Upcoming Events of the SeventyFifth Season of The William

Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot

Belin Concerts

Poulenc Trio

Music by Francaix, Saint-Saens, Rossini,

Viet Cuong, Schnittke, and Shostakovich 

May 21, 4:00

East Building Auditorium

West Garden Trio

Piano Trios by Kenji Bunch, Charles Ives,

and Paul Schoenfield 

May 31,12:10

West Building, East Garden Court

Eclipse Chamber Orchestra

Music by Piazzolla and Vivaldi

June 4, 4:00

East Building Auditorium

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 Francois Hubert Drouais, Portrait of Carlos

Fernando FitzJames-Stuart, Marquess of Jamaica

(formerly Madame du Barry Playing the Guitar),

1765, Collection of the Birmingham Museum of

Art, Eugenia Woodward Hitt Collection

MAY 21, 2017 • NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
PROGRAM

2:00 • West Building, East Garden Court

United States Marine Chamber Orchestra

Capt. Ryan J. Nowlin, conductor

Program in honor of America Collects Eighteenth-Century French Painting

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)

Suite from Les Indies Galantes

Ouverture

Entree des quatre nations

Air pour les esclaves africains

Air vif

Musette en rondeau

Air pour les amants et les amantes

Air pour les deux Polonais

Menuet I - II

Contredanse

Ritournelle pour "Le Turc genereux' 

Forlane des matelots

Tambourin I - II

Ritournelle pour les Incas du Perou

Air des Incas

Air pour I'adoration du soleil 

Gavotte I - II

Ritournelle pour la fete persane 

Marche

Air pour Zephire

Air pour Boree et la rose

Air pour les sauvages

Chaconne

Jean-Marie Leclair I'ATne (1697-1764)

Flute Concerto in C Major, op. 7, no. 3

Allegro

Adagio

Allegro assai

Gunnery Sgt. Ellen Dooley, soloist

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 -1791)

Symphony no. 31 in D Major, K. 297, Paris

Allegro assai

Andantino

Allegro; Allegro mosso

2 • National Gallery of Art

The Musicians

Established by an Act of Congress in 1798, the Marine Band is America's oldest continuously

active professional musical organization. Its mission is unique —to provide music for the 

President of the United States and the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Because of the 

demands of this unique mission, "The President's Own" is known to have included strings

when performing for major White House events as far back as 1878 and during the directorship of John Philip Sousa. An orchestra taken from within the Marine Band also gave regular

concerts at the Marine Barracks music hall in Washington, DC, as early as 1893.

The United States Marine Symphony Orchestra officially emerged as a concert

ensemble under the leadership of William H. Santelmann, Marine Band Director from

1898-1927, composed of band musicians who doubled on a string instrument. The doubling

requirement ended in 1955, and a chamber orchestra staffed by full-time string players was

formed. That model has continued to the present, and today's orchestra's musicians hail

from some of the nation's most prestigious universities and conservatories. More than 60

percent hold advanced degrees in music. Musicians are selected at auditions much like

those of major symphony orchestras, and they enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps for permanent duty with the Marine Band.

In addition to its regular appearances at the White House, the Marine Chamber 

Orchestra performs concerts during both an annual showcase series and a summer series.

Performing a wide variety of music from the staples of the orchestral repertoire to modern 

works, Broadway and light classical selections, these concerts give patrons a virtual glimpse

inside the Executive Mansion. The musicians of the Marine Chamber Orchestra are frequently

highlighted in solo performances and also participate in chamber ensemble recitals and

educational outreach programs that feature a variety of smaller instrumental groups.

Whether performing for presidents, heads of state, concert patrons, or students

across the National Capital Region, the music of "The President's Own" Marine Chamber

Orchestra is the music of America.

Gunnery Sgt. Ellen Dooley, soloist

Flutist Gunnery Sgt. Ellen Dooley of Boca Raton, Florida, joined "The President's Own"

U.S. Marine Band in May 2005. Gunnery Sgt. Dooley began her musical training at age ten.

After graduating in 1992 from the New World School of the Arts in Miami, she attended the

Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, earning a bachelor's in music performance in 1996. She

earned a master's in music performance from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in

2002. Her most notable teachers include Jeanne Baxtresser, former New York Philharmonic

principal flute, and Mark Sparks, St. Louis Symphony principal flute. Prior to joining "The 

President's Own," Gunnery Sgt. Dooley was professor of flute at Elizabethtown College in

Pennsylvania and the Levine School of Music in Washington, DC. She also performed in

educational outreach programs for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Choral Arts

Society of Washington.

75th Season • 3
Capt. Ryan J. Nowlin, conductor

Assistant Director Capt. Ryan J. Nowlin joined "The President's Own" U.S. Marine Band

in August 2010 as staff arranger. He was appointed assistant director and commissioned

a first lieutenant in July 2014 and was promoted to his current rank in July 2016.

