Born Today! 16.10.2023

Jan Dismas Zelenka (16 October 1679 – 23 December 1745), baptised Jan Lukáš Zelenka was a Czech composer and musician of the Baroque period. His music is admired for its harmonic inventiveness and mastery of counterpoint. Zelenka was raised in Central Bohemia, educated in Prague and Vienna, and spent his professional life in Dresden. The greatest success during his career was the performance of the extensive composition Sub olea pacis et palma virtutis in the presence of the Emperor Charles VI, shortly after his coronation as king of Bohemia in 1723.

Pieter van Maldere, known also as Pierre van Maldere (16 October 1729 – 1 November 1768) was a Flemish violinist and composer. He was a violinist of the Royal Chapel, the court orchestra in Brussels of the governor-general of the Austrian Netherlands, Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine. After an international career which brought him to Dublin, Paris and Vienna, he returned to Brussels where he became a director of the Brussels opera house (De Munt/La Monnaie). He was the leading composer of the Austrian Netherlands in the mid-18th century. His symphonies, exemplary for the galant style, merged French stylistic elements with Viennese and Italian influences.

Alexander Dreyschock (15 October 1818 – 1 April 1869) was a Czech pianist and composer. Born in Žáky in Bohemia, his musical talents were first noticed aged eight, and at age 15 he travelled to Prague to study piano and composition with Václav Tomášek. By the age of twenty, Dreyschock undertook his first professional tour in December 1838, performing in various northern and central towns in Germany. Subsequent tours saw him visiting Russia (1840–42), Paris (spring 1843), London, the Netherlands, Austria and Hungary (1846), as well as Denmark and Sweden in 1849. Elsewhere he caused a sensation with prodigious execution of thirds, sixths, and octaves, plus other tricks. When he made his Paris debut in 1843 he included a piece for the left hand alone. Dreyschock's left hand was renowned, and his most famous technical stunt was to play the left-hand arpeggios of Chopin's Revolutionary Étude in octaves. Observers of the time reported that he played it in correct tempo, and it is known that he programmed it in all of his recitals.In 1862, Dreyschock became a staff member at the newly founded St. Petersburg Conservatory at Anton Rubinstein's invitation. His students included Arkady Abaza. He was appointed Court Pianist to the Tsar as well as Director of the Imperial School of Music for the Operatic Stage. Whilst he maintained this double post for six years, his health suffered from the Russian climate. He moved to Italy in 1868, but the change of residence did him little good, and he died of tuberculosis, aged fifty, in Venice. At the wish of his family he was buried at the Olšany Cemetery in Prague.

Albert Franz Doppler (16 October 1821 – 27 July 1883), was a flute virtuoso and a composer best known for his flute music. He also wrote one German and several Hungarian operas for Budapest, all produced with great success. His ballet music was popular during his lifetime.

Émile Louis Victor Mathieu (Lille, 18 October 1844 – Ghent, 20 August 1932) was a Belgian music teacher and composer of classical music. Mathieu was born into a musical family: his father was the director of a theatre in Antwerp and a singer, while is mother taught singing at the Académie des Beaux-Arts of Leuven. He studied at the Conservatory of Brussels and later became a teacher of piano and harmony at the conservatory of Leuven. In 1867 Mathieu won a second prize in the Prix de Rome contest with his cantata Torquato Tasso’s dood. He won first place in the same contest in 1871 and again in 1873. Between 1873 and 1875 he lived in Paris, where he conducted the orchestra of the Théâtre du Châtelet. Afterwards, he returned to Brussels, where he held a position as accompanist at the Theatre Royal of LA Monnaie. He headed the Leuven Conservatory (which today is called SLAC) from 1881, and succeeded Adolphe Samuel as director of the Ghent Conservatory from 1898 to 1924. He was also a member of the Académie Royale de Belgique. His compositions include 7 operas, 3 symphonic poems, concertos for piano and violin, a Te Deum and choral works. Most of his operas used librettos of his own writing. His best known work today is "Freyhir", an hour-long choral tone poem written in 1883 on the theme of deforestation around Ardennes where the composer grew up. Freyhir is the legendary name of the forest.

Miguel Llobet Solés (18 October 1878 – 22 February 1938) was a classical guitarist, born in Barcelona, Spain. Llobet was a renowned virtuoso who toured Europe and America extensively. He made well known arrangements of Catalan folk songs for the solo guitar, made famous arrangements for the guitar of the piano compositions of Isaac Albéniz, arrangements immortalized by Andrés Segovia, and was also the composer of original works.

Cesar Bresgen (16 October 1913 – 7 April 1988) was an Austrian composer.

Cesar Bresgen (16 October 1913 – 7 April 1988) was an Austrian composer.

Xin Huguang (16 October 1933 – 17 October 2011) was a modern Chinese composer. Born in Shanghai, her family came from Jiangxi in China's south. In 1948 she went to Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi, to commence musical studies. In 1951 she enlisted at the Conservatory of the Central Music University in Beijing. Her classmate Mei Li Qi Ge introduced her to Mongolian folk music and this idiom informed her composing. She commenced collecting tapes and written articles on the subject. She met her future husband Bao Yu Shan, from Ke Zuo Zhong Qi in Mongolia while he was studying saxophone at the Conservatory. At the completion of her studies she composed Ga Da Mei Lin as a symphonic tone poem. The premier performance caused a stir as few could credit a 23-year-old female graduate with its composition. In that year she went with her husband to teach and compose music in Mongolia where she remained for the next 26 years. In 1982 she returned to Beijing to continue her work. In 1991 she visited America. She had three sons, the third of which, San Bao, was also a composer.

Gerardo Gandini (Buenos Aires (Argentina), October 16, 1936 – Buenos Aires, March 22, 2013) was a pianist, composer, and music director, who became one of the most relevant figures of contemporary Argentine music of the second half of the 20th century. He studied composition with Goffredo Petrassi and Alberto Ginastera, and piano with Roberto Caamaño, Pía Sebastiani, and Ivonne Loriod. He was Astor Piazzolla's pianist in the Sexteto Nuevo Tango formed in 1989.

Derek David Bourgeois (16 October 1941 – 6 September 2017) was an English composer.

José García Román (born 1945) is a Spanish symphonic composer. He is the author of more than one hundred works, including La resurrección de don Quijote, El bosque de Diana (with libretto by Antonio Muñoz Molina), Ruinas de Oradour Sur Glane, and Epur si muoeve o Paseo de los Tristes. He lives and works in Granada, Spain, where he is director of La Academia de Bellas Artes.

Leonid Arkadievich Desyatnikov (Russian: Леонид Аркадьевич Десятников, born: 16 October 1955, Kharkiv, Ukrainian SSR) is a Russian composer who first made a reputation with a number of film scores, then achieving greater fame when his controversial opera The Children of Rosenthal was premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

Erkki-Sven Tüür (born 16 October 1959) is an Estonian composer.