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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,

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

The Sixty-eighth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,742nd Concert

Emma Kirkby, soprano

Jakob Lindberg, lutenist

October 25, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Orpheus in England—Dowland and Purcell

Celebrating the 350th anniversary of Purcell’s birth

John Dowland (1563-1626)

Come heavy sleep

Shall I strive with words to move?

A shepherd in a shade

By afountain where I lay

Away with these self-loving lads

Lachrimae

Earl ofEssex’ galliard

Come ye heavy states ofnight

Farewell unkind,farewell

Prelude

Fantasia

Toss not my soul

In darkness let me dwell

INTERMISSION

Henry Purcell (1659-1695)

She loves and she confesses too

They tell us that you mighty pow’rs above

Sweeter than roses
What a sadfate is mine

Bess ofbedlam

Six Short Piecesfor Lute

(arranged by Jakob Lindberg)

Cebell

Ritomell “The Grove”

A New Irish Measure

A New Ground

Hornpipe

A New Scottish Measure

Fly swift ye hours

Musicfor a while

The Musicians

EMMA KIRKBY

As a classics student at Oxford and then a schoolteacher, Emma Kirkby sang 

for pleasure in choirs and small groups, always feeling most at home in

Renaissance and baroque repertoire. In 1971 she joined the Taverner Choir 

and two years later began her long association with the Consort of Musicke.

At a time when most university-trained sopranos were not seeking a sound

appropriate for early instruments, she had to find her own approach. She

credits London soprano Jessica Cash with helping her find her niche and 

move into a career as a professional singer, along with the directors, fellow

singers, and instrumentalists with whom she has worked over the years.

Kirkby has built long-term relationships with several chamber groups 

and orchestras, including the Armonico Consort, Florilegium, the Freiburger Barockorchester, Fretwork, London Baroque, l’Orfeo (of Linz, Austria),

the Orchestra ofthe Age of Enlightenment, and the Purcell Quartet. Kirkby

has made well over a hundred recordings, from sequences of Hildegarde 

von Bingen and madrigals ofthe Italian and English Renaissance to cantatas 

and oratorios ofthe baroque and works of Mozart, Haydn, and Johann

Christian Bach. Since 2000 she has collaborated with the Swedish record 

company bis, and has recorded numerous CDs, including Handel motets

and cantatas, Christmas pieces, and music ofCouperin with London Baroque,

lute songs with Anthony Rooley and Jakob Lindberg, and songs by Amy

Beach. This year bis issued a compilation entitled “The Artistry of Emma 

Kirkby,” featuring highlights from her complete recordings with the company.

Despite all the recording activity, Kirkby still prefers live concerts—especially

the pleasure ofrepeating programs with colleagues. Even in those repeat

performances, she finds an opportunity to create something new from her

wide-ranging repertoire.

In 1999 Kirkby was voted Artist ofthe Year by Classic fm Radio listeners.

In November 2000 she received the Order ofthe British Empire, and in November of 2007 she was appointed a Dame Commander ofthe Order ofthe 

British Empire. In June 2008 she returned to her alma mater, Oxford Univer5
sity, to receive an honorary doctorate ofmusic. She appears at the National

Gallery by arrangement with Schwalbe and Partners of New York City.

JAKOB LINDBERG

Jakob Lindberg was born in Djursholm, Sweden, where as a youth he developed his first passionate interest in music through the Beatles. He started to

play guitar and soon became interested in the classical repertoire. At age

fourteen he began his studies with Jorgen Rorby, who also gave him his first

lesson on the lute. After reading music at Stockholm University, he went to

London to study at the Royal College of Music. Here he further developed

his knowledge ofthe lute repertoire under the guidance of Diana Poulton

and concentrated on Renaissance and baroque music. Through his live solo

performances, Lindberg has become known as one ofthe finest lutenists in

the world today, and he has given recitals in many parts of Europe as well

as in Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, and the United

States. He also teaches at the Royal College of Music in London, where he

succeeded Poulton as professor oflute in 1979.

Lindberg has made numerous recordings for bis, many ofwhich are pioneering in that they present first recordings of a wide range ofmusic. He 

has brought Scottish lute music to public attention, demonstrated the beauty

ofthe Italian repertoire for chitairone, and recorded chamber music by Boccherini, Haydn, and Vivaldi on period instruments. He is the first lutenist to

have recorded the complete lute music ofJohn Dowland and his recording

ofJohann Sebastian Bach’s music for solo lute is considered to be one ofthe

most important readings ofthese works.

