For the convenience of concertgoers 

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-sixth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,658th Concert

Orchestra of New Spain

Grover Wilkins, music director

Eugenia Ramirez, soprano

Scot Cameron, alto and tenor

Presented in celebration ofthefiftieth anniversary

ofthe Fulbright Program in Spain

February 10, 2008

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
This concert is made possible in part by funds provided by the 

United States Department of State in cooperation with the Spanish

Binational Commission and the Embassy of Spain in Washington, DC.

Program

Part 1: Music at the Royal Court of Eighteenth-Century Madrid

Francisco Courcelle (1705-1778)

Lamentation 11 in Cena domini

Courcelle

Motet: Mortales cantate

Aria: Allegro

Recitative

Aria: Amoroso; con spirito

Jose de Nebra (1702-1768)

Suavidad el aire inspire

Recitative and Aria for the Feast ofthe Assumption

Sebastian Duron (1660-1716)

From the zarzuela Nuevas annas de amor (c. 1707)

Recitative: Valed me, pero en vano

Aria: Cuantos te meis

INTERMISSION

Part 2: Music in the Public Theater of Late Eighteenth-Century Madrid

Three tonadillas

Pablo Esteve (c. 1730-1790)

Garrido de Into por la Caramba

Andante espresivo 

Allegretto

Andante
Andantino

Allegretto (spoken)

Allegretto

Seguidillas: Allegro poco

Allegretto

Recitative

Seguidillas: Allegro poco

Pablo del Moral (fl. 1780-1790)

Las Dudas satisfechas

Allegro moderato

Allegretto

Maestoso

Mas andante

Allegro poco 

Allegro

Seguidillas: Allegretto

Allegretto

Jose Castel (c. 1737-1781)

La maja bailarina, or El Frances y [la] Maja

Andantino Allegretto 

Seguidillas: Andante

Allegro

Recitative: Allegro 

Allegretto

Seguidillas: Allegretto

Fandango

Allegretto

The Occasion

In this concert the National Gallery joins the Embassy of Spain, the Fulbright

Commission, the Orchestra of New Spain, and the United States Department

of State in celebrating the fiftieth anniversary ofthe Fulbright Program in

Spain. To mark the occasion, the Fulbright program’s Spanish director, Maria

Jesus Pablos, selected Grover Wilkins and his Orchestra of New Spain, as

exemplifying the highest aspirations ofthe Fulbright Commission. Funding

from both the French and Spanish Fulbright Commissions has played an

essential role in the research pursued by Maestro Wilkins and in the development ofthose discoveries into performances, recordings, and publications of

unknown Spanish music. The international relations, exchanges, and friendships that have developed through this work have contributed to the Fulbright

Commission’s stated goal “to increase mutual understanding between the

people ofthe United States and the people of other countries.” The board

ofdirectors and the musicians ofthe Orchestra of New Spain are honored to

have been chosen to recognize this occasion.

5
The Musicians

ORCHESTRA OF NEW SPAIN

First violin Viola

Kristin Van Cleve, concertmaster Kristen Swanson

Beth Rudy

Lisa Shields

Ania Bard

Cello

Gyongy Erodi

Second violin

Inga Kroll

Bass

Michael Lelevich

Dan Golleher Oboe

Tessa Isaac Sarah Davol

Sarah Weiner

Interest in eighteenth-century Spanish music has increased dramatically in

Spain over the last twenty years. University faculty, musicology graduates,

and performers are all working with great dedication to fill the various

lacunae. Since 1989, the Orchestra of New Spain and its founder and music

director Grover Wilkins have played a pivotal role in this resurgence. These

musicians have the unique advantage ofresearching, editing, and performing their programs under one roof, provided most often by the Myerson

Symphony Center in Dallas, Texas. The ensemble consists not only ofthe

instrumental players listed above but also a sixteen-voice chorus and vocal

soloists. Most ofthe orchestra’s repertory consists of unpublished works

discovered in Spanish and other European libraries by Maestro Wilkins. The

ensemble has recorded portions ofits repertory for the Dorian label on a cd

titled Madrid 1752: Sacred Musicfrom the Royal Chapel of Spain, recorded in

1999 by Maestro Wilkins and the Orchestra of New Spain’s Madrid affiliate, 

Madrid Barroco. A recording oftwo masses by Francisco Courcelle will be 

released later this year on the same label.

6

Eugenia Ramirez is one of Mexico’s most celebrated practitioners ofbaroque

music. She has twice been awarded the coveted Beca de Interpretes award 

of Mexico’s Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes. She has been featured

as a guest soloist and conductor with orchestras and chamber ensembles in

Mexico’s important music festivals, and has also performed at festivals in

England, France, Spain, and the United States. A regular soloist with the

Orchestra of New Spain, Ramirez has been featured in its tours to Houston,

New Orleans, Santa Fe, and Seattle. Her recordings include the aria by Jose

de Nebra on this program, Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachiana no. 5 with the Cello

Academia Ensemble, Paul Barker’s opera Pillow Book, and the arias from the

Notebook ofAnna Magdalena Bach. Ramirez graduated with honors from the

National School of Music in Mexico City and currently teaches early music,

chamber music, and voice at the Ollin Yoliztli School of Music in Mexico City'.

