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 of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

Mailing address

2000B South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

iviviy.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

2,747th Concert

Zephyrus Ensemble

Courtney Westcott,/Inte

Ingrid Matthews, violin

Josh Lee, viola da gamba

Jillon Stoppels Dupree, harpsichord

John Lenti, theorbo

Presented in honor of Renaissance to Revolution:

French Drawingsfrom the National Gallery ofArt, ijoo-1800

November 11, 2009

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

Admissionfree
Program

Francois Couperin (1668-1733)

Second Concert from Concerts royaux (1722)

Prelude: Gracieusement

Allemande fugue: Gayement

Air tendre

Echos: Tendrement

Jean-Marie Leclair (1697-1764)

From Sonata inE Minor (1743)

Dolce: Andante

Allemanda: Allegro ma non troppo

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)

From Pieces de clavecin en concert (1741)

La Coulicam

La Livri

Le Vezinet

Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687)

arr. Robert de Visee (c. 1650-c. 1732)

Logistille (Lentement)

Marin Marais (1656-1728)

Les voix humaines (1701)

Jean-Fery Rebel (1666-1747)

Chaconne from Suite inG Major (1705)

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)

Quartet no.6 inE Minor(“Paris”) (1736)

Prelude: Vivement

Gai

Vite

Gracieusement

Distrait

Modere

The Musicians

INGRID MATTHEWS

Violinist Ingrid Matthews is the music director of Seattle Baroque, and one

ofthe nation’s most respected exponents of her instrument. In 1989 she

won first prize at the prestigious Erwin Bodky International Competition

for Early Music. The following year she joined Toronto’s Tafelmusik, with

which she performed extensively on three continents. In 1994 she founded

the Seattle Baroque Orchestra with harpsichordist Byron Schenkman. In

addition to her work in Seattle, Matthews has served as concertmaster for 

the New York Collegium under Andrew Parrott and the Boston Early Music

Festival Orchestra. She isa frequent guest director and soloist with periodinstrument groups from Los Angeles to Montreal. In September 2009 she

led the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra as guest director for an elevenconcert tour of Australia. Among the most-recorded baroque violinists of

her generation, Matthews has won international critical acclaim fora

discography that ranges from the earliest solo violin repertoire to the great

violin sonatas and partitas ofJohann Sebastian Bach. She has served on

the faculties of Indiana University, the University of Southern California,

the University ofToronto, and the University ofWashington as well as

Amherst Early Music and the International Baroque Institute at the Longy

School of Music in Boston. Ingrid Matthews is

a graduate of Indiana

University, where she studied with Josef Gingold and Stanley Ritchie.

COURTNEY WESTCOTT

Courtney Westcott was formerly soloist and principal flutist for Tafelmusik 

(Toronto) and New York State Baroque (Ithaca). Since moving to Seattle in 

2000, she has appeared with several west coast groups, including the Los

Angeles Bach Society, Musica Angelica, Pacific Baroque, and Seattle Baroque, 

with which she has frequently appeared asa soloist since its inception. Westcott performs as a duo with lutenist John Lenti. She gave the North American

premiere ofthe recently rediscovered Flute Concerto inD by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach in Seattle. Her CD ofJohann Christian Bach flute sonatas on the3
Loft label was praised for the “joy in these performances” by Gramophone

magazine. A graduate ofthe Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, she was

the first woman to receive a soloist diploma in baroque flute from the Royal

Conservatory ofThe Hague.

JOHN LENTI

John Lenti has performed on lute and theorbo throughout the United States at 

major early music festivals in Boston, Massachusetts; Indianapolis and Bloomington, Indiana; and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Internationally, he has

performed at the Festival Guldener-Herbst in Sondershausen, Germany, and

in the Teatro Nacional in San Jose, Costa Rica. Lenti is assistant director and

continuo player ofthe Seattle Baroque Orchestra and has performed with the

Seattle Opera. He has also performed with Chatham Baroque, Harmonious

Blacksmith, the I-90 Collective, and La Monica. His recording credits include

And I Remain: Three Love Songs, a collection oflute songs and lute solos with

soprano Linda Tsatsanis; The Amorous Lyre with La Monica; and The Courtesan’s

Arts with Ellen Hargis. A native of South Carolina, Lenti studied guitar at the

North Carolina School ofthe Arts before moving to London to study lute with

Jacob Heringman and Elizabeth Kenny. He returned to the United States in

2002 to study with Nigel North at Indiana University. He also credits lutenists

Ricardo Cobo, Ronn McFarlane, and Pat O’Brien for significant musical help

and inspiration.

