Born Today! 31.12.2023

Thomas Täglichsbeck (31 December 1799 - 5 October 1867) was a German violinist and composer. Täglichsbeck was born in Ansbach. His family settled in the region of the Vogtland between Bavaria, Thuringia and Saxony, in 1800. Following violin lessons from his father, Johann Täglichsbeck, young Thomas moved to Munich where he studied with Pietro Rovelli. In 1817 a mass of his, written under the supervision of Josef Gratz, was performed in Munich. That same year, Täglichsbeck became a violinist in the Isarthortheater orchestra. Two years later, at the age of 20, he succeeded Lindpaintner as music director, making him one of the youngest conductors of the theater orchestra in Lower Saxony. In 1822 he became a solo violinist at the Munich court, which had the added advantage of freeing up his time to work on composing. On 24 August 1823 his first opera, Webers Bild, premiered at the court theater. His variations on La gazza ladra also date from this period. In 1824 he made an extensive tour of Germany, Switzerland and northern Italy; he joined the Società Filarmonica of Bergamo, where Rovelli then lived. Reviews of his concerts in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (1825–32) are laudatory, although his playing in Munich in 1832 was described as ‘more charming than exceptional’. In 1827 Täglichsbeck became the Kapellmeister to Prince Hohenzollern-Hechingen. Under Prince Friedrich Wilhelm Konstantin (1838–48) the court became a well-known musical centre which was visited by Berlioz (1842) and Liszt (1848). When political changes in 1848 eliminated the principality, Täglichsbeck was pensioned and the musicians were given paid leave. Constantine recalled Täglichsbeck from Stuttgart in 1852 and reconstituted his orchestra at Löwenberg. Five years later Täglichsbeck was pensioned and succeeded by Max Seyfriz. He subsequently taught composition at the Dresden Conservatory for two years, then lived for a while in Munich before retiring to Baden-Baden in 1866. He died in Baden-Baden a year later, aged 67. The climax of Täglichsbeck's career as a composer came with the performance of his Symphony no. 1 in E at the Paris Conservatoire in 1836. It was a popular success, though Berlioz dismissed it as ‘academic music, and nothing more’; reviewing a performance a year later, Berlioz wrote more graciously: ‘works of this kind gain 100% on rehearing’. The opera König Enzio, produced in Karlsruhe in 1843, did not establish itself in the repertory. Täglichsbeck was an excellent Kapellmeister, a good if not brilliant violinist and a skilled if not very original composer.

Henry Hiles (31 December 1826 – 20 October 1904) was an English composer, organist, writer, and music educator.

Max Fiedler (21 December 1859, Zittau – 1 December 1939, Stockholm) was a German conductor and composer, born August Max Fiedler in Zittau, Kingdom of Saxony. He was especially noted as an interpreter of Brahms. He first studied the piano with his father, who conducted the accompanying orchestra when Max made his first public appearance at the age of ten in 1870, playing Mozart's Piano Concerto in A, K.488. Continuing his musical studies in Zittau with the organist Gustav Albrecht, who had been a pupil of Mendelssohn, Fiedler then entered the Leipzig Conservatory in 1877, where the director, Carl Reinecke, was his piano teacher. He graduated in 1882, with exceptional honours, alongside his friend and colleague Karl Muck. Fiedler also studied composition and was active in the city's musical life, developing a close relationship with Julius Spengel, a friend of Brahms. Fiedler himself knew Brahms sufficiently well for the composer to ask him to substitute for him in a performance of his Piano Concerto No. 2, an invitation which Fiedler politely declined. He almost certainly heard Brahms conduct the first Leipzig performances of his Symphony No. 2 early in 1878 (though Ethel Smyth later wrote that Brahms "had the knack of rubbing orchestras the wrong way... Moreover, the Gewandhaus musicians were antagonistic to his music" ) and his Violin Concerto on New Year's Day, 1879, with the dedicatee, Joseph Joachim, as soloist, though Jan Swafford writes that it "turned out a scrambling affair, with Joachim unnerved by all the last-minute revisions and Brahms even more tense on the podium than usual." As a young man he conducted Brahms' symphonies in the presence of the composer who, not given to reticence when expressing himself, does not appear to have complained of Fiedler's interpretations.Having found work teaching at the Hamburg Conservatory Fiedler was soon much in demand as a pianist, winning high praise for his 'soft tone'. His first appearance on the conductor's podium came during the 1885–1886 season in a performance of his own composition (a symphony), and his first complete concert in late 1886. Encouraged to persevere by his first wife, he soon became one of the most popular conductors active in Hamburg, alongside Hans von Bülow, whose musicianship he admired and whose baton technique he adopted. While it was not to be until 1903 that he took over the direction of the Hamburg Conservatory, and 1904 that of the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra, from 1898 onwards Fiedler was active abroad as a guest conductor, appearing in Russia, where he was compared to Artur Nikisch and Felix Weingartner, Madrid (1899), Paris (1901), Turin (1904), Rome (1906, 1908) and London (1907, 1908). Throughout this period he developed a reputation as a major interpreter of the music of Brahms, as well as a conductor with ‘complete mastery’ of the orchestra.In 1908, Karl Muck, then the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, recommended Fiedler as his successor as conductor of the orchestra, and he was duly appointed, having already appeared in the United States during 1905, when he had conducted the New York Philharmonic Orchestra alongside Willem Mengelberg and a year before the guest appearance of a German conductor noted for his Brahms, Fritz Steinbach. Although he spent four years at the helm in Boston, his conducting attracted some criticism, especially for his volatility as an interpreter, which was viewed as pleasing ‘the general public’ rather than ‘connoisseurs’. Among his achievements there, he conducted the world premiere of Paderewski's massive Symphony in B minor "Polonia in 1909. Fiedler returned to Hamburg in 1912, where Siegmund von Hausegger was now in charge of the Philharmonic Orchestra; and since co-residence was likely to be difficult, given his own status as a former conductor of this orchestra, Fiedler withdrew to Berlin, where he became an active guest conductor of the city's various orchestras. In 1916 a Berlin critic hailed him as ‘the greatest Brahms conductor of the present day’, and during the same year he accepted the position of conductor of the Essen Orchestra, in succession to Hermann Abendroth, who was moving to Cologne to replace Steinbach. At Essen, Fiedler consolidated his reputation as a major figure in German musical life, conducting a wide repertoire that included contemporary composers such as Walter Braunfels, Karol Szymanowski and Arthur Honegger, as well as each year organising a festival devoted to a major single composer. In addition he guest-conducted the Berlin Philharmonic occasionally, and from 1927 was co-conductor of the Essen Folkwangschule. In 1929 he married for the second time and in 1934 gave up his position in Essen, returning once more to Berlin where he conducted the Berlin Radio Orchestra, as well as that of Hamburg. During 1939 he made a series of farewell appearances in Berlin and Essen, but towards the end of the year he became fatally ill, dying in Stockholm, Sweden just a few weeks short of his eightieth birthday.

Halina Czerny-Stefańska ([ˈxaˈlina t͡ʂɛrnɨ stɛˈfaj᷉ska] 31 December 1922 – 1 July 2001) was a Polish pianist.

Jennifer Elaine Higdon (born December 31, 1962) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. She has received many awards, including the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Violin Concerto and three Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Percussion Concerto in 2010, Viola Concerto in 2018, and Harp Concerto in 2020. Elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019, she was a professor of composition at the Curtis Institute of Music from 1994 to 2021.

Václav Krahulík (born 31 December 1966) is a Czech pianist, composer, musicologist and academic teacher.