Caricature titled ‘Frou Frou Wagner’ published in Der Floh, on 24 June 1877, showing journalist Daniel Spitzer standing on a cache of letters pricking Wagner, who is in deep deliberation over bolts of silk and satin,
with his poison pen; reproduced in John Grand-Carteret’s Richard Wagner en caricatures, Paris, 1892. From the collections of the Library of Congress Music Division.

Anniversaries commemorating the significant birthdays or deaths of famous composers often provide the curatorial staff here at the Library of Congress with great opportunities to take stock, so to speak, of what riches related to a certain figure might be found among our collections—opportunities, I might add, that rarely disappoint. When two of my colleagues recently reminded me of the impending bicentennial of Wagner’s birth, it was necessary for me to stifle a bark of laughter as my thoughts immediately turned to an eccentric set of epistles that were once safely tucked away in a milliner’s lavender-scented linen closet; now, long after their scandalous emergence from that closet, the letters occupy a space on our shelves filed under the name of Richard Wagner.

Perhaps the only thing better than a full-blown scandal is the constellation of dramatic retellings that they trigger—each iteration building upon the previous until the telling of the tale takes on a life of its own.  Sometimes, transgressions inadvertently become public, like the botched Watergate break-in; or they may gradually unravel like Madoff’s catastrophic Ponzi scheme.  Most often, though, scandals are occasioned by an intentional, provocative, communicative act—such as the leaking of a news story sensationalizing some aspect of a celebrity’s private life.  Such is the case of our famous collection of fourteen autograph letters written between the years 1864 to 1868 by Richard Wagner to his Viennese seamstress and interior designer par excellence, Bertha Goldwag Maretschek.

In 1877, less than a year after the Bayreuth Festspielhaus opened and the first complete performance of the Ring took place, Daniel Spitzer (1835-1893), a famous columnist and satirist with Vienna’s Neue Freie Presse, learned of the existence of the titillating Wagner-Goldwag epistolary from an undisclosed source.  Reportedly, the sensational cache outlined in minute detail Wagner’s predilection for wearing luxurious apparel made of silks and satins, rosettes and bows; his orders to milliner “Fräulein Bertha” revealed a penchant for soft, feminine fabrics, trimmings and linings that were selected for his pale pink satin dressing gowns, matching slippers adorned with bouquets of roses, lavishly festooned bed-covers, pink silk underwear, and other accessories too numerous to name—all sensuously enhanced with hints of rose-scented fragrance!

Richard Wagner in heaven: “Thank you for your welcome, dear angels, but without drums and trumpets you’ll never make an impression!” Originally published in Kikeriki (Vienna, 1883); reproduced in John Grand-Carteret’s “Richard Wagner en caricatures, Paris, 1892.
From the collections of the Library of Congress Music Division.

Spitzer, a seasoned scandalmonger with close ties to the circle of followers associated with Johannes Brahms, capitalized on the opportunity to air Wagner’s “dainty laundry,” and convinced his editor to purchase the ill-gotten letters from a local dealer, indiscreetly publishing them on June 16-17 and July 1, 1877) with added commentary for the amusement of his readers.   A humiliated Wagner partially blamed Brahms, who is said to have borrowed and publically read the letters to “hugely delighted friends” at the local coffee house; he even contemplated immigrating to America, and Cosima, “…the day she discovered the press coverage, was too disheartened to dissuade him from considering the idea of another exile” [from Cosima’s diary, quoted by Lawrence Dreyfus in Wagner and the Erotic Impulse, Harvard University Press, 2010, p. 143]. Cosima obviously came to terms with his eccentricity, ordering a pink carpet crafted from flamingo breast feathers with a border of peacock plumes for her husband’s 66^th birthday. Dreyfus also notes, the pale pink satin fetish remained the “leading motif of Wagner’s intimate attire” as he reportedly died in a dressing gown of his favorite color!