Lindberg is an active continuo player on the theorbo and arch lute and

has worked with many well known English ensembles including the Academy of Ancient Music, Chiaroscuro, the English Concert, the Monteverdi

Choir, the Orchestra ofthe Age of Enlightenment, the Purcell Quartet, and

the Taverner Choir. He is also in demand as an accompanist and has given 

recitals with Anne Sofie von Otter, Ian Partridge, and Nigel Rogers as well

as Emma Kirkby.

6

Jakob Lindberg performs on a ten-course Renaissance lute by Sixtus

Rauwolf, who was active in Augsburg in the 1590s. Only four other lutes by

Rauwolf are known to have survived. These can be found in Metropolitan

Museum in New York, the Claudius Collection in Copenhagen, a private

collection in England, and the Fugger Museum in Augsburg. Jakob Lindberg’s

instrument is from circa 1590 and has been carefully restored. Dendrochronology (a method of dating wooden objects which involves examining

the tree-rings) confirms that the soundboard is original and dates the wood 

to 1418-1560. This instrument is probably the oldest lute in playable condition with its original soundboard.

7
Program Notes

Thomas Campion, in his preface to Philip Rosseter’s Book ofAyres of 1601,

famously defined the ideal English Air as “short and well-seasoned,” deploring the current fashion for songs “bated with fugue and chained with syncopation.” This is likely to refer to the work ofJohn Dowland, whose First Book

ofSongs, published initially in 1597, was a huge success and already by 1600

in the first offour reprints. Dowland was famous across northern Europe

for his playing as well as for his compositions. He spent several years in

Copenhagen on a huge salary at the court of King Christian iv, and another

of his patrons, Moritz, Landgraf of Hesse, dubbed him “der Englische

Orpheus.” Dowland’s music traveled further than he did, even to Sweden

and Russia. His style is indeed more complex than that ofCampion and

Rosseter. They chose to set poems plainly, with simple chordal accompaniment, in a type of enhanced speech delivery. In contrast, Dowland, who had

spent some years ofhis youth in France, strove for an effect celebrated by

some ofthe French Academicians—a sort of alchemical magic, the text and

the music combining in such a way as to raise the listener to a higher level

of enraptured awareness. This is in no way lessened by the predominantly

melancholy tone of Dowland’s songs. Melancholy was his artistic “persona”— 

hence the title of his famous pavan Semper Dowland, semper dolens (Dowland

is always grieving), and the even more famous Lachrimae (Tears)—but one

should not draw too many literal conclusions from this about a man who

one contemporary described as “living a life oflawful merriment.” The Earl

ofEssex’ galliard uses virtuosic cross-rhythms to reflect the wordplay that was 

the trademark ofthat dazzling courtier, a great favorite of Queen Elizabeth,

(until she brought an end to his mad arrogance at the scaffold in 1601). In its 

third section we hear the folk tune Shall we go walk the woods so wild?

Emma Kirkby’s selection ofsongs begins with vintage melancholy in

Come heavy sleep, with its typically emblematic first phrase (in these brief

pieces not a bar is wasted). Shall I strive with words to move was named in

an instrumental source as Henry Nowell’s galliard, after a young man in

Queen Elizabeth’s court whose dancing she liked so much that she called

him her “Bonny Boots.” Since she was famous for “dancing six galliards daily

before breakfast,” this was quite a compliment. Henry Nowell died tragically 

young; it is not known whether the tender yearning love-lyric was his, or

whether it was added later, but it seems to end on a hopeful note.

Elizabethan courtiers, like their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, loved

to play at shepherds and nymphs. The ultimate nymph was of course the

Virgin Queen herself, subject ofmany a joyful homage (By afountain where I

lay). Her ultra-refined nobles could fashion pastoral laments to her (A shepherd in a shade), or even cheekily tease her (as Cynthia in Away with these

self-loving lads).

The master ofmelancholy was anything but monochrome. Robert

Burton’s widely-circulated book The Anatomy ofMelancholy (1621) specifies

at least four types ofthis fashionable condition, which the author calls a

“humour.” The highest type is that ofthe contemplative philosopher, and the

lowest that ofthe moaning lover, which Burton found absurd. Dowland’s

songs embody all shades in between. In the songs in this program one finds

the lovesick shepherd, a bereaved daughter (Come ye heavy states ofnight),

the bittersweet song ofthe runaway maiden (Farewell unkind,farewell) — 

could this be Jessica’s farewell to Shylock?—a beautifully world-weary philosopher (Toss not my soul) and, finally, the epitome ofmelancholic genius

(In darkness let me dwell)—a piece still shocking in its modernity.