JILLON STOPPELS DUPREE

Harpsichordist Jillon Stoppels Dupree has captivated audiences in such cities

as Amsterdam, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, and New York. Her

playing can be heard on the Decca, Delos, Meridian, and Wild Boar record

labels, and she has appeared live on the bbc, cbs Television, National Public

Radio, and Polish National Television. She has been a featured artist at the

Boston, Berkeley, and York (England) Early Music Festivals, the Cleveland 

Museum ofArt, the National Music Museum, the Santa Barbara Art Museum,

and numerous universities and colleges. The New York Times described her

4

world premiere recording of Philip Glass’ Concertofor Harpsichord and

Chamber Orchestra as “superb.” Dupree collaborates with dancer Anna Mansbridge, recorder virtuoso Marion Verbruggen, violinists Ingrid Matthews 

and Stanley Ritchie, and sopranos Julianne Baird and Ellen Hargis as well

as ensembles such as Musica Pacifica, The Newberry Consort, the Seattle

Baroque Orchestra, and the Seattle Symphony. She has taught harpsichord

at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and the University of Michigan,

and currently serves on the faculty of Seattle’s Accademia d’Amore baroque

opera course. Her teachers include Lisa Goode Crawford, Gustav Leonhardt,

and Ton Koopman. She is the founding director of Seattle’s Gallery Concerts

early music series.

JOSH LEE

Cited for his stylish and soulful playing, Josh Lee leads a varied musical life,

performing on viols and double bass with some ofthe world’s leaders in early

music. An alumnus ofthe Peabody Conservatory ofMusic and the Longy

School ofMusic, he studied double bass with Harold Hall Robinson and viol

with Ann Marie Morgan and Jane Hershey. Lee is the founder ofthe early

music ensemble Ostraka and has performed at the Boston Early Music Festival

and the Carmel Bach Festival. He has also appeared with the Atlanta Baroque 

Orchestra, the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic,

Musica Angelica, Musica Pacifica, and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.

His performances have been heard on Peformance Today and Harmonia, and

he has recorded for Dorian Sono Luminus, Koch International, and Reference 

Recordings. A resident of San Francisco, Lee is director ofthe Viola da Gamba

Society ofAmerica Young Players’ Weekend.

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, with special strength in examples made 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 the recent opening of Renaissance to Revolution: French Drawings

from the National Gallery ofArt, 1500-1800. The exhibition’s approximately

130 drawings were made over a period ofthree centuries by the best French

artists working at home and abroad and by foreign artists working in France. 

Among the key artists are Jean Cousin the Elder and Benvenuto Cellini

from the sixteenth century; Jacques Callot, Claude Lorrain, and Charles de 

La Fosse from the seventeenth century; and Francois Boucher, Jean-Honore

Fragonard, and Antoine Watteau from the eighteenth century. 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 concert is the third offour to feature French music from the same

three centuries that are covered by the exhibition. It focuses on the remarkable development ofinstrumental music in France in the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries. 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

xiii and Louis xiv introduced musical genres such as opera and the grand

motet, both ofwhich required large numbers ofperformers. Versailles and

Paris inevitably attracted the finest musical talents in the kingdom, who were

summoned to participate in the development of a national art.

6

In one scene ofRoberto Rossellini’s film La Prise de pouvoirpar Louis xiv,

a newly instated Louis xiv demands that the royal tailor add more ribbons, lace,

and jewels to an ensemble he intends to wear at court. At last, the suit having

reached a comical level ofornament, he asserts that, as such a getup would cost 

the equivalent ofa year’s earnings for anyone in his retinue, and as the nobility 

ofhis court will feel compelled to keep pace with his new extravagance, he

can bring them to their knees and keep them in line, due to the mere cost of

remaining fashionable. This apparent foppery actually succeeded in subduing

many French aristocrats, whose rebellious tendencies could have proved 

disastrous to the king’s reign, had they not been hamstrung by the immense

cost ofmaintaining the lifestyle Louis modeled for them.

That seventy-two-year reign saw the stabilization ofthe French economy, 

governmental reforms that did away with feudalism, and an unprecedented

expansion ofthe wealth and influence ofthe French state. The power, splendor, 

and opulence ofthe court ofVersailles can be viewed as resulting from a cross

between the guile ofMachiavelli and the wealth ofCroesus, a cynical policy of

sartorial, architectural, and musical “shock and awe,” calculated to make plain

the extent and nature ofthe king’s absolute rule. To this end Louis exercised 

considerable control over who made music at Versailles and what they composed. Fortunately for posterity, he had some musical savvy and good taste.

Most ofthe composers on this program were colleagues, and the French

baroque style that they synthesized while working together in the court of

Louis xiv was one ofthe richest and most nuanced musical languages ever 

devised. Francois Couperin was the most significant member of one of

France’s great musical dynasties. Various Couperins were active in Parisian

musical life from the late sixteenth century well into the nineteenth, in

particular at the Church of Saint Gervais, which had an unbroken succession of Couperins in its organ loft for 173 years. The Concerts royaux come

from a period ofstylistic transition in Couperin’s life—with the publication

ofthese Concerts, he shrugged offthe Italian trio-sonata model of his early

7
chamber music publications and began to write in an authentically homegrown style. For Couperin, writing in the French style meant writing music

that consisted, for the most part, of a single, dominant melody and continuo

bass line. The four Concerts royaux can be performed on solo harpsichord

(the music is entirely notated on two staves), and the preface states that they 

would sound well when played by violin, flute, oboe, viol, and bassoon. The

second ofthe Concerts, in D major and minor, may be the most intimate of

the set. One imagines that they might have been performed for an aging

king and a few trusted courtiers, his dancing days behind him, and his view

of his reign and the incredible refulgence of his court turned melancholy.