Soon after the 1877 scandal,  Spitzer sold the letters to industrialist Arthur Faber, husband to Brahms’ friend, singer Bertha Porubszky.  (Brahms composed his Wiegenlied (cradle-song), aka his “Lullaby,” for the Fabers’ first born.)  Faber gifted the letters to Brahms, who temporarily loaned them to Joseph Joachim, and upon their return, he set them aside in an envelope intended for his estate. Berliner Dr. Eugene Wolbe sold the epistolary to the Boston antiquary Charles Goodspeed, from whom the Library bought them in 1922.  Today, the Music Division’s fourteen Putzmacherin (milliner) letters display the muted evidence of faded splendor, with small swatches of satins and ribbons folded between the sheets having lost their original luster of magenta, mauve, and applegreen.

Enclosure from Wagner’s letter dated April, 1865 to Miss Bertha:
“Nr. 3 tassel and cord of the same color
a) dressing gown, lined with heavy, beautiful white satin at 6-7 fl.
b) breeches
c) waistcoat
b and c lined with lightweight white satin.
Also: d and e – breeches and waistcoat of the same heavy, white satin as thelining of the dressing gown (at 6-7 fl.) and lined with a paler pink satin at 3 ½ fl.”
From the collections of the Library of Congress Music Division (ML95.W14 Case).

Accounts of the letters and the stir they created continue to flood the literature: there is a 1906 interview with Bertha herself describing the Venusberg-like boudoir she designed for Wagner with silk-lined walls, soft carpets and lavish pink accessories; here she vehemently denies having any knowledge about who might have stolen her well-hidden collection.  Few Wagner monographs fail to retell this textilian tale (along with similar requisitions involving Friedrich Nietzsche, author Judith Gautier, etc.); dozens of studies quote Bertha’s letters in discussions about Wagner’s pathologies—his musical eroticism, moral insanity, and how this manifestation of quintessential decadence was perchance a necessary, even crucial by-product of the gorgeousness and genius of Richard Wagner’s colorful and unmatched musical palette.  Happy 200^th birthday!

Rachel Weiss

The following is the fifth in a series of  guest posts by retired Senior Music Cataloger Sharon McKinley.

Rachel Weiss worked as a volunteer intern during the summer of 2011 cataloging the last thousand or so librettos in the Albert Schatz collection. Following her internship, Rachel pursued her MLIS at the University of Pittsburgh, graduating in August 2012. She enjoyed visiting Washington, DC for a second time that summer, when she spent two weeks performing at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival with West Virginia University’s steel drum band. After six months working as campus librarian at Lincoln College of Technology in West Palm Beach, Florida, Rachel was hired as music librarian at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota for the academic year of 2013-2014.

Claire Maude

Claire Maude contributed to the It’s Showtime sheet music database and cataloged music materials during her internship at the Library of Congress.   She went on to spend several years as the print music buyer and manager of Middle C Music in the Tenleytown neighborhood in Washington,  DC, and sang in various ensembles around the city.  Claire recently  moved to Chicago to be closer to her family, and now works in the wild world of property management.  She also sings with St. Alphonsus Church, Chicago Choral Artists, Wicker Park Choral Singers, and the newly created Peregrine Vocal Ensemble.  In her spare time, she bakes a lot.

Jessica Turner

Jessica Turner was an intern in what was then the Special Materials Cataloging Division (SMCD) with the Junior Fellows program in the summer of 2007. Now a Junior at Miami University in Ohio, she is doubling in Mass Communication and Political Science.  She has also recently returned from spending four months studying abroad in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops perform “Country Girl” at the 2013 ASCAP “We Write the Songs” concert in the Coolidge Auditorium.
Photo/ Abby Brack Lewis

On Tuesday night the Library of Congress hosted the annual ASCAP “We Write the Songs” concert that celebrates the Library’s partnership with The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, a non-profit organization that handles licensing and royalties for songwriters. In 2010 the first “We Write the Songs” concert was produced as a celebration of the Music Division’s acquisition of the ASCAP archives and the tradition has continued on an annual basis since that first show. Songwriters come and perform their own hits after providing some insight and anecdotes that reveal something about their own songwriting process.

