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 ofthe 

West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

For the convenience of concertgoers, 

the Garden Cafe remains open for light refreshments

until 6:00 pm on Sundays.

Music Department

National Gallery ofArt 

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

www.nga.gov

Concerts are made possible in part through the generosity of donors

to the National Gallery ofArt through The Circle. Reserved seating is

available in recognition oftheir support. Please contact the development 

office at (202) 842-6450 or circle (a) nga.gov for more information.

The Seventy-Third Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

3,037th Concert

Marlissa Hudson, soprano

Alan Mandel, pianist

Presented in honor ofAfrican American History Month

February 8, 2015

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court
A. A. Lamb, Emancipation Proclamation, c. 1864, National Gallery ofArt,

Washington, Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch

Program

Music by Alan Mandel (b. 1935)

Songs ofLove and Lyricism (2014), World premiere performance

There, Love, We Will Go

Your Heart

Golden Daffodils 

Beauteous Evening

Moonbeams Kiss the Sea

Joy in the Mountains

Slavery and Emancipation: A Song Cycle (2012)

Slavery

The Slave’s Dream

The Slave Singing at Midnight

The Witnesses

The Slave in the Dismal Swamp

The Good Part

Emancipation

INTERMISSION

A Lincoln Celebration, for piano solo (2009)

“With Malice Toward None, with Charity for All”

Lincoln Belongs to All Mankind

Spiritual Growth

Enshrined Forever

Tolling Bells

Nancy Hanks

He Was a Hero

Ann Rutledge

Going to Glory

Have You Seen Abraham Lincoln?
The Musicians

MARLISSA HUDSON

Described as a “superb lyric coloratura” with “a rich, expressive voice” by

the Saint Louis Dispatch, soprano Marlissa Hudson made her professional

debut while a student at the Peabody Institute ofJohns Hopkins University,

singing with the Baltimore Symphony Pops Orchestra under the late Marvin

Hamlisch. Since then she has collaborated with the Arianna String Quartet, 

Choralis, Vocal Essence, and the National Philharmonic and Saint Louis

Symphony orchestras. She has completed two CD recordings, Libera and

Lust, both designed to bring new audiences to classical music. She maintains a website at www.marlissahudson.com.

ALAN MANDEL

Praised for his “skillfully wrought, effective, and imaginative” compositions

by the New York Times and for his “angular melodies, virtuosic polyrhythms, 

clouds of Messaien-like color, [and] percussive bursts of energy” by the 

Washington Post, pianist and composer Alan Mandel was the first pianist to

record the complete piano works ofCharles Ives and the first to transcribe,

perform, and record Ives’s then unpublished piano works. Mandel’s career 

as a pianist began at age six, when he performed at Steinway Hall in New

York City. His National Gallery debut was in 1967, when he participated in

the Twenty-Fourth American Music Festival with a recital ofmusic by Ives

and Elie Siegmeister.

Mandel’s subsequent career as a composer has been marked by important commissions from the Library of Congress and the Phillips Collection.

His A Lincoln Celebration and Slavery and Emancipation: A Song Cycle,

both heard on tonight’s program, were commissioned by the Smithsonian

Institution’s National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of African

4

American History and Culture, respectively. Among the awards he has

garnered are a Fulbright Fellowship (for study with Hans Werner Henze

in Salzburg, Austria) and honors diplomas from Salzburg’s Mozarteum

and the Conservatorio Monteverdi in Bolzano, Italy.

A graduate ofthe Juilliard School of Music, where he studied with Rosa

Lhevinne and Henry Brant, Mandel undertook further studies with George

Crumb, George Rochberg, and Richard Wemick. He is an emeritus professor ofmusic at American University.

5
Program Note

The piano used in tonight’s concert, Steinway #0246634, was purchased

by the National Gallery ofArt in 1948. For twenty years prior to that date, it

had been the Kitfs Piano Company’s “loaner” whenever an organization in 

the Washington-area wanted to rent a Steinway D for an event. As such, it

would have been the piano used at the Lincoln Memorial for the legendary 

concert sung there on Easter Sunday 1939 by Marian Anderson, who had

been denied permission to sing in Constitution Hall.

