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 of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

Mailing address

200ob South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

xvwiv.nga.gov

The Sixty-fifth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

“Sixty-five, but not retiring”

National Gallery of Art 

2,592nd Concert

Suspicious Cheese Lords

Presented in honor of

Prayers and Portraits:

Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych

November 12, 2006

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Guillaume Dufay (c. 1397-1474)

Ave Regina cadorum

Gilles Binchois (c. 1400-1460)

Dixit sanctus Philippas

Jean de Ockeghem (c. 1410-1497)

Mort tu as navre

Josquin des Pres (c. 1450-1521)

Ave Maria... virgo serena

Pierre de La Rue (c. 1452-1518) 

Laudate Dominum omnes gentes

Thomas Crecquillon (c. 1505-1557)

Vidit Jacob scalam

Antoine Brumel (c. 1460-c. 1513)

Benedictus

Josquin

La deploration de la mort de Johannes Ockeghem
INTERMISSION

Brumel

Mater patris etJilia

J osquin

Gloria from Missa mater patris

Jheronimus Vinders (fl. 1525-1526)

O mors inevitabilis

Jean Mouton (c. 1459-1522)

Gloriosa virgo Margareta

Adrian Willaert (c. 1490-1562)

O magnum mysterium/Ave Maria

Nicolas Gombert (c. 1495-c. 1560)

Lugebat David Absalon

Elzear Genet (c. 1470-1548)

Tibi Christe

4

The Musicians

The Suspicious Cheese Lords, a male a cappella ensemble, sings a repertoire that ranges from Gregorian chant to contemporary composition. In 

addition to its National Gallery debut on December 18, 2005, the group has 

performed at the Smithsonian Institution, the xm Satellite Radio live performance studio, and a number ofWashington area churches. The Washington Post described a recent performance as “genuinely beautiful... rapturous

music-making.” The ensemble has been profiled in publications as diverse

as the Washington City> Paper and Early Music America magazine. Earlier this 

year, the group was awarded the 2005 Washington Area Music Association’s

“Wammie” for Best New Artist, making it the only classical ensemble ever to

receive this honor.

The Suspicious Cheese Lords’ unconventional name is derived from

the title of a Thomas Tallis (c. 1510-1585) motet, Suscipe quaeso Domine. In a

playful mistranslation ofthe title, it was observed that Suscipe could be taken 

to mean “suspicious,” quaeso resembles the Spanish word queso, or “cheese,”

and Domine is the Latin word for “Lord.” It was not long before “Suspicious

Cheese Lords” was adopted as the name for the group. It has released two

world premiere CDs, both ofwhich are available in the National Gallery

Shops: Maestro di Capella: Music ofElzear Genet (Carpentras), which was

described by J. L. Weber of Fanfare magazine as “a valuable addition to a

discography that is much too short”; and Missa I’homme arme: Sacred Music

ofLudwig Senjl,

Members ofthe Suspicious Cheese Lords participating in this concert 

are Daniel Boettcher, George P. Cervantes, Daniel Ebeling, Christopher

Lominaya, Gordon Geise, James Heaney, Matthew Irish, Peter Larsen,

Nathan Mitchell, Michael Raney, Christopher G. Riggs, Clifton N. West ill,

and Gary W. Winans Jr.

5
Program Notes

Prayers and Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Dipt}rch, the first exhibition

devoted to the subject, brings together almost forty pairs of Netherlandish

panel paintings from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Several paintings

now owned by different institutions are reunited as diptychs by the exhibition, such as Rogier van der Weyden's Virgin and Child from California with 

his portrait of Philippe de Croy from Antwerp (c. 1460), and Michael Sittows

Virgin and Child from Berlin with his portrait of Diego de Guevara (?) from

the National Gallery of Art (c. 1515/1518). In honor ofthis exhibition, the Suspicious Cheese Lords has assembled a program ofvocal works by musical

masters ofthe same period, most ofwhom were born and trai ned in wrhat

was then called the Low Countries, now The Netherlands. Both the visual

medium and the vocal one were vehicles for the most reputable masters

ofthe time. The exhibition remains on view in the West Building until

Februaiy 4, 2007.