Jim Weatherly performs “Midnight Train to Georgia” at the 2013 ASCAP “We Write the Songs” concert in the Coolidge Auditorium. Photo Abby Brack Lewis

The ASCAP concert is always a fun evening at the Library of Congress, so I considered myself lucky to work at the event last night and see the show. ASCAP President Paul Williams kicked off the evening as Master of Ceremonies by singing “You and Me Against the World” and warming the crowd up with his infectious humor. Performances ranged from a touching rendition of “The Way We Were” by the song’s award-winning lyricist Alan Bergman to rousing music from the Carolina Chocolate Drops and everything in between. Jim Weatherly entertained us with the story of how a phone conversation with Farrah Fawcett about her taking the “midnight plane to Houston” sparked what would become his smash hit “Midnight Train to Georgia” recorded by Gladys Knight and the Pips. And of course, we were all uplifted by Siedah Garrett’s performance of “Man in the Mirror.” Countless other stories and performances made up what turned out to be a lovely and fun-filled night in Coolidge Auditorium.

The concert was recorded and will be accessible as a video on the Library of Congress YouTube channel in the coming months; until then, enjoy videos of the ASCAP “We Write the Songs” concerts from 2010, 2011, and 2012, and check out a few photos from this week’s event!

Siedah Garrett performs “Man in the Mirror” at the 2013 ASCAP “We Write the Songs” concert in the Coolidge Auditorium. Photo/ Abby Brack Lewis

Charles Strouse and Liz Calloway perform “Tomorrow” at the 2013 ASCAP “We Write the Songs” concert in the Coolidge Auditorium. Photo/ Abby Brack Lewis

John Adams by Margaretta Mitchell

A versatile composer whose output includes operatic, symphonic and chamber works, Adams has over three decades of works to his credit, much of which has become contemporary repertoire. Many of his works engage and provoke dialogues about some of the most significant issues faced by the twentieth- and twenty-first-century global community. His musical response to the first anniversary of 9/11, On the Transmigration of Souls (2002), was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Music.

The four concerts that comprise the residency offer a wonderful survey of Adams’ instrumental music, with some of the most exciting and vibrant performers of new music available. The residency also showcases Adams’ commitment to encouraging emerging composers.

At his recommendation, the Library commissioned American composer Timothy Andres (b. 1985) to compose a new work for the Attacca Quartet, Early to Rise (2013). Adams also selected La forma dello spazio, by young Canadian composer Zosha di Castri, to be featured in a performance he conducts with the International Contemporary Ensemble, along with works by Schoenberg and Stravinsky.

Also performing are violinist Jennifer Koh with pianist Reiko Uchida, and The U.S. Army Blues in a special tribute to the swing bands that played at Adams’ grandfather’s New Hampshire dance hall.

Adams previously spent time at the Library for a public conversation about his autobiography Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life  (Picador, 2009). The webcast of that talk is available here. His Road Movies for violin and piano (1995) was a Library of Congress McKim Fund Commission and will be performed by Jennifer Koh during the residency.

For complete program listings and information on how to obtain free tickets, visit loc.gov/concerts or call 7-5502.

Event Listings:
Wednesday, May 22, 2013 – 8:00pm (Coolidge Auditorium)
Attacca Quartet
BEETHOVEN Quartet in G major, op. 18, no. 2
ADAMS Selections from John’s Book of Alleged Dances
ANDRES Early to Rise (World Premiere-Dina Koston and Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music Commission)
ADAMS String Quartet

Thursday, May 23, 2013 – 8:00pm (Atlas Performing Arts Center)
Jennifer Koh, violin and Reiko Uchida, piano
JANÁČEK Sonata
SALONEN Lachen verlernt
SCHUBERT Sonata in A major, D. 574, op. 162
BARTÓK Sonata for solo violin, Sz. 117
ADAMS Road Movies (McKim Fund Commission)