Henry Purcell’s short but golden career is well known to music lovers. 

He worked in a period when the arts flourished in England. Along with the

monarchy, the Restoration in 1660 brought dramatic and musical performances back London, and there were fine groups ofsingers and instrumentalists available at court, church, and theater. In the minimal medium of

solo song, Purcell left pieces of an astonishing range in style and function,

setting a wide variety oflyrics. One of his consummate and characteristic

skills was that ofthe ground (repeating bass line), ofwhich there are three

in this program: She loves and she confesses too, on Abraham Cowley’s witty

lyric ofwily seduction; What a sadfate is mine, in which a typical moaning

lover’s lament is deliciously colored with dissonances that borrow from

modal harmonies; and the amazing Musicfor a while, originally sung as a

9
musical interlude in John Dryden’s play Oedipus (1678). Tiresius, a seer, uses

music to summon and pacify spirits from the underworld whom he wishes 

to consult, reflecting the archetypical beliefin the power ofmusic to challenge even death.

They tell us that you mighty pow’rs above comes from Henry Purcell’s

incidental music for another Dryden play, The Indian Queen (1664). It deals

with lovesickness, but in sweetly lilting music that brings some calm to a

turbulent scene. Sweeter than roses tells ofthat rarity, a successful love; it is

in fact an extended rhapsody on the effect of a single kiss, and one has to

hope the singer will go on to taste some more. By contrast, in Bess ofbedlam,

published in the posthumous anthology Orpheus Britannicus as a single 

song, random changes ofmood and tempo paint the poignant portrait of a

bereaved lover driven mad with grief and, either in mind or in fact, already

dead and dwelling in the underworld

Fly swift ye hours, also published in Orpheus Britannicus as a single 

song, is a bravura piece. The lover, dreaming of his Belvedera, bids time go

faster for him in flurries of eighth notes, alternates these with sad and

luscious recitatives, and ends in tender resignation to his fate. On the scale

ofmelancholy utterances this ranks fairly low, because one senses in the last 

phrases a certain confidence that the beauty ofthis declaration will woo the 

lady at last.

Program notes by Emma Kirkby, Jakob Lindberg, and Lynda Sayce

Next Week at the National Gallery of Art

Masques

Music by Charpentier, Couperin, Lully, and Rameau

Presented in honor of

Renaissance to Revolution: French Drawings

from the National Gallery ofArt, 1500-1800

October 28, 2009

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

Till Fellner, pianist

Beethoven piano sonatas nos. 4,15, 24, 25, and 27

November 1, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court
Texts for Sunday, October 25, 2009

Emma Kirkby, soprano, and Jakob Lindberg, luteninst

Songs by John Dowland

Come, heavy sleep,

The image oftrue death:

And close up these my weary weeping eyes,

Whose spring oftears doth stop my vital breath

And tears my soul with sorrow’s sigh-swollen 

cries.

Come and possess my tired thoughts, worn soul

That living dies till thou on me be stole.

Shall I strive with w ords to move,

When deeds receive not due regard?

Shall I speak, and neither please,

Nor be freely heard?

Grief alas, though all in vain,

Her restless anguish may reveal;

She alone my wounds shall know,

Though she will not heal.

All woes have end, though a while delayed,

Our passion proving;

A shepherd in a shade his plaining made

Oflove and lovers’ wrong,

Unto the fairest lass that trod on grass

And thus began his song:

“Since Love and fortune will, I honor still

Thy fair and lovely eye:

What conquest will it be, sweet nymph, to thee

IfI for sorrow die?

Restore, restore my heart again

Which Love by thy sweet looks hath slain,

Lest that enforced by your disdain I sing

Fie, fie on love, it is a foolish thing.

Come, shadow ofmy end and shape ofrest,

Allied to death, child to his black-faced night,

Come thou and charm these rebels in my

breast,

Whose waking fancies do my mind affright.

O come sweet sleep, come, or I die for ever,

Come ere my last sleep comes or come never.

Anonymous

Oh, that time’s strange effects

Could but make her loving!

Storms calm at last, and why may not she

Leave off her frowning?

