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75TH SEASON 

OF CONCERTS

APRIL 15, 2017 • NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

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PROGRAM

3:00 • East Building Auditorium

Merima Kljuco, composer and accordion

Seth Knopp, piano

Bart Woodstrup, artist

The Sarajevo Haggadah: Music of the Book

For Tamara Brooks

La Bendision de Madre (The Mother's Prayer) found in a Sarajevo synagogue 

The Creation

La Convivencia (The Coexistence)

Al Mora

Alhambra Decree

Exodus

In Silenzio

Stampita Italkim

The Inquisitor

Sarajevo 1941

Dervis Korkut 

Siege of Sarajevo

La Bendision de Madre

The program is approximately one hour in length without an intermission.

2 • National Gallery of Art

The Musicians

Merima Kljuco is from Sarajevo, Bosnia, and imbues a dizzying variety of music with her

accordion playing. Whether performing in recital with ensembles such as MusikFabrik or

the Asko/Schonberg Ensemble, participating in Vermont's Yellow Barn music projects in

2010 and 2011, or appearing as guest soloist with such orchestras as the Scottish Chamber

Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the soulful traditions of her

instrument are not only given a unique voice, but they are also given new life and meaning.

Kljuco's love of world music, and the music of Bosnia in particular, is something she

seeks to share with audiences everywhere. In commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of 

the Siege of Sarajevo in 2012, the East West Theatre Company and renowned Bosnian theater

director Haris Pasovic invited Kljuco as musical director to compose, arrange, and perform

a musical poem, Sarajevska Crvena Linija (Sarajevo Red Line). The piece, which incorporated

traditional and pop songs, as well as classical music — music with deep cultural significance —

was performed on April 6, 2012, to an audience of 11, 541 empty red chairs lining the main 

boulevard in Sarajevo, each chair representing a life lost in the siege. On that day, thousands

of people from all walks of life congregated to witness and remember.

Seth Knopp, from Baltimore, is artistic director of Yellow Barn, where he was also

musician-in-residence from 1983 to 2013. He is founder and co-artistic director of Yellow Barn's

Young Artist Program and serves as artistic director of Soundings: New Music at the Nasher,

a concert series at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas. Knopp also is a founding

member of the Naumburg Award-winning Peabody Trio, the ensemble-in-residence at the

Peabody Institute, where he serves as a member of the piano and the chamber music faculties.

As a member of the Knopp-Melancon Duo, he was a winner of the United States Information

Agency's Artistic Ambassador Competition, which resulted in tours throughout Europe, the 

Far East, the Middle East, and Japan. Knopp has recorded on the CRI, Analekta, New World

Records, and Artek labels.

Bart Woodstrup is from Dekalb, Illinois, and, as an artist, seeks to understand and

manipulate the aesthetics, semiotics, and narratives of various time-based media. His work

often takes the form of traditional musical composition, real-time interactive audio/video

performance, multimedia installation, and networked experience. Using custom software

that is capable of rendering sound and visuals in real time, Woodstrup explores the creation

of Live Cinema experiences. Through the use of digital effects and editing techniques, these 

performances often subvert traditional narratives by enveloping them in irony, metaphor, 

and abstraction. His work is shown regularly throughout the United States and abroad and

has been included at Siggraph, Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts, SEAMUS, Spark Festival

of Electronic Music and Arts, Not Still Art Festival, Version>03, and the Chicago Underground Film Festival. In 2012, Woodstrup took part in the Crumb Madrigals Project Artist

Residency at Yellow Barn.

75th Season • 3
Program Notes

Composed in 2014, The Sarajevo Haggadah: Music of the Book traces the dramatic story of one

of Jewish culture's most treasured manuscripts. Its twelve movements tell the story of the

Haggadah's journey from its birth in fourteenth-century Spain through five centuries of neardestruction and survival at the hands of many peoples and cultures, from the Alhambra

Decree, or Edict of Expulsion, of 1492, to the Siege of Sarajevo of 1992. Today the Haggadah

is included in the collection of the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Using the

musical traditions of Spain, Italy, Austria, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kljuco illustrates

and illuminates the manuscript's travels from medieval Spain to twentieth-century Bosnia,

where it was hidden and rescued during World War II, to its restoration by the National

Museum in Sarajevo after the 1992-1995 war. Inspired by the historical novel by Pulitzer 

Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks, The Sarajevo Haggadah: Music of the Book creatively

interprets this miraculous artifact as a universal symbol of exile, return, and coexistence.

Haggadah is the Hebrew word for "telling" and refers to the text recited on the first

nights of the Jewish Passover, including the story of the Exodus.

The Creation

La Convivencia (The Coexistence) Now considered to be an idealized recasting of history, 

La Convivencia spanned four centuries in medieval Spain under Moorish rule, where peace

and cultural interaction existed between Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

Al Mora A special place in the Sarajevo Haggadah's depiction of the Seder table is reserved

for a Moorish woman, who appears seated in a saffron-colored robe. She seems to represent

a cultural interaction that certainly existed in fourteenth-century Spanish Catalonia, when 

the Sarajevo Haggadah was created.

Alhambra Decree Also known as the Edict of Expulsion, the Alhambra Decree was issued

in 1492 by the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. It ordered:

Jews and Jewesses of our kingdoms to depart and never to return... they

shall not dare to return to those places, nor to reside in them, nor to live

in any part of them, neither temporarily on the way to somewhere else

nor in any other manner, under pain that if they do not perform and comply

with this command and should be found in our said kingdom and lordships

and should in any manner live in them, they incur the penalty of death

and the confiscation of all their possessions by our Chamber of Finance,

incurring these penalties by the act itself, without further trial, sentence,

or declaration.

The decree was not revoked until 1968.