Friday, May 24, 2013 – 6:15pm (Whittall Pavilion)
A Conversation with John Adams and Claire Chase
(No tickets required)

Friday, May 24, 2013 – 8:00pm (Coolidge Auditorium)
International Contemporary Ensemble
John Adams, conductor
STRAVINSKY Suite–Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier’s Tale)
ADAMS Son of Chamber Symphony
DI CASTRI La forma dello spazio
SCHOENBERG Chamber Symphony no. 1, op. 9, for fifteen solo instruments

Saturday, May 25, 2013 – 8:00pm (Atlas Performing Arts Center)
The U.S. Army Blues
Hits of the Swing Era

Free admission, tickets required. Click here for box office information.

If an event is sold out in advance, space-available passes will be distributed beginning 2 hours prior to the event. Unclaimed reserved seats will be allocated to space-available pass holders sequentially beginning at 15 minutes prior to the event.

Concerts from the Library of Congress 2012-2013

How to View Webcasts

Death and the Civil War (Discussion)
February 27, 2013 – Coolidge Auditorium
Drew Gilpin Faust, President, Harvard University
Ric Burns, Steeplechase Films
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
Presented in association with The Civil War in America

Music in the Lincoln White House  (Panel Discussion)
February 9, 2013 – Whittall Pavillion
Elise K. Kirk, White House Historical Association
Christian McWhirter, The Papers of Abraham Lincoln, National Archives
MGySgt D. Michael Ressler, “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band
Loras John Schissel, Music Division, Library of Congress
Presented in association with The Civil War in America

David Shoenbaum on The Violin (Pre-Concert Lecture)
December 18, 2012 – Whittall Pavilion
David Schoenbaum, Author, The Violin: A Social History of the World’s Most Versatile Instrument

The Musical Worlds of Victor Herbert (Pre-Concert Lecture)
December 3, 2012 – Whittall Pavilion
Alyce Mott, Victor Herbert Source
Loras John Schissel, Music Division, Library of Congress

La Risonanza (Concert)
November 29, 2012 – Coolidge Auditorium
La Risonanza, Fabio Bonizzoni, director
Yetzabel Arias Fernández, mezzo-soprano

20th Century Masters: Britten’s Coolidge Commission and Shostakovich’s Soviet Redemption (Pre-Concert Lecture)
November 13, 2012 – Whittall Pavilion
Nicholas Alexander Brown, Music Division, Library of Congress

A Conversation with Ron Carter (Interview)
October 17, 2012 – Whittall Pavilion
Ron Carter, bass
Larry Appelbaum, Music Division, Library of Congress

Daniel Hope, violin and Jeffrey Kahane, piano (Concert)
October 12, 2012 – Coolidge Auditorium
Works by Brahms, Mendelssohn, Muhly (McKim Fund Commission) and Ravel
Daniel Hope, violin
Jeffrey Kahane, piano
Nico Muhly, composer

Dvořák, Schoenberg and Brahms (Concert)
October 6, 2012 – Coolidge Auditorium
Works by Dvořák, Schoenberg and Brahms
Pamela Frank and Alexander Simionescu, violin
Dmitri Murrath and Nokuthula Ngwenyama, viola
Peter Wiley and Edward Arron, cello

For more information about Concerts from the Library of Congress, visit loc.gov/concerts.

A selection of George Jones’s Copyright deposits in the Music Division collection. Photo by Pat Padua.

In the Muse was saddened to learn that classic country singer George Jones died today. The 81-yr old performer was in the process of completing what was to be his farewell concert tour.

George Glenn Jones was born in 1931 inSaratoga,Texas.  His early career reads like something out of American myth.  When Jones turned 16 he left his hometown for Jasper,Texas, where he knew a family on Highway 63 and was introduced to local musician Dalton Henderson. Jones and Henderson sang on local station KTXJ, and played boozy venues with names like the Log Cabin.