Oh, sweet Love, help her hands,

My affection crowning!

I wooed her, I loved her, and none but her

admire;

Oh come, dear love, and answer my desire!

Anonymous (Attributed to Sir Henry Noell)

My heart where have you laid, O cruel maid? 

To kiss when you might save,

Why have ye cast it forth as nothing worth,

Without a tomb or grave?

O let it be intombed and lie

In your sweet mind and memory,

Lest I resound on every warbling string,

Fie, fie on love, that is a foolish thing.”

Anonymous
By a fountain where I lay,

All blessed be that blessed day!

By the glimmering ofthe sun,

O never be that shining done!

When I might see alone

My true love’s fairest one,

Love’s delight,

Love’s clear sight,

No world’s eyes can clearer see —

A fairer sight none, none can be.

Fair with garlands all addressed, 

Was never nymph more fairly blest, 

Blessed in the highest degree,

So may she ever blessed be,

Came to this fountain near

With such a smiling cheer,

Such a face,

Such a grace,

Happy, happy eyes that see

Such a heavenly sight as she.

Away w ith these self-loving lads

Whom Cupid’s arrow never glads:

Away, poor souls that sigh and weep

In love ofthose that lie and sleep,

For Cupid is a meadow god

And forceth none to kiss the rod.

God Cupid’s shaft, like destiny 

Doth either good or ill decree:

Desert is bom out of his bow,

Reward upon his feet doth go:

What fools are they that cannot own

That Love likes no laws but his own!

My songs they be ofCynthia’s praise,

I wear her rings on holidays,

On every tree I write her name,

And every day I read the same:

Where honor Cupid’s rival is,

There miracles are bom of his.

Then I forthwith took my pipe,

Which I all fair and clean did wipe,

And upon a heavenly ground,

All in the grace of beauty found,

Played this roundelay:

“Welcome fair Queen of May,

Sing, sweet air,

Welcome fair,

Welcome be the shepherds’ Queen,

The glory of all our green.

Anonymous

IfCynthia crave her ring of me,

I blot her name out ofthe tree:

If doubt do darken things held dear,

Then welfare nothing once a year:

For many mn, but one must win:

Fools only hedge the cuckoo in.

The worth that worthiness should move

Is love, which is the bow oflove,

And love as well the softer can,

As can the mighty nobleman:

Sweet Saint, ‘tis true you worthy be,

Yet without love nought worth to me.

Anonymous
Come ye heavy states of night

Do my father’s spirit right;

Soundings baleful let me borrow,

Burdening my song with sorrow;

Come, sorrow, come: her eyes that sings

By thee are turned into springs.

Come, ye virgins ofthe night

That in dirges sad delight;

Quire my anthems; I do borrow

Gold nor pearl, but sounds ofsorrow;

Come, sorrow, come.

Anonymous

Farewell, unkind farew ell, to me no more a father,

Since my heart, my heart holds my love most dear.

The wealth which thou dost reap another’s hand must gather,

Though my heart, my heart still lies buried there.

Then farewell, then farewell, O farewell,

Welcome, my love, welcome, my joy forever.

’Tis not the vain desire ofhuman fleeting beauty,

Makes my mind to live though my means do die.

Nor do I Nature wrong, though I forget my duty:

Love not in the blood but in the spirit doth lie.

Then farewell, then farewell, 0 farewell,

Welcome, my love, welcome, my joy forever.

Anonymous

Toss not my soul, O love, ‘twixt hope and fear

Show me some ground

where I may firmly stand

Or surely fall, I care not which appear,

So one will close me in a certain band;

When once ofill the uttermost is known,

The force ofsorrow quite is overthrown.

In darkness let me dwell

The ground shall sorrow be;

The roof despair, to bar

All cheerful light from me.

The walls ofmarble black

That moistened still shall weep;

My music hellish jarring sounds

Take me, assurance, to thy blissful hold

Or thou, despair, into thy darkest cell;

Each hath full rest: the one in joys enrolled,

Th’other in that he fears no more, is well.

Anonymous

To banish friendly sleep.

Thus wedded to my woes

And bedded to my tomb,

O let me living die, till Death do come.

In darkness.

Anonymous
Songs by Henry Purcell

She loves and she confesses too,

There’s then at last no more to do;

The happy work’s entirely done,

Enter the town which thou hast won;

The fruits of conquest now begin,

Lo, triumph, enter in.

What’s this, ye Gods? What can it be?