The piano served the Gallery as its primary concert instrument, drawing 

praise from many guest performers, until 1994, when it was succeeded by a

newer Steinway. The older piano, now in its eighty-seventh year, remains in

fine condition, and from time to time proves to be the perfect instrument for

a special occasion, such as tonight’s concert in honor ofAfrican American 

History Month.

Program Note by Stephen Ackert, Senior Music Program Advisor,

National Gallery ofArt

6

Upcoming Concerts at the National Gallery ofArt

National Gallery ofArt New Music Ensemble

Music by Antosca, Plyla, Smooke, and other Washington-area composers

February 15, 2015

Sunday, 3:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Marian Anderson String Quartet

Music by African American composers 

In honor ofAfrican American History Month

February 22, 2015

Sunday, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Musica ad Rhenum

Music by J. S. Bach and other composers

March 1, 2015

Sunday, 3:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court
Marlissa Hudson, soprano, and Alan Mandel, pianist

National Gallery of Art

February 8, 2015

Texts

There, Love, Will We Go

James Joyce (1882-1941)

O cool is the valley now and there, love, will we go

For many a choir is singing now where love did sometime go.

And hear you not the thrushes calling, calling us away?

O cool and pleasant is the valley and there, Love, will we stay.

Your Heart

Joyce

Rain has fallen all the day;

O come among the laden trees:

The leaves lie thick upon the way 

ofmemories.

Staying a little by the way 

ofmemories shall we depart.

Come, my beloved, where I may 

speak to your heart.

Golden Daffodils

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils ;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay.

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they 

Outdid the sparkling waves in glee.

A poet could not but be gay

In such a jocund company.

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought 

What wealth the show to me had brought,

For aft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss ofsolitude,

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.
Beauteous Evening

Wordsworth

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,

The holy time is quiet as a nun

Breathless with adoration; the broad sun

Is sinking down in its tranquility;

The gentleness ofheaven is on the sea.

Listen! The mighty Being is awake,

And doth with his eternal motion make

A sound like thunder everlastingly.

Dear child! Dear girl! That walkest with me here,

Ifthou appearest untouched by solemn thought,

Thy nature is not therefore less divine;

Thous best in Abraham’s bosom all the year 

And worshipest at the temple’s inner shrine,

God being with thee when we know it not.

Moonbeams Kiss the Sea

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

The fountains mingle with the river,

And the rivers with the ocean.

The winds of heaven mix forever 

With a sweet emotion.

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine 

In one another’s being mingle:

Why not I with thine ?

Joy in the Mountains

Wordsworth

The cock is crowing,

The stream is flowing,

The small birds twitter,

The lake doth glitter,

The green field sleeps in the sun.

The oldest and youngest 

Are at work with the strongest;

The cattle are grazing,

Their heads never raising;

There are forty feeding like one!

See the mountains kiss high heaven,

And the waves clasp one another.

No sister flower would be forgiven 

Ifit disdained its brother.

And the sunlight clasps the earth,

And the moonbeams kiss the sea.

What are all these kissings worth

Ifthou kiss not me ?

Like an army defeated 

The snow hath retreated,

And now doth fare ill

On the top ofthe bare hill.

The ploughboy is whooping anon-anon.

There’s joy in the mountains;

There’s life in the fountains;

Small clouds are sailing,

Blue sky prevailing;

The rain is over and gone!
Poems on Slavery

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1804-1882)

Slavery

(To William E. Channing)

The pages ofthy book I read,

And as I closed each one,

My heart, responding, ever said,

“Servant of God, well done!”

Well done ! Thy words are great and bold ;

At times they seem to me

Like Luther’s, in the days of old,

Half-battles for the free.