Country music is full of stories about sin and redemption, and Jones’s volatile life fueled the whole spectrum of his work.  One of his biggest early hits, “White Lightnin’” (1959) was a frenetic paean to moonshine, but he also recorded gospel music throughout his career.  As his instrument matured, Jones’s patient phrasing grew into one of the most expressive voices in country music.  In 2008, the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress named the heartbreaking 1980 hit, “He stopped loving her today” to the National Recording Registry.   Those who consider art to be more consolation than commerce will find bitter solace in this statistic:  the signature lament is more popular on the funeral home circuit than on country music radio.

Jones is better known as an interpreter than a songwriter, but the Music Division’s coffers hold a number of Possum’s own compositions, including “Tall, tall trees,” a 1957 collaboration with Roger Miller (best known for “King of the road”) and numerous collaborations with then-wife Tammy Wynette. In the Muse hopes its readers put on their George Jones records tonight and toast him to the big honky tonk in the sky.

Further reading:

• Allen, Bob. George Jones: the life and times of a honky tonk legend. Secaucus, N.J. : Carol Pub. Group, 1994.
• Isenhour, Jack. He stopped loving her today : George Jones, Billy Sherrill, and the pretty-much totally true story of the making of the greatest country record of all time. Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 2011
•  Jones, George, with Tom Carter. I lived to tell it all.  New York : Villard, 1996.

Eun Ji (Eunice)

The following is the fourth in a series of  guest posts by retired Senior Music Cataloger Sharon McKinley.

After graduating from Cornell University, Eun Ji (Eunice) volunteered in the Music Division for six months in 2010.  She spent much of her time taking inventory of music scores in the stacks. Eunice recorded statistics for a collections analysis project, and was amazed at the extent of the collection.  Following her experience at the Library of Congress, she spent six months in a rural town in southeastern Korea, teaching elementary school children.  She is currently in her fourth semester in the Masters of Library Science program at the University of Maryland, and works as a student assistant in the institution’s East Asia collection.

Lydia Whelan

Lydia Whelan is happily settling in as the new Technical Services Librarian at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, CA, after serving as technical services librarian at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin.  She is in charge of the Saddleback College technical services department, which covers cataloging, processing/mending, and acquisitions.  Lydia has regular reference shifts, and will eventually teach library workshops and credit courses, as well as serve as liaison to the music department. Co-workers get excited when they see that Lydia worked at the Library of Congress, and they often ask, “How did they do that at the Library of Congress?” Lydia also contributed to the It’s Showtime! sheet music database during her internship, and  cataloged music materials.

Jane Sandberg

Summer 2009 Intern Jane Sandberg is currently a masters student at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  She keeps busy with two jobs on the side.  Jane is working as the information technology director for Tap in Leadership Academy — an educational non-profit — and as a cataloger in the University’s Slavic, East European, and Eurasian library.  At the Library of Congress, she worked on the It’s Showtime! database and compiled a spreadsheet providing access to 200 manuscript scores.

In the fall of 2012 Dr. Chris Ford, Director of the Baltimore School for the Arts, contacted the Music Division to see if his faculty and students could work with us to develop a research component in conjunction with their production of Martha Graham’s Appalachian Spring. The possibility of working with high school students to create an opportunity for them to engage in a sophisticated way with primary sources intrigued us. We routinely work with graduate students in the performing arts to emphasize the idea that research skills are essential tools for dynamic artists; high school students, however, do not typically visit the Music Division with such well-thought out intentions, scholarly interest, and deep passion. The following video, produced by students at the Baltimore School for the Arts, reveals what these students took away from their time working with the collections of the Music Division. We are impressed and inspired.

The story begins with Antonio Gardano, an important Venetian publisher. He printed the first volume of a motet anthology in 1538 called Mottetti del Frutto. This book is extremely rare; the Library of Congress houses one of only a half-dozen or so extant copies (our copy, incidentally, came from St. Anna’s Convent in Augsburg). It is so called because of the use of a woodcut to produce an impression of fruit on the frontispiece.

