Four Centuries of Great Music November 15, 2026 Celebration of Four Composers born in the Month of November

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music I am celebrating a few composers who maybe unfamiliar to you who’s birthdays are in the month of November

We open with Anna Amalia of Prussia’s Sonata in F Major (for Flute and Basso Continuo) (1771). 

Anna Amalia of Prussia born on November 9, 1723 in  Berlin Germany. She was the younger sister of Frederick II of Prussia. Eleven years younger, she benefitted from the new musical focus Frederick II brought to the court. Anna Amalia played the harpsichord, flute, and violin, with her first lessons coming from her brother.

She was made Abbess of Quedlinburg in 1755 which made her wealthy and independent.  She started serious study of music composition and theory in 1758 with Johann Philipp Kirnberger, a student of J.S. Bach. Like her brother, she composed chamber music, such as flute sonatas, and unlike her brother, seems to have destroyed much of her work as few pieces survive.

Her interest in religious music, an interest her brother did not share, may have helped nurture the oratorio in Germany.

Amalia also collected music, preserving over 600 volumes by Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Georg Philipp Telemann, Carl Heinrich Graun and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, among others.
She died in 1787 and was buried in Berlin.

Anna Amalia of Prussia’s Sonata in F Major (for Flute and Basso Continuo) (1771). is in 3 movements:  I. Adagio, II. Allegretto, III. Allegro ma non troppo.  

Here is a performance by Sophia Aretz, flute and Alexander von Hessen piano from the album Prussian Blue: Flute Music at the Court of Frederick the Great.  Haenssler Classic


Johann Nepomuk Hummel should be much better know and much more frequently played than he is.  He was born on November 14, 1778 in Pressburg, Kingdom of Hungary (now Bratislava, Slovakia).  His father was a violinist and music teacher and young Johann showed considerable talent in music very early. At the age of eight, he was offered music lessons by none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was impressed with his ability. Hummel was taught and housed by Mozart for two years free of charge. He made his first concert appearance at the age of nine, at one of Mozart's concerts.  While touring was a concert pianist, he continued his studies in composition with Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, Joseph Haydn, and Antonio Salieri.   Hummel’s piano composition are know to have had a great influence on works of Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Felix Mendelssohn.  For any years he was Kapellmeister in Weimar, Germany where he formed a close friendship with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German poet and polymath. Hummel brought one of the first musicians' pension schemes into existence, giving benefit concert tours to help raise funds.  In his fight against unethical music publishers, Hummel also was a key figure in establishing the principles of intellectual property and copyright law.  He died on October 17, 1837 in Weimar while still somewhat active as Kapellmeister and composer.
  
Johann Nepomuk Hummel:  Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra In E Major, S49 is in three movements
I.  Allegro Con Spirito
II.  Andante
III.  Rondo
Niklas Eklund, Trumpet and  Roy Goodman conducting the Swedish Chamber Orchestra
Haydn, Hummel & Neruda: Trumpet Concertos
Naxos


We will close this first hour of this episode of today’s Four Centuries of Great Music I am celebrating a few composers who maybe unfamiliar to you who’s birthdays are in the month of November with Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen

Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen was a late 20th and early 21st   century Danish  composer born in Copenhagen, Denmark on November 21 1932.  He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, graduating in 1958.  He was known for both his orchestral and chamber music writing.  Shortly before his death of cancer in 2016, he was commissioned by the vocal ensemble The Crossing and the International Contemporary Ensemble to compose the song cycle for chorus entitled Ad cor.  This as written as a response to Dieterich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri, specifically based upon the cantata Ad cor -the heart. Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen wrote in the program notes for the work “I decided at once to give my music a flavour of Buxtehude’s Ad Cor, which means a near-quotation of Buxtehude’s e-minor chords. They became an important part of the musical language I have chosen for this work. My work has four movements, each one pointing at different perspectives in the whole thing.
I.  Wound ….the heart is full of pain, loss and sorrow.
II. joy ….the heart is full of hope and expectation and love
III. I laugh at you mockingly … A voice of today is trying to find a place to see things clearly from, but is doubting, discussing in a bitter aggressive way
IV. Wound/joy/I laugh at you …the former three movements are played on top of each other in an attempt to let them speak together. Sometimes successfully, some times not.


Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen:  Ad cor
8. I. Wound 
9. II. joy
10. III. I laugh at you mockingly 
11. IV. Wound/joy/I laugh at you

The Crossing and the International Contemporary Ensemble 
Donald Nally, conductor 
Seven Responses
Innova Records


I am opening this 2nd hour with English composer Arnold Bax.  Bax was born on November 8, 1883 in the London suburb of Streatham to a prosperous family. He was encouraged by his parents to pursue a career in music, and his private income enabled him to follow his own path as a composer without regard for fashion or orthodoxy. Consequently, he came to be regarded in musical circles as an important but isolated figure. After preparatory school, Bax attended the Hampstead Conservatoire during the 1890s but found the obsession with English folk-song and folk-dance at that institution of no interest to him.  Bax was often heard saying, "You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.” In 1900 Bax moved on to the Royal Academy of Music, where he remained until 1905, studying composition and piano.  Early on he was influenced by the music of Richard Wagner.  "For a dozen years of my youth I wallowed in Wagner's music to the almost total exclusion – until I became aware of Richard Strauss and others”.   Bax also discovered and privately studied the works of Debussy, whose music, like that of Strauss, was frowned on by the largely conservative faculty of the academy.

While still a student at the Royal Academy of Music Bax became fascinated with Ireland and Celtic culture, which became a strong influence on his early development. In the years before the First World War he lived in Ireland and became a member of Dublin literary circles, writing fiction and verse under the pseudonym Dermot O'Byrne. Later, he developed an affinity with Nordic culture, which for a time superseded his Celtic influences in the years after the First World War.

His prolific output includes songs, choral music, chamber pieces, and solo piano works, but he is best known for his orchestral music. In addition to a series of symphonic poems, he wrote seven symphonies and was for a time widely regarded as the leading British symphonist.  His seventh symphony was completed in 1939 and in 1950 after hearing a performance of his 3rd Symphony, he spoke of writing an 8th.  But by this time he had begun to drink quite heavily, which aged him rapidly and impaired his ability to concentrate on a large-scale composition.  In the fall of 1953 celebrations we being planned for his 70th birthday in November of that year.  But these were turned into memorial concerts when he suddenly died of heart failure on October 3rd.

Let’s listen to his 3rd Symphony.  The Symphony No. 3 was completed in 1929 and is perhaps the most performed and most immediately approachable of Bax's symphonies. Unlike his first two symphonies, the third is "gentle rather than somber in character, dominated by the spirit of Nordic legends which, Bax acknowledges, influenced him subconsciously".

It is in three movements:

The opening movement marked Lento moderato – Allegro moderato – Lento moderato – Allegro moderato begins with a soft bassoon solo which introduces the main melodic theme. The clarinet then joins the bassoon, followed by other instruments of the woodwind section in a relatively short lento moderato opening section. An accelerando then introduces the allegro moderato section which is based upon the opening melody from the bassoon. There is a long slow section in the middle of the movement before the allegro moderato material eventually returns at the conclusion. Unusually, Bax calls for a single anvil strike at the climax of this movement (his original intention had been more conventional, with a cymbal clash).

The dreamy and calm second movement marked Lento begins with a solo horn introducing the main motive. Throughout the movement there are many other brass solos (particularly trumpet), and the form of the movement is relatively simple. It closes peacefully and beautifully.

The finale marked Moderato – Piu mosso – Tempo I – Epilogue opens with a gong and repeated notes from the strings and woodwinds, which is then transformed into the main theme. It ends in an epilogue which closes the first three symphonies—which are in many ways linked, and are a cycle of their own.

Bax: Symphony #3
David Lloyd-Jones: Royal Scottish National Orchestra 
Bax:  Symphony #3, The Happy Forest
Naxos

I will close Today’s of Four Centuries of Great Music on which I am celebrating a few composers who maybe unfamiliar to you who’s birthdays are in the month of November with
Arnold Bax Dream in Exile
Ashley Wass, Piano
BAX: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2, Dream in Exile, Nereid
Naxos