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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,

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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

The Sixty-fifth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,585th Concert

Octuor de France

Gabriel Thibaudeau, guest conductor

Presented in honor of

Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris

October 1, 2006

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
This concert is made possible in part by supportfrom

Credit Industriel et Commercial.

Program

Erik Satie (1866-1925)

Choses vues a droite et a gauche (sans lunettes) (1914)

For violin and piano

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

String Quartet in G Minor, op. 10 (1893)

Anime et tres decide

Assez vif et bien rythme

Andantino: Doucement expressif

Tres modere: Tres mouvemente et avec passion

INTERMISSION

Adolphe Blanc (1828-1885)

Septet, op. 40 (c. 1864)

For violin, viola, cello, double bass, clarinet, bassoon, and French horn

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Ondine from Gaspard de la nuit (1908)

Arranged by Marcel Bitsch (b. 1921) for two violins, viola, cello,

double bass, clarinet, bassoon, and French horn
The Musicians

The Octuor (Octet) de France is currently the only French ensemble ofits

type. Created in 1979 by clarinetist Jean-Louis Sajot, its repertoire includes

classical and romantic chamber music, contemporary music, and music set

to films. In addition to rediscovering and performing forgotten works from

the past, the ensemble regularly commissions new works. With many

international tours to its credit, the Octuor makes its third appearance at 

the National Gallery on this occasion, having previously accompanied the

silent films L’Homme qui rit and Au Bonheur des dames for the Gallery’s film

series. The Octuor de France has similarly performed at the film festivals

ofAthens, Cannes, Harvard University, New Orleans, New York, and

Telluride, among others. The ensemble’s extensive discography includes

CDs devoted to the works of Brahms, Jean Fran^aix, Haydn, Mozart, Anton

Reicha, Schubert, and Carl Maria von Weber. Participants in this performance are Yuriko Naganuma, first violin; Jean-Christophe Grail, second

violin; Laurent Jouanneau, viola; Paul Broutin, cello; Michel Fouquet,

double bass; Jean-Louis Sajot, clarinet; Jacques Thareau, bassoon; Antoine

Degremont, French horn; and David Garbarg, piano.

4

Program Notes

Octuor de France music director Jean-Louis Sajot has selected works for this

program that were written during or just following the life of Henri Rousseau

(1844-1910). Nicknamed “le douanier” because he worked at the Paris customs office (although he never achieved the eponymous rank), Rousseau was

a contemporary ofthe composer Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894). The artist

outlived the composer by sixteen years, but both men witnessed and contributed to the radical upheaval in French art and music that occurred between

1870 and 1894. In the early parts oftheir careers, both were obliged to pursue

the arts as an avocation (Chabrier was employed by the French Ministry ofthe

Interior) and similarly enjoyed a degree offame only in their later years. Due to

his lack offormal training, Rousseau’s unique work was ridiculed by contemporary proponents of classicism and impressionism. However, the freshness

ofhis art won the admiration of avant-garde artists ofthe late nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries, among them Pablo Picasso, who gave a banquet in

Rousseau’s honor in 1908.

With the exception of Adolphe Blanc, whose career was well established

by the time Chabrier’s works became known, all ofthe composers represented in this program were influenced by Chabrier in one way or another:

Claude Debussy claimed that he could not have written certain passages of

his La Damoiselle Hue, a work for women’s chorus, without having heard

Chabrier's La Sulamite, which is also scored for female voices; Maurice Ravel

paid direct homage to Chabrier in his piano piece titled A la Maniere de

Chabrier; and even iconoclast Erik Satie had to acknowledge that it was not

he but Chabrier (in his prelude to Le Roi malgre lui) who first indulged in

extended passages of parallel ninths.

Satie wrote only three pieces for violin and piano, which he published

in a single volume in 1916. As was his wont, the composer gave the piece

a nonsensical title, in this case Items Viewedfrom the Right andfrom the Left

(without Spectacles). He may have been making fun of himself by referring

to his signature accessory, which he wore even when posing for a portrait

such as the one painted in 1891 by Ramon Casas (1866-1932).

5
Although much of Debussy’s music is for piano, he considered composing for string quartet his greatest challenge. The theme ofthe String Quartet

in G Minor, opus io, is derived from the interval ofthe tritone, with the

result that the tonality is ambiguous. Each movement has its own key signature, but Debussy’s tonal center for the quartet as a whole remains G minor.

The use ofthe whole-tone scale (inspired by Indonesian gamelan music,

which Debussy first encountered at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1889)

appears in this work parenthetically, subject to so many transformations

that at times it becomes almost indiscernible. The Andalusian dance in the

second movement later gives rise to an elongated, morose Andantino that is

awash in kaleidoscopic harmony.

Blanc was born in Manosque, in the mountainous region of Provence.

At age thirteen he was sent to study the violin and composition at the Paris 

Conservatory. One ofhis teachers was Fromental Halevy (1799-1862), a

leading composer of early nineteenth-century French opera; later, in 1868,

Blanc composed a one-act comic opera himself, Les Deux Billets. He also 

conducted the operas and other musical performances at the Theatre lyrique

de Paris from 1855 to i860. Blanc’s mature style, however, is defined by

his hausmusik compositions for private performance. A romantic Viennese

tradition, this type ofmusic was essentially peripheral to the opera-centered

musical life of Paris, and Blanc was largely overlooked in his lifetime and

in the twentieth century. His chamber works include three string trios, four

string quartets, seven string quintets of various configurations, and fifteen

piano trios, quartets, and quintets. His most famous work is the Septet that

the Octuor de France has included in this program.

6

In its original form, Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit is a Herculean assignment

for the solo pianist. It is no less challenging when scored for several instruments, as in this arrangement by Marcel Bitsch, French composer and champion ofmusic for winds. Each ofthe three sections ofthe work derives its title

from an eponymous poem by Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841), an exponent

of chimerical poetry who was held in awe by Ravel as well as by fellow poets 

Charles Baudelaire and Stephane Mallarme. Bertrand attributed these poems

to the devil, alias Gaspard. In keeping with their literary source, each ofthe

three musical sections has a fiendish aspect. In the case of Ondine, effervescent and unrelenting double notes imitate the frenetic movements of a water

nymph and her contemptuous laughter.