Credit: Antonio Gardano, Mottetti del frutto primus liber cum quinque vocibus, frontispiece, held at the Library of Congress.

“Methinks thou dost motets too much”

After Gardano’s anthology appeared, a scandalous act was perpetrated: Johannes Buglhat, a competing publisher based in Ferrara, published a different anthology entitled Moteti de la Simia. The woodcut used for this impression was less impressive, but the image was clear enough—it featured a monkey eating some fruit, suggesting that the “fruit” of Gardano’s labor would bear an unkind fate once consumed. To leave no doubt as to the butt of the reference, Gardano’s printshop address was located on the Calle de la Simia. It is not clear what Buglhat’s motivation was, but clearly he did not think highly of Gardano’s output.

Credit: Johannes Buglhat, Moteti de la Simia, frontispiece, scanned image from Royal Holloway, University of London

Gardano responded in simia-lar fashion. He had taken as his printer’s mark the lion and bear of his patron, Leone Orsini. In its ordinary version, the two animals get along sportingly, mutually supporting some sort of flower-ball (I took iconography pass/fail):

Credit: Le dotte, et eccellente compositioni de i madrigali di Verdelot, published by Gardano, held at the Library of Congress

When Gardano published his Mottetti del frutto for six voices in 1539, he responded with an extremely “firmus cantus”: the frontispiece depicts the monkey being devoured by Gardano’s lion and bear (the flower-ball distraction was only so effective), with much of the fruit largely intact:

Credit: Gardano, Mottetti del frutto a sei voci, primus liber, as scanned by State Library of Munich.

The image is a bit graphic for a collection of sacred motets, but is nevertheless satisfying and not too realistic, especially given the sasquatch-y nature of the monkey’s depiction. In any case it was dangerous to put the omnivorous bear in such close proximity to the fruit as well, but I suppose it was beholden to his master’s code-x.

Another fascinating point about this exchange is that the anonymous woodcut featured in the Mottetti del Frutto is one of the earliest modern Italian still-life images, and may have directly influenced artists such as Caravaggio. I would like to point interested readers to the website of John T. Spike, art historian and author, who in addition to a study of Caravaggio (among others) wrote a great and more detailed explication of this story here; it was a great resource found while confirming the particulars of the story.

Event Listing
Stile Antico
Wednesday, April 17, 2013, 8:00 p.m. – Jefferson Building, Coolidge Auditorium

Program:

NICOLAS GOMBERT (c. 1495 – c. 1560)
Magnificat primi toni

JACOBUS CLEMENS NON PAPA (c. 1510 – c. 1555)
Ego flos campi

ORLANDE DE LASSUS (c. 1532 – 1594)
Veni dilecte mi

WILLIAM BYRD (c. 1540 – 1623)
Vigilate

THOMAS TALLIS (c. 1505 – 1585)
In pace in idipsum dormiam

JOHN MCCABE (b. 1939)
Woefully arrayed

 INTERMISSION

 THOMAS TOMKINS (1572 – 1656)
O praise the Lord

JOHN SHEPPARD (c. 1515 – 1558)
The Lord’s Prayer

 ORLANDO GIBBONS (1583 – 1625)
O clap your hands

GIOVANNI PIERLUIGI DA PALESTRINA (1525 – 1594)
Exultate Deo

TOMÁS LUIS DE VICTORIA (1548-1611)
O magnum mysterium

SEBASTIÁN DE VIVANCO (c. 1551 – 1622)
Veni, dilecte mi

RODRIGO DE CEBALLOS (c. 1525 – 1581)
Hortus Conclusus

HIERONYMUS PRAETORIUS (1560 – 1629)
Tota pulchra es

Free, tickets required. Visit loc.gov/concerts for more information.