Go on, until this land revokes

The old and chartered Lie,

The feudal curse, whose whips and yokes

Insult humanity.

A voice is ever at thy side

Speaking in tones ofmight,

Like the prophetic voice, that cried

To John in Patmos, “Write!”

Write! And tell out this bloody tale;

Record this dire eclipse,

This Day ofWrath, this endless wail,

This dread Apocalypse!
The Slave’s Dream

Beside the ungathered rice he lay, his sickle in his hand;

His breast was bare, his matted hair was buried in the sand.

Again, in the mist and shadow ofsleep, he saw his native land.

Wide through the landscape ofthis dreams the lordly Niger flowed;

Beneath the palm trees on the plain once more a king he strode,

And heard the tinkling caravans descend the mountain road.

He saw once more his dark-eyed queen among her children stand;

They clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks, they held him by the hand —

A tear burst from the sleeper’s lids and fell into the sand.

And then at furious speed he rode along the Niger’s bank;

His bridle-reins were golden chains, and with a martial clank,

At each leap he could feel his scabbard smiting his stallion’s flank.

Before him, like a blood-red flag, the bright flamingoes flew;

From mom till night he followed their flight o’er plains where the tamarind grew,

Till he saw the roofs ofCaffre huts, and the ocean rose to view.

At night he heard the lion roar, and the hyenas scream,

And the river-horse, as he crushed the reeds beside some hidden stream;

And it passed, like a glorious roll of dmms, through the triumph of his dream.

The forests, with their myriad tongues, shouted ofliberty;

And the blast ofthe desert cried aloud, with a voice so wild and free,

That he started in his sleep and smiled at their tempestuous glee.

He did not feel the driver’s whip, nor the burning heat of day ;

For Death had illumined the land ofsleep, and his lifeless body lay

A wom-out fetter, that the soul had broken and thrown away!
The Slave Singing at Midnight

Loud he sang the psalm ofDavid!

He a Negro and enslaved,

Sang of Israel’s victory,

Sang of Zion, bright and free.

In that hour, when night is calmest,

Sang he from the Hebrew Psalmist,

In a voice so sweet and clear

That I could not choose but hear.

Songs oftriumph, and ascriptions,

Such as reached the swart Egyptians,

When upon the Red Sea coast

Perished Pharaoh and his host.

The Witnesses

In Ocean’s wide domains,

Halfburied in the sands,

Lie skeletons in chains,

With shackled feet and hands.

Beyond the fall of dews,

Deeper than plummet lies,

Float ships, with all their crews,

No more to sink nor rise.

There the black slave-ship swims,

Freighted with human forms,

Whose fettered, fleshless limbs

Are not the sport ofstorms.

These are the bones ofslaves;

They gleam from the abyss;

They cry, from yawning waves,

“We are the witnesses!”

And the voice ofhis devotion 

Filled my soul with strange emotion ;

For its tones by turns were glad,

Sweetly solemn, wildly sad.

Paul and Silas, in their prison,

Sang ofChrist, the Lord arisen,

And an earthquake’s arm ofmight 

Broke their dungeon-gates at night.

But, alas ! What holy angel

Brings the slave this glad evangel?

And what earthquake’s arm ofmight 

Breaks his dungeon-gates at night?

Within earth’s wide domains 

Are markets for men’s lives;

Their necks are galled with chains;

Their wrists are cramped with gyves.

Dead bodies, that the kite 

In deserts makes its prey;

Murders, that with affright 

Scare schoolboys from their play!

All evil thoughts and deeds;

Anger, and lust, and pride;

The foulest, rankest weeds;

That choke life’s groaning tide!

These are the woes ofslaves;

They glare from the abyss;

They cry, from unknown graves,

“We are the witnesses!”
The Slave in the Dismal Swamp

In dark fens ofthe dismal swamp

The hunted Negro lay;

He saw the fire ofthe midnight camp,

And heard at times a horse’s tramp

And a bloodhound’s distant bay.