Remains there still an enemy?

Bold Honor stands up in the gate,

And would yet capitulate.

Have I o’ercome all real foes,

And shall this phantom me oppose?

Noisy nothing, stalking shade,

By what witchcraft wert thou made,

Thou empty cause ofsolid harms?

Prelude and Song from Orazia:

Note from the score: In this section, Orazia and her lover, Montezuma, are held captive by the villain 

Traxalla, who offers to spare the hero if Orazia will submit. Orazia sings of her love and torment.

They tell us that you mighty powers above

Make perfect yourjoys and your blessings by Love.

Ah! Why do you suffer the blessing that’s there

To give a poor lover such sad torments here?

Yet though for my passion such griefI endure,

My love shall like yours still be constant and pure.

To suffer for him gives an ease to my pains 

There’s joy in my grief and there’s freedom in chains;

IfI were divine he could love me no more 

And I in return my adorer adore

0 let his dear life then, kind Gods, be your care

For I in your blessings have no other share.

But I shall find out counter charms,

Thy airy devilship to remove

From this circle here oflove

Sure I shall rid myself ofthee

By the night’s obscurity,

And obscurer secrecy;

Unlike to ev’ry other spright

Thou attempt’st not men to affright,

Nor appear’st but in the light.

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), from The

Mistress, published 1656

John Dryden (1631-1700) and Sir Robert Howard (1626-1698)
Sweeter than Roses

Sweeter than roses or cool evening breeze

On a warm flow’ry shore

Was the dear kiss; first trembling made me

freeze,

Then shot like fire all o’er.

What a sad fate is mine,

My love is my crime;

Or why should he be,

More easy and free

To all than to me?

Bess of Bedlam

From silent shades and the Elysian groves

Where sad departed spirits mourn their loves

From crystal streams

and from that country where

Jove crowns the fields with flowers all the year,

Poor senseless Bess,

cloth’d in her rags and folly,

Is come to cure her lovesick melancholy.

“Bright Cynthia kept her revels late

While Mab, the Fairy Queen, did dance,

And Oberon did sit in state

When Mars at Venus ran his lance.

In yonder cowslip lies my dear,

Entomb’d in liquid gems of dew;

Each day I’ll water it with a tear,

Its fading blossom to renew.

For since my love is dead

and all my joys are gone,

Poor Bess for his sake, A garland will make,

My music shall be a groan.

I'll lay me down and die

within some hollow tree,

The rav’n and cat,

The owl and bat

Shall warble forth my elegy.

What magic has victorious love;

For all I touch or see

Since that dear kiss, all, all is love to me.

Richard Norton, from Pausanias (1686)

But if by disdain

He can lessen my pain,

'Tis all I implore,

To make me love less,

Or himselfto love more.

Anonymous

Did you not see my love as he pass’d by you?

His two flaming eyes, if he comes nigh you,

They will scorch up your hearts: Ladies beware

ye,

Lest he should dart a glance that may ensnare

ye!

Hark! Hark! I hear old Charon bawl,

His boat he will no longer stay,

And furies lash their whips and call:

Come, come away, come, come away.

Poor Bess will return

to the place whence she came,

Since the world is so mad 

she can hope for no cure.

For love’s grown a bubble, a shadow, a name,

Which fools do admire and wise men endure.

Cold and hungry am I grown.

Ambrosia will I feed upon,

Drink nectar still and sing."

Who is content,

Does all sorrow prevent,

And Bess in her straw,

Whilst free from the law,

In her thoughts is as great, great as a king.

Anonymous
Fly swift, ye hours, fly swift, thou lazy sun;

Make haste and drive the tedious minutes on.

Bring back my Belvidera to my sight,

My Belvidera, than thyself more bright.

Swifter than Time my eager wishes move,

And scorn the beaten paths of vulgar love.

Soft peace is banish'd from my tortur’d breast,

Love robs my days of ease, my nights ofrest.

Yet tho’ her cruel scorn provokes despair,

My passion still is strong as she is fair.

Still must I love, still bless the pleasing pain,

Still court my ruin and embrace my chain.

Anonymous

Music for a while

Shall all your cares beguile 

Wond’ring how your pains were eased

And disdaining to be pleas’d

Till Alecto free the dead

From their eternal bands;

Till the shakes drop from her head 

And the whip from out her hands;

Music for a while

Shall all your cares beguile.

John Dryden/Nathaniel Lee, from Oedipus (1678)