4 • National Gallery of Art

Exodus

In Silenzio

Stampita Italkim Stampita is a medieval dance and musical form. Italkim is the Hebrew 

word for "Italians" and refers to a specific community of Jews (also known as "Bene Roma,"

or "Children of Rome," who have lived in Rome for over two thousand years. Thus, this

movement is a tipsy stampita shared by two Italkim.

The Inquisitor Most likely smuggled out of Spain after the Alhambra Decree of 1492, the

Sarajevo Haggadah resurfaces in 1609 in Venice. Here, Jews are allowed to live but are confined 

to the ghetto of Cannaregio and prohibited from printing books. Indeed, all books are subject

to inspection by the Inquisition, and those considered a threat to the teachings of the Church

are burned. This movement is devoted to the priest for the Inquisition who evidently allowed 

the Sarajevo Haggadah to be spared. His notation appears inside the Haggadah: "Revisto per

me," or "Revised by me," and signed Giovanni Dorn. Vistorini.

Sarajevo 1941

Dervis Korkut Hitler wished to establish a "museum of an extinct race" that would house

artifacts like the Sarajevo Haggadah. Dervis Korkut, the chief librarian at the Bosnian National 

Museum, had the foresight to understand that the Haggadah was threatened, and when the

Nazi commander Johann Fortner arrived at the museum to claim it, Korkut hid it underneath 

his coat. Quietly leaving the museum, Korkut entrusted the Haggadah to a Muslim imam 

who hid it in his mosque's library until after the war.

Siege of Sarajevo The Siege of Sarajevo began on April 6,1992. Under constant fire, the inhabitants of the Bosnian capital were cut off from food, medicine, water, and electricity. The siege

lasted almost four years. It was one of the most catastrophic and tragic events of Yugoslavia's

violent break-up and left an estimated 200,000 people dead and 2.7 million displaced as

refugees —the largest displacement in Europe since the Second World War. The people of 

Bosnia and Herzegovina were witnesses to almost unimaginable violations of human rights

in the name of ethnic cleansing, ranging from rape to mass executions and starvation.

La Bendision de Madre (The Mother's Prayer) This prayer was especially intended to be

used by elderly Jewish women who had not had the opportunity to study Hebrew and who

considered Ladino (a language derived from Old Spanish and spoken predominantly by Sephardic minorities) to be their Jewish language.

75th Season • 5
Composer’s Note

I am fascinated by the Sarajevo Haggadah not only because of its amazing and fascinating

history, but also because it reminds me of my own life and the "exodus" I experienced. I was 

forced to leave my country under the strangest and heaviest circumstances.

In its journey, the Haggadah suffered transformations that make it even more special

by giving it a richer history that reflects its passage through different cultures. I also travel

around the world, and with every journey I get a new "scar," positive or negative, but I keep

my dignity and become richer by traveling through different circumstances and sharing my

culture with others through my music.

My composition, The Sarajevo Haggadah: Music of the Book, is based on the Sephardic 

traditions of different countries that the Haggadah visited as it traveled through history.

Sephardic Jews observed the traditions of their home countries and infused Jewish culture

into the music of their adopted lands. This resulted in musical similarities. For example, 

Bosnians and Sephardic Jews use the same scales and rhythms. They share the same

emotion in their songs, the same pleasures, and the same pain. In the end, they share the

same country, the same customs, and the same food. They learn from each other. And

curiously, many Sephardic songs from Bosnia are about celebrating Passover.

I have learned most of these songs from my dear friend Flory Jagoda, the Bosnian

expert in the field of Sephardic music. Flory is a Sephardic Jew who left Bosnia during the

Second World War and is now living in Washington, DC. We understand each other on many 

levels, as we share a very similar destiny, with a difference of only a few decades.

One of the important aspects of the Sarajevo Haggadah is its illustrations. In the historical novel The People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks relates the story that the Haggadah was

beautifully illustrated in order for a deaf child to follow and understand it.

Next to the musical journey of the Haggadah, video artist Bart Woodstrup created a

visual backdrop to the music that subtly interweaves the imagery of the Sarajevo Haggadah

with elements of the book's history. Inspired by the textures found in the illustrations, as

well as the stains and signs of aging found in the book, Bart literally "illuminates" and animates those elements with a variety of digital software techniques. His animations are

almost entirely composed of imagery from the book, yet arranged in an abstract way so

that they blend with the musical composition to make a unified aural-visual experience. 

Composer notes by Merima Kljuco

6 • National Gallery of Art

Upcoming Events of the SeventyFifth Season of The William

Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot

Belin Concerts

Musical Dialogues: An Exploration of Hope

April 16, 3:00

West Building, East Garden Court

Sound Impact

"Washingtonians on Wednesdays"

Music by Polina Nazaykinskaya,

Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich 

April 19,12:10

West Building, East Garden Court

East Coast Chamber Orchestra

Music by Caplet, Lutosfawski, Suk,

and Theofanidis

April 23, 3:30

West Building, East Garden Court

West Garden Trio

"Washingtonians on Wednesdays"

Music by Kenji Bunch, Charles Ives,

and Paul Schoenfield 

April 26,12:10

West Building, East Garden Court

Matt Haimovitz and Christopher O'Riley 

April 30, 3:30

West Building, East Garden Court

Tonality of Culture

Multidisciplinary Estonian concert

Presented as part of the

European Month of Culture

May 3,12:10

East Building Auditorium

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 © 2017 Board of

Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Cover Theophile Alexandre Steinlen, Exodus

(L'exode) (detail), 1916, National Gallery of Art,

Washington, Rosenwald Collection

Back cover West Building, Constitution

Avenue entrance, viewed from Sixth Street NW,

1941, National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Gallery Archives