Jean-Marie Leclair was a renowned dancer, a skilled lace-maker, and the

greatest French violinist after Rebel. Some music historians credit him with

having founded the French schools ofboth violin and flute playing, due to

his virtuosity as a violinist and his nine violin sonatas “pent cejouer sur leflute

allemande” ([which] can be played on the German flute). From 1723 to 1733, he

played in the Concerts Spirituels, the main semi-public music series in Paris.

Fie gained appointment at Versailles in 1733 as ordinaire de la musique (gentleman ordinary for music) but resigned after just four years after a clash with

a rival violinist, Jean-Pierre Guignon (1702-1774) over control ofthe royal

orchestra. Leclair went on to work for the Princess ofOrange in The Netherlands and the Duke ofGramont in the French Basque region.

Jean-Philippe Rameau is a fascinating figure, the dominant French

composer ofthe generation after Lully, the most influential musical theorist

oftire eighteenth century, and the composer ofsome ofthe most remarkable solo harpsichord and chamber music of his time. Fie was evidently a

rather thorny character, working in relative obscurity and poverty before he

finally achieved fame and fortune in the 1730s when he was in his fifties.

The Pieces de clavecin en concert, late works in his oeuvre, are quite different

from all the other pieces in this program in that the harpsichord leaves its

usual role as accompanist and takes a turn as soloist, prefiguring the piano

trios and quartets of Haydn and Mozart.

Robert de Visee was Louis xiv’s guitar teacher, often called upon to play

guitar at Louis’ bedside and in chamber music soirees at court in Paris

and at Versailles. Logistille is the name of a good fairy in I’Histoire de Roland,

the French version ofAriosto’s Orlandofurioso, which was also made into

an opera by the dominant French musician ofthe time, Jean-Baptiste Lully

(1632-1687). This theorbo solo movement is a transcription of a short

sinfonie that introduces an aria in which Logistille soothes the conscience

ofthe fitfully sleeping hero.

Marin Marais, who is to the viola da gamba what Chopin is to the piano,

lived his entire life in Paris and Versailles. In 1676 Marias joined the royal

orchestra and spent the rest ofhis career in the service ofthe French court,

the better part ofit in the employ of Louis xiv as ordinaire de la chambre

du Roi pour la viole (gentleman ordinary ofthe king’s chamber for the viol).

Like most ofhis contemporaries, Marais gave titles to his pieces that were

either one-word dance titles or evocative characterizations, one ofthe truly

charming features of French baroque instrumental music. Les voix humaines

(human voices) is an arresting title for the plaintive, deeply emotive piece

to which he affixed it.

Jean-Fery Rebel was bom into the court of Louis xiv, the son of one of

Lully’s favorite singers. By age eight, Rebel dazzled Lully and the king with

his extraordinary virtuosity on the violin, making his future secure at court.

In 1705 he became one ofthe Vingt-quatre violons du roi (twenty-four violins

ofthe king) and was shortly thereafter made conductor ofthat ensemble.

The Chaconne from his 1705 publication ofviolin suites is as much theatrical

as it is violinistic, showing Rebel’s indebtedness to the ever-so-French

orchestral chaconnes in the operas of Lully.

Georg Philipp Telemann was a lifelong Francophile. He also shared his

generation's infatuation with the immensely influential Italians Corelli and

Caldara and emulated them heavily in his early works. His first employer,

however, was the ostentatious cosmopolitan Count Erdmann 11 of Promnitz,

who demanded orchestral suites in the manner of Lully. (Ironically, Lully,

9
the father ofthe French style, was bora in Italy.) The French style suited

Telemann rather well, and in time French musicians came to admire and 

champion his “faux-French” works. Telemann’s Nouveaux quatuors en six

suites were published in Paris in 1736, and have since that time been viewed

as his finest chamber music. The passacaille (Modere) that ends the quartet

is a monumental movement. The perfection ofthe ensemble texture,

mastery ofharmonic morion, and divine melodic sense ofthe whole composition truly mark this as one of the greatest instrumental ensemble

works of the eighteenth century.

Program notes by John Lenti

10

Upcoming Concerts at the National Gallery ofArt

National Gallery ofArt Vocal Ensemble

Music by Gevaert, Janequin, Rameau, Sermisy, and Tessier

November 15, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Presented in honor of Renaissance to Revolution:

French Drawingsfrom the National Gallery ofArt, 1500-1800

Thomas Mastroianni, pianist

Stephen Ackert, narrator

A Suite bergamasque in Music and Art

Music by Debussy

November 18, 2009

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Flail