, Gerusalemme

Liberata, and hundreds of other epic poems from the Renaissance, including

the Florentine Sacre Rappresentazioni on Biblical themes, designed for the

edification ofthe Christian faithful.

Elias Bachur Levita, who, a generation earlier, had left Germany for Italy

in search of a better life, chose the same verse form for one ofthe first major

works in Yiddish: the Bofo-Bukh, the history of Buovo d’Antona (Bevis of

Hampton), one ofthe most beloved characters in epic poetry. Joseph Sarfati, 

a sixteenth-century Roman intellectual, left us a collection of Hebrew

strambotti in ottava rime, including a faithful adaptation of a poem by the

highly esteemed poet (and musician) Serafino dall’Aquila.

Sometimes, this ongoing exchange leaves traces that survive for centuries,

such as the echoes ofthe Aria della Follia that can be heard in the liturgy for 

the removal ofthe Torah from the Ark, a version of Shema Israel still sung

today. Some tunes of Renaissance origin live on into popular culture, such

as the Ballo di Mantova, which originated in the Gonzaga court, where there

were many Jewish dancing masters, actors, and musicians. By the end ofthe

sixteenth century, its popularity was widespread in Europe, and it formed

the basis for a well-known song, Fuggi,fuggi,fuggi, which could be found

in a variety ofsources until the eighteenth century. Still played in various

regions ofItaly, the mantovana has undergone numerous transformations,

eventually becoming the melody for the national anthem ofIsrael.

Program notes by Francis Biggi and Avery Gosfield

6

Upcoming Concerts at the National Gallery ofArt

Mak Grgic and Nejc Kuhar, guitarists

Music by J. S. Bach

and Slovenian composers

November 24, 2013

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Building Court

National Gallery ofArt Piano Trio

Music by Bloch, Rosowsky, Stutschewsky,

and other composers

Hanukkah Concert

December 1, 2013

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Building Court

United States Navy Band Commodores

Duke Ellington: The Nutcracker Suite

December 8, 2013

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Building Court