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, Italian Comedians, probably 1720,

National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection

The Sixty-eighth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,749th Concert

Thomas Mastroianni, pianist

Stephen Ackert, narrator

November 18, 2009

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

West Building Lecture Hall

Admissionfree
Program

“A Suite bergamasque in Art and Music”

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Suite bergamasque (1905)

Prelude

Menuet

Clair de lune

Passepied

Masques (1904)

D’un Cahier d’esquisses (1904)

Lislejoyeuse (1904)

The Musicians

THOMAS MASTROIANNI

Thomas Mastroianni is active as a chamber musician, concerto soloist, lecturer, 

and recitalist throughout the United States and in Europe, Latin America, 

Russia, and the Far East. His recent performances include a concerto with the

National Symphony Orchestra; master classes, lectures, and recitals in New

York City and Rio de Janeiro; and appearances in Bulgaria, Italy, and Spain.

His many workshops and lecture-recitals have included topics such as “Performance Anxiety,” “The Team Approach to Wellness for the Performer,”

“Chopin and Bel Canto,” “The Italian Aspect of Liszt,” and “Musical Memory.”

Mastroianni is a cofounder ofthe Amalfi Coast Music Festival in Italy, where

he teaches, performs, and gives master classes each summer. He performed

“A Suite bergamasque in Art and Music” with Stephen Ackert at the 2009 Amalfi

Coast Festival, and they will present it again next month in New York City.

Mastroianni has worked closely with members ofthe medical profession

in researching pianists’ physiological problems and has appeared with members ofthe medical profession in workshops and panel discussions. He is

a co-author with Richard Norris, M.D., oftwo articles on the problems of

the performing musician. Mastroianni was invited to present a series of

sessions on wellness at the 2002 World Piano Pedagogy Conference. His

article “Memory and Anxiety” recently appeared in the Journal ofthe International Societyfor the Study ofTension in Peformance, published in London.

A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Mastroianni studied at the Juilliard

School of Music and Dramatic Arts, where he was a scholarship student of

Beveridge Webster. After military service, he earned a doctorate in piano

performance from Indiana University, where he worked with Bela Nagy

and Sidney Foster. He is a professor emeritus of piano at the Benjamin T.

Rome School of Music at The Catholic University of America, having served

that institution as dean ofmusic for nine years and as chairman ofthe

piano department for twenty-five years. He previously served as chairman

ofthe applied music division and professor of piano at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

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STEPHEN ACKERT

Stephen Ackert is head ofthe music department at the National Gallery ofArt

and an adjunct teacher of organ at Northern Virginia Community College in

Alexandria, Virginia. A graduate ofOberlin College, Northwestern University,

and the University ofWisconsin, Dr. Ackert studied organ and harpsichord as

a Fulbright scholar in Frankfurt, Germany, where his teachers were Helmut

Walcha and Maria Jaeger-Jung. He has performed organ and harpsichord

recitals and presented lecture-recitals throughout Washington, DC, including

the National Shrine ofthe Immaculate Conception, the National Cathedral, the

National Gallery ofArt, and the embassies ofAustria, Belgium, and Germany. 

In his capacity as head ofthe music department at the National Gallery, Ackert

plans and presents concerts for the public and presents lectures and lecturerecitals on subjects that bring together the visual arts and music. He has served

on the boards ofdirectors ofthe Washington International Bach Competitions

and the Arlington Symphony, and is currently on the advisory boards ofthe

Amalfi Coast Music Festival and the Westfield Center.

I

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Program Notes

Claude Debussy is popularly identified as the great impressionist composer.

He was profoundly affected by the work ofthe impressionist artists Edgar 

Degas (1834-1917), Edouard Manet (1832-1883), Claude Monet (1840-1926),

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), and Alfred Sisley (1839-1899), even 

though his period of activity as a composer was between 1895 and 1915, long

after the impressionist period in art had waned. His contemporaries among

painters were those who are today identified as post-impressionists, among

them Paul Gaugin (1848-1903), Odile Redon (1840-1916), and Henri de

Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). Debussy was interested in their work, too, but

his personal art collection consisted ofJapanese woodcuts by various artists

and copies ofpaintings by J. M.W. Turner and James McNeill Whistler.

Debussy and all ofthe artists mentioned in this context had one very

important interest in common—symbolist poetry and the philosophy behind

it. They studiously read the works ofCharles Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarme,

Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine, and subscribed to the

theory of correspondences, as set forth by Baudelaire, who maintained that

all artistic endeavor is related and was fond ofsaying “Music is poetry without words; art is poetry without sound.” Symbolism in art is characterized

by innovations in use of color, use ofrapid brush strokes, and works that

capture a briefmoment in time. Symbolism in music is characterized by

innovations in harmony, tone color, and texture, and forms that are simple

and briefin duration.

Among the favorite literary and theater pastimes ofsymbolist composers

and artists were the stories, plays, and skits that were known as masques— 

dramatic entertainments, usually performed by masked players representing mythological or allegorical figures, that reached their height of popularity in Europe in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Stretching

back to the medieval period and perhaps even to the plays ofthe ancient

Roman authors Plautus and Terence, masques carried on a long tradition
ofstories that typically combined pastoral settings, mythological fable, and

sometimes political and social messages in allegorical form. In their Italian

form, masques were known as Commedia dell’arte, and featured three main

stock roles—servant, master, and lover.

As Thomas Mastroianni plays Debussy’s Masques et bergamasques, images

that have been selected from the National Gallery’s permanent collection 

and other sources culled by Stephen Ackert will be shown as a backdrop.

The images include paintings and drawings by Antoine Watteau (1684-1721)

and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770); artists who were contemporaries

of Debussy, such as Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) and Julian Weir (1852-

1919); and later artists who continued to be fascinated by both symbolism

and Commedia dell’arte, such as Andre Derain (1880-1954) and Raoul

Dufy (1877-1953).

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Upcoming Concerts at the National Gallery ofArt

Richard Stoltzman, clarinetist

Yehudi Wyner, pianist

Music by Carter, Reich, and Wyner

First concert in the 64th American Music Festival

November 22, 2009

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

East Building Auditorium

Presented in honor of The Robert and Jane

MeyerhoffCollection: Selected Works

Cct?'

Enso String Quartet

Music by Corigliano, Jalbert, Moravec, and Reich

Second concert in the 64th American Music Festival

Presented in honor of The Robert and Jane

MeyerhoffCollection: Selected Works

November 25, 2009

Wednesday, 12:10 pm

East Building Auditorium