With "The President's Own," Capt. Nowlin has arranged and composed a variety

of music for the Marine Band, the Marine Chamber Orchestra, the brass ensemble, and

various other small ensembles. In 2013, he collaborated with Kelly Clarkson ("America”)

and arranged a setting of "The Star-Spangled Banner" for the second inauguration of 

President Barack Obama. He also arranged "The Star-Spangled Banner" for Jordin Sparks,

which was performed for the nationwide broadcast of the national anthem's 200th anniversary celebration in 2014. Capt. Nowlin's music has been heard in performance at many 

White House events, including state dinners and the Kennedy Center's Honors and Medal

of Freedom receptions. His transcription of Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue

in D Minor was featured on the 2013 Marine Band recording From the Keyboard, and most

recently his setting of David Conte's A Copland Portrait was included in the band's 2016

release, Picture Studies.

As assistant director, Capt. Nowlin's responsibilities include conducting the Marine

Band and Chamber Orchestra in their winter/spring concert series and summer concerts on

the National Mall, as well as at ceremonies in the National Capital Region and at the White

House. Additionally, he conducted the band at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing

Arts in Vienna, Virginia; at the Midwest Band Clinic in Chicago; and on the Marine Band's

national concert tour. He has served as a producer for Marine Band recordings since 2014,

as well as for The Complete Marches of John Philip Sousa recording project since its inception.

Capt. Nowlin is a 1996 graduate of North Royalton High School in Ohio. He earned

both a bachelor's degree in music education in 2000 and a master's degree in music

education and conducting in 2004 from Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where

he studied horn with Herbert Spencer Jr. and conducting with Bruce Moss and Emily

Freeman Brown. He has also studied composition with prolific composer Anne McGinty

and has participated in workshops and master classes with several renowned conductors

and educators including H. Robert Reynolds, Mallory Thompson, Col. Arnald Gabriel,

Harry Begian, and Frederick Fennell.

4 ' National Gallery of Art

Program Notes

America Collects Eighteenth-Century French Painting

When Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon, arrived in the United States in 1815,

he brought with him his exquisite collection of eighteenth-century French paintings. Put

on public view, the works caused a sensation, and a new American taste for French art

was born. Over the decades, appreciation of eighteenth-century French art has fluctuated

between preference for the alluring decorative canvases of rococo artists such as Francois

Boucher and Jean Honore Fragonard to admiration for the sober neoclassicism championed

by Jacques Louis David and his pupils. This exhibition brings together sixty-eight paintings

that represent some of the best and most unusual examples of French art of that era held

by American museums and tells their stories on a national stage. The exhibition highlights

smaller museum collections, less well-known paintings, and diverse locations across the

United States, from Pittsburgh and Indianapolis to Birmingham and Phoenix.

Suite from Les Indes Galantes

Catapulted to fame with his Traite de Tharmonie (Treatise on Harmony) in 1722, JeanPhilippe Rameau became one of the most influential composers and music theorists of the

baroque era. For much of King Louis XV's reign, he dominated the French musical scene,

replacing the revered Jean-Baptiste Lully. However, it was not until he was nearly fifty that

he made his operatic debut, the genre on which his musical reputation now largely resides.

Though Rameau's inaugural tragedy Flippolyte et Aricie opened in 1733 to critical

acclaim, his Opera-ballet Les Indes Galantes two years later was met with far less enthusiasm. 

While the scenery, dancing, and some of the instrumental music were generally praised,

patrons and critics alike expressed disappointment in the vocal music. Less than a month

after the initial premiere, Rameau and librettist Louis Fuzelier dramatically revised the words

and music for the third act, Les Fleurs. Additionally, and seemingly in large part to accommodate some performing musicians' objections to the level of difficulty, the composer altered 

several other passages of the work. By 1736, a fourth act, Les Sauvages, was added, securing 

the work's enduring success. Les Indes Galantes was performed at the court and the opera

well into the 1770s, enjoying three revivals during Rameau's lifetime — in 1743,1751, and 1761.

In Opera-ballet, each act presents a self-contained story in which dancing plays

a principal part. In this case, the four individual acts are given a unifying theme by a

mythological-allegorical introduction. The unifying theme is the power of love in fleshand-blood characters and its ability to create happiness. In the Prologue, Hebe (the

goddess of youth) and I'Amour (the god of love, or Cupid) summon their attendants

(young warriors from France, Spain, Italy, and Poland) to take part in a lively festival. The

celebration is interrupted by Bellona (the goddess of war) who convinces the youths

to abandon their earthly pleasures in search of the glories of battle. Hebe and L'amour 

disperse "far from the European nations" to remote lands known as "the Indies,” in search

of youth and love. These travels to an island in the Indian Ocean, Peru, Persia, and North

America constitute the four acts of the Opera-ballet: Le Turc genereux (The Generous

Turk), Les Incas du Perou (The Incas of Peru), Les Fleurs (The Flowers), and Les Sauvages

(The Savages).

75th Season • 5
The instrumental selections from Les Sauvages are among Rameau's most beloved

pieces. They occur in the final moments of the Opera-ballet in which reconciliation takes

place between the North American natives and settlers with a ceremonial smoking of the

peace pipe. Originally, Rameau wrote Air pour les sauvages in 1725 after observing a delegation of Native Americans from the Louisiana Territory pledge allegiance to Louis XV. It is

said the visiting chiefs performed a dance that inspired Rameau's composition. This music,

already published in his Nouvelles suites de pieces de clavecin, was reused to evoke a similar

sense of wonder in this culminating scene.