This concert is SOLD OUT. Space-available passes will be distributed beginning at 6:00 p.m. in the Coolidge Lobby. Unclaimed reserved seats will be allocated to space-available pass holders sequentially beginning at 7:45 p.m.

Credit: Christophe Rousset by Eric Larrayadieu

On Saturday afternoon the Coolidge Collective (my new name for our dedicated audience) will descend on the Library for a fête du clavecin, served by the great harpsichordist and founder/director of Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset. The program will include a delectable assortment of harpsichord works both familiar and less so, featuring music by François Couperin, Jean-Philippe Rameau and Joseph Nicolas Pancrace Royer.

This music was all published within an approximately twenty-year period between c. 1728 and 1746, and represents three distinct styles from three generations of influential writers of harpsichord music. Rousset will start with François Couperin’s final harpsichord collection (the twenty-seventh “ordre” from his fourth book of harpsichord pieces), a concise set that nevertheless offers a compelling glimpse of the breadth of Couperin’s contributions.

A lusty helping of Rameau follows, with a major portion of the Nouvelles Suites de Pièces de clavecin, and excerpts from the infrequently heard transcriptions that Rameau made of his opéra-ballet Les Indes galantes. A common theme throughout these pieces (and indeed throughout the entire program) is the portrayal of the “exotic” and “foreign” through descriptive titles and allusive musical tropes. From a 21^st-century perspective it may be difficult to identify these references audibly, but they may well have been more accessible to the French Baroque audience. Les Sauvages in particular was extremely popular in Rameau’s time, and was adapted for inclusion in his later work Les Indes galantes.

The final group of pieces is by the lesser-known Royer, the youngest composer of the batch. The selections chosen for this performance demonstrate Royer’s individual approach to ornamentation while remaining part of a stylistic continuum.

Space, combined with the complexity of the topic, has prevented me from adequately addressing the “exotic” theme of this concert—more specifically, the historical portrayal in “art music” of the exotic “other.” Whole books have been written about this thorny topic (for instance, read Ralph Locke’s 2009 book Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections, which includes a section on Rameau’s Les Indes galantes); dealing with the consequences of positive and negative portrayals of other cultures is a worthy and ongoing effort. The music of these accomplished composers inspired by “exotic” sources is fascinating with and without their “other” baggage.

Event program

This concert is presented in cooperation with the Cultural Service of the Embassy of France and its partner Safran USA, and is further supported by Gregory and Regina Annenberg Weingarten/The Annenberg Foundation, and by Institut Français.

Event Listing

Christophe Rousset, harpsichord
Saturday, April 13, 2013, 2:00 p.m. – Jefferson Building, Coolidge Auditorium

Program:
L’exotisme au clavecin

FRANÇOIS COUPERIN (1668-1733)

Quatrième Livre de Pièces de clavecin: Vingt-septième ordre (1730)

L’Exquise
Les Pavots
Les Chinois
Saillie

 JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU (1683-1764)

Nouvelles Suites de Pièces de clavecin: Suite in G (c. 1728)

Les Tricotets: Rondeau
L’Indifférente
La Poule
Menuets I & II
Les Triolets
Les Sauvages
L’Enharmonique
L’Egyptienne

Les Indes galantes, Suite de ballet transcrite pour clavecin (1735)

Excerpts:
Ouverture
Air pour les esclaves affricains
Vivement
Air grave pour les Incas du Pérou
Rondeaux gratieux
Gavottes I & II

JOSEPH NICOLAS PANCRACE ROYER (1705-1755)

Premier Livre de Pièces pour clavecin: Suite in D (1746)

La Majestueuse: Courante
La Zaïde: Rondeau: Tendrement
Les Matelots: Modérément
Tambourin I & II

Free, tickets required. Visit loc.gov/concerts for more information.

This concert is SOLD OUT. Space-available passes will be distributed beginning at 12:00 p.m. in the Coolidge Lobby. Unclaimed reserved seats will be allocated to space-available pass holders sequentially beginning at 1:30 p.m.