Tradition holds that Guillaume Dufay was born in the textile town of

Cambrai, Flanders. FTis youth was spent as a choirboy at Cambrai Cathedral,

a church renowned for its music. He is considered a founder ofthe so-called 

Burgundian school and is noted for using the third interval and introducing

“modern” harmonies. His Ave Regina caelorum is a brief but brilliant threevoice Marian antiphon set in triple meter.

Scholars agree that along with Dufay and John Dunstable, Gilles 

Binchois (or de Bins) completes the triad ofsignificant early fifteenth-century

composers. His surviving repertoire, known for its melodic quality, includes

about fifty sacred wrorks and a greater number of chansons. Dixit sanctus

Philippus is a three-voice motet relating Saint Philip’s admonition against idol

worship. In recent years, interest in this old master has grown, and in 1995

his music was the subject of an international conference in New York City1.

6

Jean de Ockeghem’s birthplace is believed to have been Saint-Ghislain,

Hainaut, Belgium. The earliest surviving reference to him is dated June 24,

1443, when he was listed as a vicaires-chanteur at the Cathedral of Our Lady

in Antwerp. After an appointment as a singer in the chapel ofCharles 1,

Duke of Bourbon, he entered the service ofCharles vn, King of France,

spending a considerable portion of his life in the service ofthe royal court.

Ockeghem’s skills extended well beyond singing and composing; in 1459 he

became treasurer ofthe Abbey of Saint Martin in Tours, ofwhich the king

was the nominal abbot. His motet-chanson Mort tu as navre is an unusual

work in that the upper voice sings a French ballade while the three lower

voices sing in Latin, quoting the Dies irae plainchant at the end.

Josquin des Pres w'as employed in many places in Italy and his native

France, including the papal chapel, where he sang from 1489 to sometime

in the late 1490s (a time for which records have been lost). In the renovation

ofthe Vatican’s Sistine Chapel in the past decade, his name was found carved 

in the choir loft, where only singers were allowed. His Ave Maria... virgo

serena opens with a simple line based on plainchant descending through

voices, as ifmusically painting the image ofthe angel Gabriel saying “Ave!”

(Hail!) while descending from the heavens. One highlight of the piece

occurs at the text “Ave vera virginitas,” where, in a new triple meter, the upper

voice (superius) and middle voice (tenor) engage in a canon separated by a

mere quarter note. Josquin’s genius lies in the fact that the detailed structure

never overpowers the beauty ofthe music.

A contemporary ofJosquin’s, Pierre de La Rue w7as one ofthe few FrancoFlemish composers who did not spend time in Italy he remained in and

around the Low Countries, serving in Cambrai, Cologne, Ghent, Nieuw7poort,

and ‘s-Hertogenbosch. La Rue’s Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, a setting

of psalm 116, demonstrates his tendency to shift between passages of compact four-voice polyphony and the spare texture oftwo voices. He also had a

penchant for exploring the vocal depths ofthe bass voice, as exemplified

by the final chord.

7
One ofthe leading composers ofhis generation, Thomas Crecquillon

spent most of his career as a member ofthe imperial chapel ofthe Holy

Roman Emperor, Charles v. As such, he most likely would have traveled

with the entourage throughout the empire, resulting in a wide dissemination 

oi his music. He is primarily known as a prolific writer of chansons, with

well over two hundred to his credit. His Vidit Jacob scalam is an antiphon

for the Feast ofthe Dedication of a Church.

Canons and other forms of imitation were commonplace in sixteenthcentury sacred music. Antoine Brumel’s solitary Benedictus, written as a

canon for two equal voices, is believed to be part of a lost mass setting.

Considered a great composer ofthe Franco-Flemish tradition, Brumel was

a pupil ofJosquin’s. In 1505 Brumel moved to the city-state of Ferrara in

northern Italy, accepting a position at the prestigious court ofthe arts

patron Alfonso d’Este.