Where will-o’-the’wisps and glow-worms 

shine,

In bulrush and in brake;

Where waving mosses shroud the pine,

And the cedar grows, and the poisonous vine

Is spotted, like the snake;

Where hardly a human foot could pass,

Or a human heart would dare,

On the quaking turf ofthe green morass 

He crouched in the rank and tangled grass,

Like a wild beast in his lair.

A poor old slave, infirm and lame;

Great scars deformed his face;

On his forehead he bore the brand ofshame,

And the rags, that hid his mangled frame,

Were the livery of disgrace.

All things above were bright and fair,

All things were glad and free;

Lithe squirrels darted here and there,

And wild birds filled the echoing air

With songs ofliberty!

On him alone was the doom ofpain,

From the morning ofhis birth;

On him alone the curse ofCain

Fell, like a flail on the garnered grain,

And struck him to the earth!

The Good Part That Shall Not Be Taken Away

She dwells by great Kenhawa’s side,

In valleys green and cool;

And all her hope and all her pride 

Are in the village school.

Her soul, like the transparent air

That robes the hills above,

Though not of earth, encircles there 

All things with arms oflove.

And thus she walks among her girls

With praise and mild rebukes ;

Subduing e’en rude village churls

By her angelic looks.

She reads to them at eventide 

Of One of who came to save ;

To cast the captive’s chains aside

And liberate the slave.
And oft the blessed time foretells

When all men shall be free ;

And musical, as silver bells,

Their falling chains shall be.

And following her beloved Lord,

In decent poverty,

She makes her life one sweet record 

And deed of charity.

For she was rich, and gave up all

To break the iron bands 

Ofthose who waited in her hall,

And labored in her lands.

Long since beyond the Southern Sea

Their outbound sails have sped,

While she, in meek humility,

Now earns her daily bread.

It is their prayers, which never cease,

That clothe her with such grace ;

Their blessing is the light of peace 

That shines upon her face.
Emancipation

From Fifty Years, 1863-1913

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)

O brothers mine, today we stand

Where half a century sweeps our ken,

Since God, through Lincoln’s ready hand,

Struck off our bonds and made us men.

Just fifty years—a winter’s day.

As runs the history of a race;

Yet, as we look back o’er the way,

How distant seems our starting place!

Look farther Back! Three centuries!

To where a naked, shivering score,

Snatched from their haunts across the seas,

Stood, wild-eyed on Virginia’s shore.

Far, far the way that we have trod,

From heathen kralls and jungle dens,

To freedmen, freemen, sons of God,

Americans and citizens.

A part of God’s unkown design,

We’ve lived within a mighty age;

And we have helped to write a line

On history’s most wondrous page.

A few black bondsmen strewn along

The borders of our eastern coast,

Now grown a race, ten million strong,

An upward, onward marching host!

This land is ours by right ofbirth,

This land is ours by right oftoil;

We helped to turn its virgin earth,

Our sweat is in its fruitful soil.

To gain these fruits that have been earned,

To hold these fields that have been won,

Our anns have strained, our backs have 

burned,

Bent bare beneath a ruthless sun.

And never yet had come the cry,

When that fair flag has been assailed,

For men to do, for men to die,

That we have faltered or have failed.

And yet my brothers, well I know 

The tethered feet, the pinioned wings,

The spirit bowed beneath the blow,

The heart grown faint from wounds and

stings;

The staggering force ofbrutish might,

That strikes and leaves us stunned and

dazed;

The long, vain waiting through the night

To hear some voice forjustice raised.

Courage! Look out, beyond, and see

The far horizon’s beckoning span!

Faith in your God-known destiny!

We are a part ofsome great plan.

Think you that John Brown’s spirit stops?

That Lovejoy was idly slain?

Or do you think those precious drops

From Lincoln’s heart were shed in vain?

That for which millions prayed and sighed,

That for which tens ofthousands fought,

For which so many freely died,

God cannot let it come to naught.