While the opening of the Gallery's exhibition offers a unique opportunity to

explore eighteenth-century France through the eyes of American collectors, perhaps 

the French perspective of the emerging Americas can be observed in these final

moments of Les Indes Galantes.

Flute Concerto in C Major, op. 7, no. 3

Born in Lyon, France, Jean-Marie Leclair I'Aine (The Elder) was a student of his father's trade, 

braid-making. An artist at heart, he also studied violin and dance on the side, becoming ballet

master at the theater in Turin in 1722. A year later, Leclair left the theater for Paris where he

published his first sonatas for violin, launching him on his musical career.

After losing his first wife in 1728, Leclair married engraver Louise Roussel in 1730.

As a court composer, publisher, and solo-performer, Leclair served a variety of benefactors

in France and the Netherlands. After his marriage failed in 1758, Leclair withdrew to a

home he had purchased earlier in a notorious part of Paris. There he continued to work

as a teacher and composer until he was found stabbed to death on October 23,1764. The

murder remains a mystery, though authorities suspected either his ex-wife or nephew

committed the crime.

Leclair's contemporaries lauded his solo violin performance for its virtuosity and

refinement. Prolific in his work for the instrument, his forty-eight violin sonatas are now 

part of the repertoire's fundamental and stylistically formative works, making the composer

considered by many as the father of the French school of violin performance.

First appearing in Paris in 1737 as a set of parts, Leclair's opus 7 is a collection of six

concerti for violin. An addition to the beginning of the third concerto's solo part, however,

he remarks: "Les Solo peuvent se jouer sur la Flute Allemande ou Hautbois" (the solo can

be played on the German flute or oboe). It is most likely that Leclair's colleagues at Paris's

prestigious music series, the Concert Spirituel, encouraged the alternative scoring. Leclair

goes on to graciously dedicate this work to his teacher, Monsieur Andre Cheron, saying:

"If there be some beauties in them, I owe these to the erudite lessons I received from you,

I am, and all my life will be, [filled] with the same friendship and the same gratitude.''

6 • National Gallery of Art

Symphony no. 31 in D Major, K. 297, Paris

The Paris symphony ushered in a new period of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's symphonic

output. By the time he began sketching this commissioned work in 1778, four years had

passed since the completion of his most recent symphony. The intervening years presented 

many experiences to which his musical maturation can be attributed. During much of this

time, Mozart was in the employ of the court of Salzburg, a period that was unusually long 

when compared to the composer's life thus far. This tenure saw the creation of all five of his

concerti for violin as well as his groundbreaking Piano Concerto in E-flat Major, K. 271.

Despite these successes, Mozart grew increasingly discontented with Salzburg and

resigned in 1777 to search for new employment.

The long, arduous journey that ensued would take the composer, now twenty-one

years of age, to Mannheim and Paris. While in Mannheim, Mozart became acquainted

with members of the famous Mannheim orchestra, perhaps the best in Europe at the time,

undoubtedly motivating him to explore new possibilities and forms in this genre. But it was

the Parisian orchestra that finally prompted him to expand the orchestra from his thirtieth

symphony by adding flutes, clarinets, and timpani, thereby enabling him to try out new

orchestral colors. In fact, K. 297 was Mozart's first symphony to make use of the clarinet.

Additionally, Mozart returned to a three-movement symphony, considerably enlarging the 

first and last movements in comparison with his previous works.

Many musical effects popular in Mannheim and Paris can be found in this work, 

including the "Mannheim Rocket," the flashy upward scale that appears at the opening

of the first movement. Most of these effects, scholars agree, are intended as parodies to 

curry favor with this Parisian audience. In a letter to his father, Mozart wrote: "Right in

the middle of the opening Allegro there was a passage I simply knew would please the

audience. But because I knew how to write it and what sort of effect it would have, I went

on to apply it twice."

It was Joseph Le Gros, the head of the Concert Spirituel (the same group in which

Leclair performed decades earlier), who persuaded Mozart to compose a "grand symphony."

The resulting work, completed on June 12,1778, and premiered six days later, was well

received. In a letter to his father dated July 3,1778, Mozart wrote: "It was performed with

great applause on Corpus Christi. From what I hear, the event was even reported in the

Couriere de i'Europe. In other words, its success has been exceptional."

Nearly a week later however, in a letter dated July 9, Mozart elaborated on the reception of the second movement saying it was denied the good fortune of pleasing Le Gros.

"It was too long and had too many modulations," he said, "because the listeners forgot to

clap their hands as loud and as long as they did for the first and last movements. For the 

Andante received the greatest applause not only from myself, but from all the connoisseurs, 

amateurs, and most of the listeners. It is just the opposite of what Le Gros claims it to be:

it is natural and short. But to satisfy him (and, as he says, many others), I have written

another one. Each is fine in its own way, for each has a different character." While this "new

Andante" still exists, the original was officially restored when the symphony appeared in

print in the 1780s and is the version usually performed today.

75th Season • 7