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

COVER: Antoine Watteau, Two Studies ofa Violinist Tuning His Instrument (detail),

1717-1718, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Howard Sturges

The Sixty-eighth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell

and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery of Art

2,745th Concert

Pro Musica Rara

Allen Whear, artistic director

Sara Nichols, flute traversiere

Cynthia Roberts, violon

Kenneth Slowilc, basse de viole

Allen Whear, violoncelle

Avi Stein, clavecin

Presented in honor of

Renaissance to Revolution:

French Drawingsfrom the

National Gallery ofArt, ijoo-1800

November 4, 2009

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

Admissionfree
Program

Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)

Cinquieme concert from Pieces de Clavecin en concerts

La Forqueray

La Cupis 

La Marais

Marin Marais (1656-1728)

Sonnerie de Saint Genevieve du Mont de Paris

Antoine Forqueray (1672-1745)

From Pieces de viole

La Boisson

La Sylva

Jupiter

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)

Cinquieme Quatuor (Fifth Quartet in A Major— “Paris”)

Prelude: Vivement

Gai

Modere

Modere

Pas vite

Un peu gai

The National Gallery extends its thanks to the Music Division of

the Library ofCongress for the loan ofthe Hubbard and Broekman 

harpsichord used in this concert.
The Musicians

Pro Musica Rara, dubbed by the Baltimore press as “[The city’s] premier

early music ensemble,” was founded in 1974. The members ofthe ensemble

are Baltimore area professional musicians who are committed to performing baroque, classical, and early romantic repertoire. They often collaborate

with early music specialists from other areas ofthe eastern seaboard and

with world-renowned guest artists. As artists-in-residence at Towson University Center for the Arts, the musicians of Pro Musica Rara present an annual

subscription series and offer preconcert lectures, master classes, and open

dress rehearsals for students. In recent years, the group has also given performances at the Walters Art Museum, the Peabody Conservatory of Music, 

and the Montpelier Mansion in Laurel, Maryland. More information about

Pro Musica Rara is available at www.promusicarara.org.

Allen Whear, cellist and artistic director of Pro Music Rara, is associate

principal cellist ofthe Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and principal cellist

and recital director ofthe Carmel (California) Bach Festival. A graduate of

the New England Conservatory, the Juilliard School of Music, and Rutgers

University, where he earned the doctoral degree in music, he also received

an ITT International Fellowship to study with the famed Dutch cellist Anner

Bylsma. Whear has performed as soloist with the Brandenburg Collegium,

the Charleston Symphony, the Mid-Atlantic Chamber Orchestra, the Philadelphia Classical Symphony, and Tafelmusik, and has toured Japan and

Singapore as principal cellist with Opera Atelier. His recording credits

include Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Musical Heritage, Naxos, and Sony.

Sara Nichols, who has played theflute traversiere (transverse flute) with

Pro Musica Rara since 1988, was the principal flutist ofthe Baltimore Opera

Orchestra for twenty-one seasons, and is currently a member ofthe awardwinning wind quintet Quintigre as well as the National Gallery ofArt Wind

Quintet. She also performs with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the

National Gallery Orchestra, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and the WolfTrap

Orchestra. She teaches at Towson University and the Baltimore School for 

the Arts.

4

Violinist Cynthia Roberts has served as concertmaster ofthe American

Bach Soloists, Apollo’s Fire, Concert Royal, and the New York Collegium,

and has appeared as soloist with early music ensembles throughout North

America. She has toured with William Christie as concertmaster of Les Arts

Florissants. Roberts is a member ofthe faculties ofthe Juilliard School of

Music, the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, and the University of

North Texas. She can be heard as soloist in the complete Bach Brandenburg

Concertos with Apollo’s Fire, on the soundtrack ofthe movie Casanova, and

on numerous other recordings on the bmg, Dorian, Electra, and Sony labels.

Kenneth Slowik, who plays both modem and period lower string

instruments with equal mastery, performs in this concert on the basse de

viole (bass viol). He is artistic director ofthe Chamber Music Program at the

Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum ofAmerican History. A founding member ofthe Axelrod and Smithson Quartets, the Castle Trio, and the

Smithsonian Chamber Players, he appears frequently with Anner Bylsma’s

l’Archibudelli, and has been a soloist with numerous orchestras, including

the Baltimore, Cleveland, and National Symphony Orchestras. He is also 

active as a conductor of oratorio, opera, and the orchestral repertoire, and

has appeared twice in recent seasons at the National Gallery ofArt in this capacity. He has performed or conducted in more than fifty recordings—many

ofthem international prize winners—more that half ofwhich include his

critically praised liner notes. A member ofthe University of Maryland faculty,

Slowik is also artistic director ofthe Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute.

Harpsichordist Avi Stein teaches and coaches vocal repertoire and chamber music at Yale University. An active continuo accompanist, Stein has

played with the Clarion Music Society; the baroque orchestras ofIndianapolis,

Los Angeles, and Seattle; and the Indianapolis, Toulouse, and Warsaw 

Symphony Orchestras as well as his own chamber groups La Monica and

X579. Stein, who is the music director of Saint Matthew and Saint Timothy

Episcopal Church in New York City, makes his third appearance with Pro 

Musica Rara in this concert.

5
Program Notes

The National Gallery’s outstanding collection of French old master drawings

represents in remarkable richness and breadth the history of French draftsmanship before 1800. Individual works have been included in exhibitions

at the Gallery and elsewhere, but the heart ofthe collection as a whole, now

augmented with numerous important recent acquisitions, has not been

showcased in a special exhibition until last month’s opening of Renaissance

to Revolution: French Drawingsfrom the National Gallery ofArt, 1500-1800.

