75TH SEASON 

OF CONCERTS

OCTOBER 23, 2016 • NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
PROGRAM

3:30 • West Building, West Garden Court

LeStrange Viols

Kivie Cahn-Lipman, tenor viol

Douglas Kelley, bass viol

Loren Ludwig, treble viol

James Waldo, bass viol

Zoe Weiss, treble viol

The Duarte Family: A Musical Household in the Age of Rembrandt

Peter Philips (1560-1628) Intermission

Pavan and Galliard

Leonora Duarte (c. 1610-1678)

Sinfonia No. 5

John Bull (1562-1628)

In Nomine

Fantasia "A Leona"

Anonymous (c. 1500), from 0 Cancioneiro

Quie te traxo el cavallero

Anonymous, from 0 Cancioneiro

Cogoxa del mal presente

Duarte Lobo (1564-1646)

Missa “Dum Aurora" Kyrie

Missa "Dum Aurora" Gloria

Cornelis Schuyt (1557-1616)

lllustre Cavallier

Sweelinck

Veuilles, Seigneur

Sweelinck

Pavana Philippi

Duarte

Sinfonia No. 3

Sinfonia No. 4

Frescobaldi

Canzon sesta detta La Presenti

Sweelinck

Fantasia Chromatica

Nicolaus a Kempis (1600-1676)

Symphonia no. 1 as

Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643)

Recercar Settimo

Duarte

Sinfonia No. 6

Variations on LAria del Gran Duca

Peter Philips, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562 -

1621), and Peeter Cornet (c. 1570-1633)

thS
The Musicians

LeStrange Viols formed in 2014 to record the modern premiere of William Cranford's

consort music. By that time the musicians of LeStrange had already established themselves

as a crack team of American consort players. Their many previous appearances together in

diverse musical combinations and their experience in acclaimed American ensembles allow

the ensemble to craft refined and vigorous performances of intricate gems of the consort

repertory. LeStrange's debut CD made the New Yorker's list of notable recordings of 2015.

Program Notes

"In the evening I was invited to Signor Duerts, a Portuguese by nation, an exceeding rich

merchant, whose palace I found to be furnish'd like a prince's; and here his three daughters

entertain'd us with rare musick, both vocal and instrumental, which was finish'd with a

handsome collation.” So wrote English writer John Evelyn in his diary during his 1641 visit

to Antwerp.

During the seventeenth century, the Duarte family of Antwerp included patrons and

collectors of art as well as accomplished amateur writers, composers, and musicians. The

Duartes, a Jewish converso family that had fled Portugal to settle in the tolerant city of 

Antwerp during the sixteenth century, had quickly established themselves as jewelers to

north European royalty and as leading citizens of one of Europe's most prosperous and

populous cities. Gaspar Duarte (1584-1653) was close friends with Contantijn Huygens,

secretary to two Princes of Orange and closely connected to Rembrandt and numerous

other Dutch and Flemish painters. Huygens and Gaspar shared a love of art, music, and

letters. Leonora Duarte (1610-1678), one of Gaspar's three daughters, was praised for her

performance on the virginals and the viol and is the only known female composer of chamber 

music for viols whose music — a collection of five-part sinfonias (several of which will be

featured in today's concert) — survives.

By the early seventeenth century the fortunes of Antwerp were in decline in relation

to its northern neighbor, the burgeoning Dutch Republic. Yet cultural, political, and economic

ties between Antwerp and the principal Dutch cities to the north (Amsterdam and The

Hague) remained strong. For centuries, Antwerp had been an important musical center and

had played a leading role in the music of the Low Countries. Johannes Ockeghem, Jacob

Obrecht, Severin Cornet, and John Bull had all served its musical institutions, and Cipriano

de Rore, Orlande de Lassus, and Philippe de Monte had all spent parts of their careers in

that city. The famous Ruckers family of harpsichord builders lived in Antwerp, and by the 

seventeenth century the city had become a center of music publishing, home to the printing

houses of Susato, Phalese, and Plantin.

Today's program features music by composers with connections to seventeenthcentury Antwerp and to the Duarte family, in particular, and celebrates the rich musical, 

literary, and artistic culture of the Golden Age of art in the Low Countries.

Peter Philips was an English composer and keyboard virtuoso who lived much of his

life in the Low Countries, having fled England on account of his Catholicism. His Pavan and

Galliard, with its long, tuneful lines, balanced strains, and equality of voices, is a wonderful

example of the characteristically English consort music for viols, an idiom that became 

quite popular in the Low Countries and was also familiar to the musicians of the Duarte

circle, many of whom played the viol.

John Bull was another English Catholic composer and keyboard virtuoso who had fled 

his homeland for the continent. Much of his career was spent in Antwerp, where he became 

the cathedral's principal organist in 1617. It is likely that Bull taught music to the Duarte children,

and that it was Bull who introduced Leonora to the English and Italian polyphony that would

influence her five-part sinfonias for viol consort. Leonora's Sinfonia No. 5 features soaring

lines accompanying a cantus firmus moving in slow, even notes in an inner voice, a device 

that Bull used in his five-part In Nomine that follows. Given Bull's likely close connection to

Leonora, we have arranged his keyboard fantasia on the tune "A Leona" for consort, a practice that would have been familiar to musicians of the day.

The Duartes were part of a substantial Portuguese community in Antwerp, where

much Portuguese and Spanish music was printed. The three-part songs from a Portuguese 

concioneiro (song book) and the Kyrie and Gloria from a mass by Duarte Lobo —the leading 

Portuguese composer of the period and whose works were published in Antwerp during

the early seventeenth century— offer a taste of the music that would have been familiar to

Antwerp's Portuguese residents.

Cornelis Schuyt was a composer and organist at the Pieterskerk in Leiden. His madrigal

lllustre Cavallier honors a member of the Dutch aristocracy and offers a native take on a musical

idiom that was widely adopted and adapted across Europe.

The final set of the first half of today's concert begins with a ricercar — an imitative

polyphonic piece —by the influential Italian composer and keyboard virtuoso Girolamo

Frescobaldi, who spent a year in Antwerp in 1608 and later had a number of his works published there. His four-part Recercar Settimo (1615) features a five-note melodic figure in the

tenor that repeats in gradually longer notes over the course of the composition. Leonora

Duarte would rewrite and expand Frescobaldi's Recercar Settimo to five parts in her Sinfonia

No. 6, the only known instance of Duarte directly quoting another composer. The set ends

with a "mashup" of variations by several composers on L'Aria del Gran Duca, an Italian song 

that was a favorite vehicle for virtuoso variations across Europe during the first half of the

seventeenth century.

Once described as "the Orpheus of Amsterdam," Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck is generally recognized as the greatest Dutch composer of his era. In addition to being a prolific

composer, he is credited with introducing the keyboard works of William Byrd and John Bull

to the continent and helping to establish the North German organ tradition that J. S. Bach

would inherit a century later. Veuilles, Seigneur, a setting for five voices of Psalm 132, is from

one of Sweelinck's masterworks, a publication of settings of the entire cycle of psalms.

Pavana Philippi, originally for keyboard but heard today in a modern arrangement for viols, 

was composed by Sweelinck on a theme by Peter Philips, who made a pilgrimage in 1593 to
Amsterdam to visit the great musician, whom Philips described as "an excellent man of his

faculties." Sweelinck's Fantasia Chromatica (also heard here in a modern arrangement for viols),

with its distinctive chromatic motive, was well known in the early seventeenth century and

appears in manuscripts of keyboard music across Europe.

Our program ends with an Italianate symphonia for strings by Nicolaus a Kempis, a

work that would have sounded very modern when it was first published in Antwerp in 1649.

Kempis was one of the first composers working in the Low Countries to adopt the new

virtuoso Italian writing for strings by composers like Dario Castello and Marco Uccellini,

a style that Kempis adapted to the local market for domestic chamber music and that

would not have gone unnoticed in the erudite Duarte household.

Program notes by Loren Ludwig

Upcoming Events of the SeventyFifth Season of The William

Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot

Belin Concerts

Anderson & Roe Piano Duo

Danse Macabre

October 30, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Four Goldberg Variations

Spend an afternoon immersed in Bach's

iconic keyboard variations on a G-major

theme. The monumental work has inspired

numerous transcriptions, each one bringing

new aspects of its genius to light. Come

for your favorite, or stay to hear them all.

November 6

Ignacio Prego, harpsichord

12:00, West Building Lecture Hall

Aspen String Trio

1:30, West Building, West Garden Court

Atlantic Reed Consort

3:00, West Building Lecture Hall

Dan Tepfer, jazz pianist

4:30, West Building, West Garden Court

A Far Cry

Dreams and Prayers

featuring David Krakauer, clarinet

November 20, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Eliot Fisk, guitar

Complete Cello Suites of

Johann Sebastian Bach

November 26 & 27, 3:00

West Building, West Garden Court

General Information

Admission to the National Gallery of Art

and all of its programs is free of charge,

except as noted.

The use of cameras or recording equipment

during the performance is not allowed.

Please be sure that all portable electronic

devices are turned off.

Concerts are made possible in part

through the generosity of donors to the

National Gallery of Art through The Circle.

Reserved seating is available in recognition

of their support. Please contact the

development office at (202) 842-6450 or

circle@nga.gov for more information.

www.nga.gov

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The department of music produced these

program notes. Copyright © 2016 Board of

Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Cover Ambrosius Bosschaert, Bouquet of

Flowers in a Glass Vase (detail), 1621, National

Gallery of Art, Washington, Patrons' Permanent

Fund and New Century Fund

Back cover West Building, Constitution

Avenue entrance, viewed from Sixth Street NW,

1941, National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Gallery Archives