Four Centuries of Great Music July 13, 2025 Anniversaries of Composers' Births in July

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music we are celebrating some of the composers whose birthdays are in July.  We open with Marianna Auenbrugger

Marianna Auenbrugger born on July 19, 1759  in Vienna.  She was a highly regarded pianist and composer in Vienna. Together with her sister Caterina Franziska, she was a student of Joseph Haydn and Antonio Salieri. In 1780, Haydn dedicated a cycle of six sonatas to the two sisters (Hob XVI :35-39 and 20).
When Marianna died in 1782 at 23 years of age, Salieri, at his own expense, published her Keyboard Sonata in E-flat

Let’s listen to her Keyboard Sonata in E-flat.  It is in 3 movements
01 Sonata in E-Flat Major, I. Moderato
02 Sonata in E-Flat Major, II. Largo
03 Sonata in E-Flat Major, III. Rondo allegro
Sarah Hagen
Women of Note
Self-release

Marianna Auenbrugger:  Sonata in E-Flat Major, I. Moderato
Marianna Auenbrugger:  Sonata in E-Flat Major, II. Largo
Marianna Auenbrugger:  Sonata in E-Flat Major, III. Rondo allegro

You have been listening to Marianna Auenbrugger:  Sonata in E-Flat Major as performed by Sarah Hagen, piano from the album 
Women of Note.


Next on this episode of Four Centuries of Great Music celebrating some of the composers whose birthdays are in July is Alberto Nepomuceno. Nepomuceno was born on July 6, 1864 in Fortaleza, the capital of the state of Ceará in Northeastern Brazil. and is considered the father of modern Brazilian concert music.  His father was a violinist and organist.  He began his musical studies with his father but these studies became much more serious when his family moved to Recife.   Both musically and politically he became an ardent Brazilian nationalist.  He incorporated Brazilian folk melodies în his music and insisted on  the use of the Portuguese language in Brazilian classical music, instead of the preferred European languages such as French, German and Italian.   As a faculty member and director and of  the Instituto Nacional de Música (National Institute of Music) in Rio de Janeiro, Nepomuceno had a significant influence on many early 20th-century Brazilian nationalist composers such as Heitor Villa-Lobos, who became one of his students, Luciano Gallet, and Oscar Lorenzo Fernández.

Let’s listen to hisSérie brasileira (Brazilian Suite).  It is in 4 movements
Alberto Nepomuceno:  Série brasileira (Brazilian Suite) - I. Alvorada na Serra (Dawn at the Mountains)
Alberto Nepomuceno:  Série brasileira (Brazilian Suite) - II. Intermédio (Intermezzo)
Alberto Nepomuceno:  Série brasileira (Brazilian Suite) - III. Sesta na Rede (Napping in a Hammock) 
Alberto Nepomuceno:  Série brasileira (Brazilian Suite) - IV. Batuque  


Here is a performance of Alberto Nepomuceno Série brasileira by Minas Gerais Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Fabio Mechetti from  the album Nepomuceno: Symphony in G Minor, O Garatuja Prelude & Série brasileira.  Naxos



Let’s close ot this first hour of this episode  of Four Centuries of Great Music on which we are celebrating some of the composers whose birthdays are in July with the music of David Diamond.  For more than five decades David Diamond figured prominently among mainstream American composers, but today just two decades after his death, his is is rarely heard in the concert hall. 

Diamond born on July 9, 1915 in Rochester, New York, to Yiddish-speaking immigrant parents. At the age of seven he displayed musical gifts on the violin, which he learned to play initially on his own, and he began composing small pieces while still a child—also without formal instruction. There followed violin lessons at public grammar school and, briefly, while his family was in temporary residence in Cleveland, Ohio, during the 1920s, some studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Later, he was awarded a scholarship at the Eastman School of Music, in Rochester, where he studied with Bernard Rogers. The premiere of his first orchestral work, a one-movement symphony, was conducted by Eastman’s resident composer and composition department chairman, Howard Hanson.

Diamond left Eastman to study with Roger Sessions .  Sessions, like Rogers, had been a student of Ernest Bloch, and Diamond always felt that this provided him an indirect yet significant influence of that acknowledged 20th-century master.  During the mid to late 1930s, he studied in Paris with the legendary Nadia Boulanger—as did many other young aspiring American composers.  While in Paris he came under the influence of Maurice  Ravel and Darius Milhaud.  And in 1939 Diamond wrote Elegy in Memory of Maurice Ravel (who had died in 1937).

Here is a performance  of  David Diamond:  Elegy in Memory of Maurice Ravel by John Adams & Orchestra of St. Luke’s from  the album American Elegies  Nonesuch Records

Most of this second hour of today’s Four Centuries of Great Music on which I am celebrating some of the composers whose birthdays are in July, is dedicated to a single work by Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch.  In the discussion of the life of composer David Diamond, I noted that Diamond felt that the fact that his teachers Roger Sessions and Bernard Rogers had been  students of Ernest Bloch provided him an indirect yet significant influence of that acknowledged 20th-century master. 

Bloch was born in Geneva on July 24, 1880, to Jewish parents.  He began playing the violin at age 9, and began composing soon after. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. He studied composition in Germany and Paris and lived back in Geneva before settling in the United States in 1916, taking US citizenship in 1924. 

He taught at several conservatories and universities in the United States before retiring to his long time vacation home in Agate Beach, Oregon.

America, an Epic Rhapsody is an orchestral work he composed between 1926 and 1927 as a tribute to the country to which he had emigrated in 1916 and had just received citizenship in 1924. He was inspired by the writing of Walt Whitman and his travels around the country. It received a major award in 1927 and on December 21, 1928, it was performed simultaneously in five American cities: Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco.The work consists of three movements, covering the history of the United States and entitled: 
Ernest Bloch:  America, an Epic Rhapsody  -  I.  1620. The Soil - The Indians - (England) - The Mayflower - The Landing of the Pilgrims
Ernest Bloch:  America, an Epic Rhapsody  -  II. 1861-1865. Hours of Joy - Hours of Sorrow
Ernest Bloch:  America, an Epic Rhapsody  -  III. 1926. The Present, The Future (Anthem)

Here is a performance of America, an Epic Rhapsody by Elena Matusova, the Lucnica Chorus and Dalia Atlas conducting the  Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra from the album Independence Day 2010 Sampler Naxos Records

I am closing today’s Four Centuries of Great Music which celebrates some of the composers whose birthdays are in July with L’Aurore by Eugène Ysaÿe born on July 16, 1858 and violin teacher to Ernest Bloch in a performance by violinist Carolin Widmann from her album L’Aurore

Eugene Ysaye: L’Aurore

You have been listening to a performance of Eugène Ysaÿe’s L’Aurore by violinist Carolin Widmann from her album L’Aurore 

Thank you for joining me on this episode of Four Centuries of Great Music and join me again next Sunday at 3pm for a new episode and this coming Saturday at 3pm for an encore of this episode.