Born Today! 20.11.2024

Friedrich Heinrich Himmel (November 20, 1765 – June 8, 1814) was a German composer.

Arthur Goring Thomas (20 November 1850 – 20 March 1892) was an English composer.

Georges Paul Alphonse Emilien Caussade (20 November 1873 – 5 August 1936) was a French composer, music theorist, and music educator.

Margaret Ada Sutherland (20 November 1897 – 12 August 1984) was an Australian composer, among the best-known female musicians her country has produced.

Yakov Izrailevich Zak ( (Russian: Яков Израилевич Зак), Jiakov Israilevič Sak; Odessa, 20 November [O.S. 7 November] 1913 – Moscow, 28 June 1976) was a Soviet and Russian pianist and pedagogue. People's Artist of the USSR (1966). Born in Odessa, Zak studied piano at the Odessa Conservatory with Maria Starkhova, took classes on special harmony with Mykola Vilinsky, and later studied with Heinrich Neuhaus in Moscow, graduating in 1935. Having made his debut in 1935, he rose to prominence when he won First Prize and the Mazurka Prize at the III International Chopin Piano Competition in 1937. From 1935 Zak taught at the Moscow Conservatory, becoming a professor in 1947 and being granted a chair in 1965. His pupils include Eliso Virsaladze, Alexandr Sklioutovski, Irina Zaritskaya, Nikolai Petrov, Evgeny Mogilevsky, Svetlana Navasardyan, Lyubov Timofeyeva, Valery Afanassiev, Ludmila Knezkova-Hussey, Vladimir Bakk, and Youri Egorov.

Armin Schibler (Kreuzlingen am Bodensee, 20 November 1920 – Zurich, 7 September 1986) was a Swiss composer.

Meredith Jane Monk (born November 20, 1942) is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. From the 1960s onwards, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records. In 1991, Monk composed Atlas, an opera, commissioned and produced by the Houston Opera and the American Music Theater Festival. Her music has been used in films by the Coen Brothers (The Big Lebowski, 1998) and Jean-Luc Godard (Nouvelle Vague, 1990 and Notre musique, 2004). Trip hop musician DJ Shadow sampled Monk's "Dolmen Music" on the song "Midnight in a Perfect World". In 2015, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Barack Obama.

Hendrik Pienaar Hofmeyr (born 20 November 1957) is a South African composer. Born in Cape Town, he furthered his studies in Italy during 10 years of self-imposed exile as a conscientious objector. While there, he won the South African Opera Competition with The Fall of the House of Usher. He also received the annual Nederburg Prize for Opera for this work subsequent to its performance at the State Theatre in Pretoria in 1988. In the same year, he obtained first prize in an international competition in Italy with music for a short film by Wim Wenders. He returned to South Africa in 1992, and in 1997 won two major international composition competitions, the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition of Belgium (with 'Raptus' for violin and orchestra) and the first edition of the Dimitris Mitropoulos Competition in Athens (with 'Byzantium' for high voice and orchestra). His 'Incantesimo' for solo flute was selected to represent South Africa at the ISCM World Music Days in Croatia in 2005. In 2008 he was honoured with a Kanna award by the Kleinkaroo National Arts Festival. He is currently Professor and Head of Composition and Theory at the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town, where he obtained a DMus in 1999. Hofmeyr has completed more than a hundred commissioned works for, amongst others, the British duo Nettle&Markham, the Hogarth Quartet, the Vancouver Recital Society, the Latvian youth choir Kamēr, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, the South African Music Rights Organisation, the Foundation for the Creative Arts and the Cape Performing Arts Board.

Yoshiki Hayashi (Japanese: 林 佳樹, Hepburn: Hayashi Yoshiki, born November 20, 1965), known as Yoshiki, is a Japanese musician, songwriter, composer, record producer, film director, and fashion designer. He is best known as the leader of the visual kei rock bands X Japan and the Last Rockstars, for which he is the drummer, pianist, and main songwriter. He has been described by Billboard as a "musical innovator" and named "one of the most influential composers in Japanese history" by Consequence. Yoshiki's solo career includes several classical studio albums and collaborations with artists such as George Martin, Bono, will.i.am, St. Vincent, the Chainsmokers, Skrillex, Ellie Goulding, Stan Lee, Roger Taylor and Brian May of Queen, Gene Simmons and KISS, Nicole Scherzinger, and Sarah Brightman. In 1999, at the request of the Japanese royal family, he composed and performed a classical song at a celebration in honor of the tenth anniversary of Emperor Akihito's enthronement. Yoshiki also composed the theme for the 69th Golden Globe Awards as well as for several anime and film soundtracks including Attack on Titan and Saw IV. In 2023, he made his directorial debut with the feature documentary film Yoshiki: Under the Sky. In 2023, Yoshiki was selected as the first Japanese artist to be honored with a hand and footprint ceremony at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood in nearly 100 years. In 2024, Variety selected Yoshiki as the International Achievement in Music honoree.