SCOT CAMERON

A native of North Carolina, Scot Cameron now resides in Dallas, Texas, and

enjoys a flourishing career as a singer, conductor, vocal clinician, church

musician, and private voice instructor. Noted as a “polished performer with

a rich, expressive voice’’ (Dallas Morning News), Cameron has spent the past

eleven years performing throughout the United States and in Brazil, China,

England, France, Israel, Latvia, Singapore, Spain, and Taiwan. In addition to

the Orchestra of New Spain, Cameron has performed with the Concert Royale

at Princeton University, the Dallas Bach Society, the Fort Worth Dallas Ballet,

the Hallelujah Oratorio Society in Singapore, and the Spectrum Chamber

Ensemble. In 2003, he made his Carnegie Hall debut, singing Carmina

Burana with the Sacramento Choral Society and the New England Philharmonic Orchestra. Cameron has also performed with the Early Music Foundation of New York, Fort Worth Early Music, the Fort Worth Symphony, the 

New York Baroque Dance Company, the Orpheus Chamber Chorale, Publick 

Musick, and the Rochester Bach Festival.

EUGENIA RAMIREZ

7
Program Notes

The music ofthe Spanish baroque is normally not included in musicological

studies, nor is it practiced in concert halls, or even known by most “early music”

bands. The reasons for this are political, geographic, and historical, and they

have more to do with Spain than with any outside player. The Spanish baroque

falls within the timeframe of all other European baroque traditions, roughly

1600-1750. The “high” Spanish baroque and its turn to classicism in the

eighteenth century is the purview ofthe Orchestra ofNew Spain. The Spanish

repertory ofthis period is virtually all vocal—zarzuela and opera, vocal theater

music known as tonadillas, and liturgical music. The relatively small instrumental repertoire ofthe Spanish baroque consists ofthe keyboard music of

Padre Antonio Soler (1729-1783) and the music ofthree Italians who worked 

in Spain: Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805), and

Gaetano Bmnetti (1744-1798).

It is not possible to understand the musical life of eighteenth-century

Spain without considering the arrival ofthe French Bourbons in 1700.

That year, Felipe v, a grandson of Louis xiv of France, ascended the Spanish

throne having been raised and educated in the Sun King’s court. In 1714

Felipe married Isabel Farnese, who brought significant Italian influences to

the court and its music, hiring two of Madrid’s most prominent Italians, the

castrato Carlo Maria Broschi, known as Farinelli (1705-1782), and Francisco

Courcelle. Broschi was a spectacular vocalist as well as a brilliant diplomat.

At Isabel’s behest, he retired from the stage at a relatively young age to take

over the court’s opera interests, and to become a virtual secretary ofstate

to the chronically ailing Felipe.

The first halfofthis evening’s concert focuses on small liturgical works, 

while the second half explores the unique tonadillas of Madrid’s bustling,

frenetic, and wildly popular theater scene in its flourishing^m de siecle. The

concert opens with two works from Madrid’s most unusual eighteenth-century

composer, Francisco Courcelle, who was bom in Piacenza, Italy, but settled 

in Spain. A thoroughly international man ofimmense curiosity, charm, and

musical skills, Courcelle worked with the entire spectrum ofMadrid’s musical

establishment. As leader ofthe Royal Chapel boy choir, he taught and nurtured

young musicians, and subsequently saw his pupils rise to preeminence in

that chapel as well as in the Buen Retiro Opera House and the public theaters

that were developing during his tenure. The same violinists who played for his

court orchestra played in those theaters. Furthermore, there can be little doubt

that the Viennese soloists sent to the Madrid opera by the celebrated poet and

librettist Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782) sang on occasion for the Spanish court

under Courcelle’s direction.

Jose de Nebra was born in Catalyud, Spain, and enjoyed early success

in the theater, where his zarzuelas were well-received. His appointment as 

organist to the Royal Chapel in 1724 offered him access to the musical life

ofthe court. Following the disastrous Christmas Eve fire at the Royal Palace 

in 1734, he and Courcelle were central in reconstituting the musical archives.

In 1751 he was appointed vice-maestro de capilla and vice-rector ofthe Colegio

de Ninos Cantores. Nebra’s more than 100 compositions in the Royal Archive 

often reflect the theatricality of his zarzuelas, sometimes borrowing directly

from them.

Sebastian Duron flourished under Carlos II, the last ofthe AustroHungarian kings of Spain. Partisan ofthe Austrians, Duron lost his place in

the court at the conclusion ofthe War ofthe Spanish Succession (1701-1714),

and spent the rest of his life in exile in Cambeau-les-Bains, a small town in

the Bordeaux region of France. His aria Cuantos te meis recalls the spare

and plaintive works of Henry Purcell (1659-1695).

9
The tonadilla, the focus ofthe second half ofthis concert, was originally

a work of brief duration that was placed in the intermissions between acts

(jomados) oftheatrical works (comedias), adding a festive and joyous touch

while the actors changed costumes or took a break. Tonadillas originally

had no purpose other than to amuse the waiting public: they were unpretentious works created for the moment. Their composers were little noted, and

only today are they starting to attract musicological interest. As time passed,

however, these composers earned the loyalty of a public avid to hear music

that broke with the historical and mythological themes that were the norm

in eighteenth-century Spanish theaters. An example ofthis “normal” music

is the aria by Duron in the first half ofthis program. Eventually audiences

turned out to hear the premieres of new tonadillas rather than the great

literary works. The actors and actresses took on roles in this new art form,

which represented everyday life and customs: moral transgressions in

courtship, the gallant adulterer, falling in and out oflove, the critic lost in

la mode. These productions became a type ofmetatheater: a place where

the public, the musicians, and the actors all met.

Program notes by Grover Wilkins

10

Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

Juilliard String Quartet

String Quartets by Beethoven, Carter, and Verdi

February 17, 2008

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court