Dpon the death ofJean de Ockeghem, Josquin wrote a tribute, La

deploration de la mort de Johannes Ockeghem, setting the text Nymphes des bois

by French poet Jean Molinet against the cantus firmus ofthe Requiem

aeternam plainchant. An interesting feature ofthis piece is apparent to the 

performers but not the audience, as this motet is an example ofAugenmusik

(“eye music”). Josquin scored the work only in black notation, rather than the 

standard black-and-white notes (as in modern notation), as ifto indicate that

the music itselfis draped in black, in mourning for its esteemed champion.

In the context of Renaissance music, parody is unrelated to satire and 

ridicule. It refers, rather, to the practice of honoring another composer by

incorporating melodic elements of his motet or chanson into a new, larger 

work, such as a mass setting. The first two pieces in the second half ofthe

program, Brumel’s briefthree-voice Mater patris etjilia and the four-voice

Gloria from Josquin’s Missa mater patris, serve as an example of parody. The

fact that Josquin expanded on Brumel’s motet is a bit puzzling, as composers

generally used parody to honor the work of a teacher or elder, and Brumel

was Josquin’s junior by about ten years. It has been theorized that Josquin

intended for his work to be an homage to the younger man, who preceded

him in death.

8

Josquins own death was commemorated by several composers, including Nicolas Gombert, Benedictus Appenzeller, and Jean Richafort. Among 

these elegies is a seven-voice motet by the Flemish composer Jheronimus

Vinders, O mors inevitabilis. Almost nothing is known ofVinders, except that 

he served for a short time at the Janskerk (now the Cathedral of Saint Baaf)

in Ghent. As did Ockeghem and Josquin before him, Vinders combined the 

sacred and secular: five voices sing a text that matches an epitaph in the

church of Saint Gudule in Brussels; two additional voices sing a plainchant

from the requiem mass, resulting in a full-sounding seven-voice sonority.

Gloriosa virgo Margareta is one of about one hundred motets by Jean

Mouton, who served the French royal court, first under Queen Anne of

Brittany and subsequently under King Francois 1. The motet refers to Saint

Margaret of Antioch, who was tortured and beheaded in the fourth century

c.e. by order of Olvbrius, the Roman prefect ofAntioch , because she refused 

to renounce Christianity and marry him.

Mouton was the teacher of another significant Renaissance composer,

Adrian Willaert. Born in Bruges or Roulers, Willaert is credited with cultivating the Franco-Flemish tradition in Italy. He was maestro di cappella of

Saint Mark's Cathedral in Venice, a position he held from 1527 to 1558. He

is considered the father ofthe Venetian school, since several of his students,

including Cipriano de Rore and Andrea Gabrieli, made important stylistic

leaps that later marked the beginning ofthe baroque musical era. O magnum mysterium/Ave Maria is a lovely two-part motet, in which each section

ends with the same Beata Virgo text and music.

One ofmany lesser-known composers ofthe generation between Josquin

and Palestrina, Nicolas Gombert was born in southern Flanders, near Fille.

From about 1526 to 1540 Gombert served in the court chapel of Charles v,

first as a singer and then as the master of choirboys, which gave him the

opportunity to travel throughout Europe. The melody of his sublime eightvoice setting ofthe lament Lugebat David Absalon closely resembles that

of another of his chansons, Je prens congie de mes amours.

9
Elzear Genet, also known as Carpentras, sang in the papal chapel under

Popes Julius ii and Leo x, and in the court ofthe French King Louis xn.

Although Genet was the first composer to publish his own collected works,

his music has fallen into near-oblivion. There are no documented performances ofhis music until the early nineteenth century. Tibi Christe is a hymn

for the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels (September 29). The archangel

is mentioned in sacred texts such as the Koran, the Book of Enoch, and

kabbalistic writings; the name “Michael” is derived from the Hebrew phrase

“Who is like God?”

Program notes by George P. Cervantes and Christopher G. Riggs

10

Next Week at the National Gallery ofArt

Peter de Groot, countertenor

Stephen Ackert, harpsichordist

Daniel Rippe, gambist

Seventeenth-century Dutch music

Presented in honor of

Strokes ofGenius: Rembrandt ’s Prints and Drawings

November 19, 2006

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building Lecture Hall