Born Today! 24.11.2024

Tarquinio Merula (24 November 1595 – 10 December 1665) was an Italian composer, organist, and violinist of the early Baroque era. Although mainly active in Cremona, stylistically he was a member of the Venetian school. He was one of the most progressive Italian composers of the early 17th century, especially in applying newly developed techniques to sacred music.

Lorenzo Maria Petronio Gibelli (24 November 1718 – 5 November 1812) was an Italian composer, singer, and singing teacher. Also known as "Gibellone", he was born in Bologna and studied music there under Giovanni Battista Martini. He was elected to the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna in 1741 and made a "Principe" (Prince) of the academy in 1753. He served as maestro di cappella of several churches in Bologna, most notably the Chiesa del Santissimo Salvatore. He had only a modest career as an opera singer, despite having a voice of an extraordinarily wide vocal range from bass to the lower tenor notes. However, he became highly regarded as a voice teacher. Amongst his pupils were the castrato singers Girolamo Crescentini and Francesco Roncaglia and the tenor Matteo Babbini. His compositions include five operas, five oratorios, and over 400 pieces of sacred music.

Felice Alessandri (24 November 1747 – 15 August 1798) was an Italian keyboardist and composer who was internationally active; working in Berlin, London, Paris, Saint Petersburg, and Turin. He is best known for his stage works, and he produced a total of 32 operas between 1764 and 1794. His other compositions include 6 symphonies, 6 trio sonatas for 2 violins with basso continuo, a ballet, and an oratorio.

Matteo Salvi (24 November 1816 – 18 October 1887 ) was a composer of opera and classical music and a theatre director. Salvi was born in Botta di Sedrina (Provincia di Bergamo), Italy. A student of Gaetano Donizetti, he is best known for having completed the score of Donizetti’s unfinished opera Le duc d’Albe for its first public performance in 1882, some forty years after Donizetti’s death. (The libretto was translated into Italian, and the opera was performed as Il duca d’Alba.) Salvi is usually credited as the composer of the tenor aria “Angelo casto e bel” in Il duca d’Alba, although as he was helped in the reconstruction of Donizetti’s score by several composers, including Amilcare Ponchielli, there has been some dispute as to the degree to which he was the aria’s sole composer. He died in Rieti, Italy.

Friedrich Lux (24 November 1820 – 9 July 1895) was a German conductor, composer and organist. He was born in the town of Ruhla, son of composer Georg Heinrich Lux. His father gave him his first music lessons, and Lux later became a student of Friedrich Schneider. Between 1841 and 1850, he was Director of the Opera in Dessau and from 1851 to 1857 performed the same role in Mainz for the Mainz Singing Academy.

Bernhard Stavenhagen (24 November 1862 – 25 December 1914) was a German pianist, composer and conductor. His musical style was influenced by Franz Liszt, and as a conductor he was a strong advocate of new music.

Jan Adam Maklakiewicz (24 November 1899, Chojnata, Congress Poland – 8 February 1954, Warsaw) was a Polish composer, conductor, critic, and music educator. His most known compositions belong to the choral music.

Erik Valdemar Bergman (24 November 1911, in Nykarleby – 24 April 2006, in Helsinki) was a composer of classical music from Finland. Bergman's style ranged widely, from Romanticism in his early works (many of which he later prohibited from being performed) to modernism and primitivism, among other genres. He won the Nordic Council Music Prize in 1994 for his opera Det sjungande trädet. Bergman studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and afterwards with Heinz Tiessen in Berlin and with Wladimir Vogel in Ascona. Since 1963 he taught composition at the Sibelius Academy, besides working until 1978 as a choir conductor. Bergman is considered a pioneer of modern music in Finland. Because of his training he was considered as a representative of the avant-garde; he developed for example the twelve-tone techniques of Arnold Schoenberg learned from Wladimir Vogel. He composed song cycles, cantatas, pieces for piano and for organ, a guitar suite, a chamber concert for flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello, percussion and piano and further chamber works. His Requiem for a dead poet (1970) and Colori ed improvvisazioni for orchestra (1973) gave him international recognition. He is also known for his extensive choral output. His latest works include concertos for cello, violin and trumpet. He is buried in the Hietaniemi Cemetery in Helsinki.

Alfred Garrievich Schnittke (24 November 1934 – 3 August 1998) was a Russian composer. Among the most performed and recorded composers of late 20th-century classical music, he is described by musicologist Ivan Moody as a "composer who was concerned in his music to depict the moral and spiritual struggles of contemporary man in [...] depth and detail." Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic Symphony No. 1 (1969–1972) and his first concerto grosso (1977). In the 1980s, Schnittke's music began to become more widely known abroad with the publication of his second (1980) and third (1983) string quartets and the String Trio (1985); the ballet Peer Gynt (1985–1987); the third (1981), fourth (1984), and fifth (1988) symphonies; and the viola concerto (1985) and first cello concerto (1985–1986). As his health deteriorated, Schnittke's music started to abandon much of the extroversion of his polystylism and retreated into a more withdrawn, bleak style.

Deborah Joy Cheetham Fraillon (born Deborah Joy Cheetham, 1964) is an Aboriginal Australian soprano, composer, and playwright. She leads Short Black Opera, based in Melbourne, which provides training and opportunities for emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musical artists. In February 2023, she was appointed inaugural Elizabeth Todd Chair of Vocal Studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.