The exhibition's approximately 120 drawings were made over a period of

three centuries by the best French artists working at home and abroad and

by foreign artists working in France. Among the key artists are Francois 

Boucher, Benvenuto Cellini, Jean-Honore Fragonard, Claude Lorrain, and

Antoine Watteau. Their works celebrate the singular originality, elegance,

and spirit of French draftsmanship and the refinement of French artistic life

in general. The exhibition remains on view until January 31, 2010.

This is the second offour concerts that feature French music from the

same time period covered by the exhibition. It focuses on the remarkable

development ofinstrumental music in France in the seventeenth century. 

The territorial unity sought by the kings of France in the seventeenth century was accompanied by a desire for political, administrative, and cultural

centralism in which music played an important part. Louis xm and Louis

xiv introduced musical genres such as opera and the grand motet, both of

which required large numbers of performers. Versailles and Paris inevitably 

attracted the finest musical talents in the kingdom, who were summoned to

participate in the development ofnational art.

In 1741 Jean Philippe Rameau, who was already France’s leading opera

composer ofthe time, published his only chamber music, a set offive works

entitled Pieces de clavecin en concert (Pieces for the harpsichord in ensemble).

In some ways the pieces can be considered a reaction to the overwhelming

6

popularity ofthe Italian trio sonata, wherein melodic material always

appeared in the two treble parts and the harpsichord was entirely devoted to

the basso continuo. In his forward to this work, Rameau admits that he had

been inspired by “the success ofsome recently published sonatas” that featured the harpsichord in an obbligato role, accompanied by the violin. Those

sonatas are presumed to have been composed by Jean-Joseph de Mondonville 

(1711-1772). Rameau’s ensemble features the harpsichord as a melodic instrument, but places equal demands on the violin and viol. His cryptic titles for 

his works include dance titles, curiosities, and tributes. In the Cinquieme

concert we find La Forqueray and La Marais—tributes to two great masters

of French baroque viol playing—and La Cupis, a reference to a family of

musicians and dancers.

Marin Marais was not only one ofthe greatest masters ofthe viola da

gamba of all time, but a significant composer of operas in the tragedie en

musique (tragedy in music) tradition ofJean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687). The

son of a shoemaker, Marais was first trained as a choirboy before taking up

the viol, and he eventually became a pupil of Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe

(1640-1700). A fictional account ofthis teacher-pupil relationship has

appeared as a novel and subsequent film titled Tous les matins du monde.

By age nineteen, Marais was performing in the Opera de Paris under the

direction of Lully, from whom he learned his composition technique. Marais 

published some six hundred pieces for the viola da gamba, which attest to

his technical innovations and imagination. One of his best-known character

pieces, Sonnerie de Saint Genevieve du Mont de Paris, unfolds in the manner

of a chaconne, as a simple three-note ground bass provides the foundation

and driving force for the building ofmelodic variations. These appear first

in the violin, then increasingly in the viol part, which emerges with increasing brilliance from the bass, only occasionally making tactical retreats.

Antoine Forqueray enjoyed a reputation alongside Marais as one ofthe

great virtuosos ofhis day. He absorbed the virtuoso approach ofthe Italian

violinists, and his playing was described as “demonic,” in contrast to Marais’

7
“angelic” style. Although he wrote numerous works for his instrument,

relatively few ofthem were published, and these mostly as arranged by his 

son Jean-Baptiste Forqueray (1699-1782), with whom he had a combative

relationship. The younger Forqueray participated in performances ofTelemann’s “Paris” Quartets, which were highly praised by the composer.

It may come as a surprise to find a non-Gallic name such as Georg Phillip

Telemann on a program devoted to French music. Throughout Europe in

the baroque era, music was influenced by the two dominant national styles,

Italian and French. At the risk of oversimplification, it could be said that the 

Italian style favored virtuosity and such instrumental forms as the concerto

and the sonata, while the essence of French style lay in the dance suite and 

the air. The prolific Telemann received a broad musical education in his 

native Magdeburg, Germany, and built upon it to become a stylistic chameleon, capable of producing music in whatever style was suitable to the circumstances, whether it be French, Italian, or even Polish. Like his colleague

and sometime rival Johann Sebastian Bach, he was able to synthesize these

characteristics into something new. Remarkably, Telemann’s French-style

pieces won acceptance by the French themselves. One could say that he

succeeded in expanding to the world market.

The twelve works collectively referred to as the “Paris” Quartets actually

represent two different sets of pieces. Six Quadri appeared in Hamburg in

1730, and were published again in Paris in 1736. These include two pairs

each ofsonatas, concertos, and suites. During Telemann’s visit to Paris in

1737, he published Six Nouveau Quatuors, for the same instrumentation as

their predecessors, and they were an instant success. The initial publication 

had 294 subscribers, half ofwhom were French. One ofthe subscribers was

a certain “Mr. Bach, de Leipzig.”

Telemann later wrote: “My long-postponed journey to Paris, to which I

had been invited several years earlier by Parisian virtuosi who had found

several ofmy printed works suited to their taste, began around Michaelmas 

in 1737 and lasted eight months. There, having received a royal privilege.. .1

had engraved new quartets sold by subscription... .The wonderful way in

which the quartets were performed.. .would deserve a better description

than I can give you. Suffice it to say that the Court and the whole city pricked 

up their ears most remarkably, and these quartets quickly won for me a

nearly universal respect which was accompanied with exceeding courtesy.”

Program notes by Allen Whear
Upcoming Concerts at the National Gallery ofArt

Yakov Kasman, pianist

Music by J. S. Bach, Prokofiev, Schumann,

Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky

November 8, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Zephyrus Ensemble

Music by Couperin, Leclair, Rameau, and Rebel

November 11, 2009

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall