75TH SEASON
MARCH 12

3:30 • West Building, East Garden Court

Cappelia Pratensis

Stratton Bull, Andrew Hallock, superius

Pieter De Moor, Lior Leibovici, contratenor

Olivier Berten, Peter de Laurentiis, tenor

Lionel Meunier, Pieter Stas, bassus

Stratton Bull, conductor

Commemorating the 500th anniversary of Hieronymus Bosch's death

Triptych — The Musical World of Hieronymus

Bosch

Anon, (early 16th century)

Chant/polyphony

Introitus — Salve Sancta Parens

Pierre de la Rue (c. 1450-1518)

Missa Cum jocunditate — Kyrie

Pierre de la Rue

Missa Cum jocunditate — Gloria

Chant (early 16th century)

Graduate — Benedicta et venerabilis es

Chant (early 16th century)

Alleluia — Ave Maria

Anon, (early 16th century)

Chant/polyphony

Sequentia — Verbum bonum et suave

Pierre de la Rue

Missa Cum jocunditate — Credo

Anon, (early 16th century)

Offertorium-motet — Sub tuum presidium

Chant (early 16th century)

Prefatio

Pierre de la Rue

Missa Cum jocunditate — Sanctus

Anon, (early 16th century)

With Elevation motet — 0 salutaris hostia

Chant (early 16th century)

Pater noster

Pierre de la Rue

Missa Cum jocunditate — Agnus Dei

Chant (early 16th century)

Communio — Beata viscera

Pierre de la Rue

Motet — Gaude Virgo mater Christi

2 • National Gallery of Art

The Musicians

The vocal ensemble Cappelia Pratensis —literally "Cappelia des pres"— champions the

music of Josquin des Prez and the polyphonists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Based in the Dutch city of 's-Hertogenbosch (also home to the painter Hieronymus

Bosch, celebrated in this program), the group combines historically informed performance

practice with inventive programs and original interpretations based on scholarly research

and artistic insight. As in Josquin's time, the members of Cappelia Pratensis perform from

a central music stand, singing from the original mensural notation scored in a large choirbook. This approach — together with attention to such factors as the chant origins of the

polyphonic repertoire, the modal system on which it is based, the influence of solmization,

and the linguistic basis —creates an intense engagement with the music.

Besides regular appearances at concert venues in the Netherlands and Belgium,

Cappelia Pratensis has performed at leading international festivals and concert series

throughout Europe, North America, and Japan. The group has been ensemble-in-residence

at Harvard University, the Fondation Royaumont (France), and Boston University, giving

courses, presenting concerts, and working with distinguished musicians. The group's

CD recordings have met with critical acclaim and distinctions from the press, including the

Diapason d'Or and the Prix Choc.

Cappelia Pratensis also passes on insights into vocal polyphony and performance

from original notation —both among professionals and amateurs —through master classes,

multimedia presentations, collaboration with institutions, an annual summer course as part

of the Laus Polyphoniae festival in Antwerp, and training young singers within the group

itself. The ensemble is a partner with the universities of Leuven and Oxford in the digitization and valorization of all the brilliant musical sources made in the workshops of the early 

sixteenth-century music scribe Petrus Alamire (c. 1470 -1536).

75th Season * 3
Program Notes

In the Chapel with Hieronymus Bosch

Music clearly fascinated the great Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450 -1516); his

sketches and paintings are peppered with closely observed depictions of music making

and musical instruments. But these pictures suggest a fraught relationship to the activity:

representations of instruments put to lewd use and singers presented as fools or among

hell's company far outnumber angelic harpists. A blush of guilty pleasure colors the gaily

carousing company of lay and religious men and women in the Ship of Fools; the damned

who sing from notes spewed on a man's naked posterior by a monstrous choirmaster

in Hell do so with gusto. Bosch seems to have experienced music as at once dangerous 

and delightful.

Indeed, the artist regularly indulged his double-edged interest in music. A native of

's-Hertogenbosch in the Duchy of Brabant, Bosch was a life-long sworn brother of the city's 

Brotherhood of Our Illustrious Lady, a large and prestigious organization for which sacred

music was an essential and highly valued part of its devotional life. Every Wednesday Bosch

could gather with his confraternity brothers in their opulent chapel in the church of St. John

the Evangelist to celebrate a votive mass in honor of the Blessed Virgin. There he would have

heard their choir of men and boys sing not only the ancient plainsong melodies but also the

most complex new music of his time, polyphonic masses and motets by composers of both 

international and local reputation.

This program aims to capture a sense of the devotional soundscape that Bosch

experienced throughout his life as a member of this music-loving Marian brotherhood.

Instead of the frightening cacophony conjured by the artist's vision of Hell, we encounter

here the joy and serenity of the weekly Marian Votive Mass liturgy with its prescribed

progression of chants that praise and entreat the Blessed Virgin, the confraternity's

patroness. The opening acclamation of the introit chant Salve sancta parens (Salve — Hail!)

salutes her as the celebrant enters the chapel, and the ornate polyphony that decorates

the melody as it unfolds (the work of a local composer) set the jubilant tone that will

pervade the rest of the ceremony.

Confraternity singers could choose from many polyphonic settings of the Mass 

Ordinary contained in the three manuscripts they commissioned from the illustrious

scriptorium of Petrus Alamire. From among the several Marian options, we have chosen the 

Missa Cum jocunditate by Pierre de la Rue, who was not only the most renowned composer

of the Habsburg-Burgundian court but also an external member of the brotherhood from

the early 1490s until his death in 1518. Indeed, La Rue may well have had occasion to meet

Bosch during these years.

The Missa Cum jocunditate is based on the first six notes of the final vespers antiphon

for the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, but the text associated with this short tune 

("Cum jocunditate — With Joy!”) made this Ordinary Mass setting suitable for any mass in

praise of the Virgin. As is immediately apparent in the Kyrie and Gloria, this catchy phrase

saturates the musical fabric as a melodic ostinato. Indeed, the tenor sings almost nothing but 

these six notes, over and over, oscillating happily between statements on G and D in endlessly 

varied rhythmic designs.

4 ' National Gallery of Art

The collect prayer and the Old Testament reading would have followed the Gloria,

leading to the gradual Benedicta et venerabilis es. Chant manuscripts of the confraternity reveal

that local practice generally truncated this chant, omitting the verse — instead, the choir

proceed directly into the ebullient Alleluia: Ave Maria, an expansive melismatic plainsong.

Confraternity custom requires the long sequence chant to be adorned with polyphony. 

Of the three votive Marian sequences provided with polyphony in the confraternity's choirbooks, all by an unnamed and presumably local composer, we have chosen the sequence

Verbum bonum et suave. Here the odd-numbered verses of the melody's paired stanzas are

sung as chant, while a quartet responds with intricate four-voice polyphony on the evennumbered verses.

The sequence prepared the gospel reading, which was then followed by the Credo.

La Rue's Credo from the Missa Cum jocunditate pulls out all the stops, expanding the texture

from four to five voice parts and highlighting the Creed's mention of Mary's essential role

("And was incarnate by the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary, and was made man") with

luscious homophonic chords.

Quite exceptionally, no offertory chant accompanied the preparation of the gifts of 

bread and wine; the chant books of the confraternity deliberately omit it. But music surely 

embellished this phase of the liturgy, and we have chosen an anonymous six-voice setting

of the brief suffrage prayer Sub tuum presidium found in one of the confraternity's Alamire

choirbooks. Like La Rue's Credo setting, this too highlights a special text phrase ("0 Holy

Mother of God") with a single long-held chord that seems to allow time for the invocation

to rise heavenward.

The Preface, intoned by the celebrant, prepares the ritual solemnity of the Sanctus

section of La Rue's Missa Cum jocunditate, which provided the sonic backdrop for the Elevation

of the Host. At the outset La Rue presents a puzzle to the singers: in the tenor the entire

written part of the opening section consists of just the six notes of the Cum jocunditate motive

followed by a playful profusion of repeat signs suggesting multiple repetitions at different

pitches. The tenors must repeat this motive stepping down the scale from D to G, creating

an audible descent suggesting the descent of the Holy Spirit to accomplish the miracle of

Transubstantiation. Next, lively syncopation and rising motives permeate the three-voice

Pleni, the "With Joy!" motive now disappearing as the tenor falls silent.

The first Osanna usually marked the ritual apex of the Elevation of the Host Mass,

However, confraternity custom permitted the substitution of an Elevation motet for the first

Osanna, for which the singers were paid a little extra. Two of the brotherhood's three

Alamire choirbooks include an anonymous setting of 0 salutaris hostia expressly for this

purpose. Here we have chosen the four-voice setting with lucid texture and long-held

chords that seem to suspend the listener in time and space, inviting contemplation of

God's presence at this juncture of the ceremony. La Rue's intricate polyphony resumes 

with the three-voice Benedictus, followed by the concluding jaunty Osanna in which the

tenor resumes its Cum jocunditate ostinato.

75th Season • 5
After the chant Pater noster, embellished here with improvised counterpoint, the choir 

sings the Agnus Dei from La Rue's Missa Cum jocunditate. In the confraternity's choirbook, the 

final invocation with the plea for peace appears in the final Agnus Dei, coinciding with a change

to triple meter that brings this last section of the Mass Ordinary to a joyful conclusion. The

simple communion plainsong Beata viscera again directs praise to the confraternity's patroness.

That confraternity members could sometimes enjoy a motet at the close of mass is

suggested by the interpolation of a motet after each mass setting in one of their Alamire

choirbooks. Thus we conclude our evocation of the confraternity's Wednesday Votive

Marian Mass with La Rue's motet Gaude virgo mater Christi, an exuberant setting of a poem 

enumerating the Seven Joys of Mary— a most appropriate theme for a votive mass in her

honor, by a composer who was himself a member of the organization.

Except for this final motet, all the music in this program comes from the treasuretrove of extant manuscripts made expressly for the confraternity's worship services during

the first decades of the sixteenth century. Cappella Pratensis sings from the original

notation, reading from scale copies of the confraternity's manuscripts of plainsong and

polyphony, and adopts the Brabant pronunciation of Latin those singers surely employed.

They also read together from one large music book, like the men portrayed in the Singers

in the Egg sketch attributed to Bosch. Indeed, one can't help but wonder whether Bosch

modeled the faces in his sketch on the confraternity singers he would have heard at mass.

They seem a merry bunch, but perhaps Bosch had some reservations about them too: they

sit in the egg's yolk, or "door" in Middle Dutch — a word which also meant "fool.”

Program notes by A/I. Jennifer Bloxam

6 • National Gallery of Art

Upcoming Events of the SeventyFifth Season of The William

Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot

Belin Concerts

Inscape

"Washingtonians on Wednesdays”

March 15,12:10

West Building Lecture Hall

Kruger Brothers and Kontras Quartet

Appalachian Concerto

Presented in honor of East of the

Mississippi: Nineteenth-Century

American Landscape Photography

March 19, 3:30

West Building, East Garden Court

Music of Amy Beach

Three by Three

"Washingtonians on Wednesdays"

March 22,12:10

West Building, East Garden Court

Parker Quartet

Music by Mendelssohn, Shostakovich, 

and Augusta Read Thomas

March 26, 3:30

West Building, East Garden Court

Arianna Zukerman, soprano

"Washingtonians on Wednesdays"

March 29,12:10

West Building, East Garden Court

General Information

Admission to the National Gallery of Art

and all of its programs is free of charge,

except as noted.

The use of cameras or recording equipment

during the performance is not allowed.

Please be sure that all portable electronic

devices are turned off.

Concerts are made possible in part

through the generosity of donors to the

National Gallery of Art through The Circle. 

Reserved seating is available in recognition

of their support. Please contact the

development office at (202) 842-6450 or 

circle@nga.gov for more information.

www.nga.gov

www.instagram.com/ngadc

www.twitter.com/ngadc

www.facebook.com/nationalgalleryofart

The department of music produced these

program notes. Copyright © 2ory Board of

Trustees, National Gallery ofArt, Washington

Cover After Hieronymus Bosch, The Last

Judgement Triptych (detail), c. 1510-1570,

National Gallery of Art, Washington, Print

Purchase Fund (Rosenwald Collection)

Back cover West Building, Constitution

Avenue entrance, viewed from Sixth Street nw,

1941, National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Gallery Archives