Born Today! 21.12.2024

Pietro Andrea Ziani (1616 in Venice – 1684 in Naples) was an Italian organist and composer. He was the uncle of Marc'Antonio Ziani. Beginning in 1669, he was the organist at St Mark's Basilica and later moved on to serve Eleonor Magdalene of Neuburg in Vienna. His works included "L'Assalone punito" (1667) and the operas "La ricreazione burlesca" (1663), "L'invidia conculcata della virtù, merito, virtù, merito, valore di Leopoldo imperatore" (1664), "Cloridea" (1665), "Circe" (1665), "L'Elice" (1666) and "La Galatea" (1667).

Hermann Friedrich Raupach (December 21, 1728 – December 12, 1778) was an 18th-century German composer.

Ernst Pauer (21 December 1826 – 5 May 1905) was an Austrian pianist, composer and educator.

Zdeněk Fibich (Czech pronunciation: [ˈzdɛɲɛk ˈfɪbɪx], 21 December 1850 in Všebořice – 15 October 1900 in Prague) was a Czech composer of classical music. Among his compositions are chamber works (including two string quartets, a piano trio, piano quartet and a quintet for piano, strings and winds), symphonic poems, three symphonies, at least seven operas (the most famous probably Šárka and The Bride of Messina), melodramas including the substantial trilogy Hippodamia, liturgical music including a mass – a missa brevis; and a large cycle (a total of 376 pieces, from the 1890s) of piano works called Moods, Impressions, and Reminiscences. The piano cycle served as a diary of sorts of his love for a piano pupil, and one of the pieces formed the basis for the short instrumental work Poème, for which Fibich is best remembered today.

Blagoje Bersa (born as Benito Bersa, 21 December 1873 – 1 January 1934) was a Croatian musical composer of substantial influence. Bersa was born in Dubrovnik. He studied in Zagreb with Ivan Zajc and at the Vienna Conservatory with Robert Fuchs and Julius Epstein. In 1919 he returned to Zagreb, where he worked as a composition teacher at the music academy. He remained there until his death.

Vsevolod Petrovich Zaderatsky (Ukrainian: Всеволод Петрович Задерацький; 21 December 1891, Rivne, Ukraine – 1 February 1953, Lviv, USSR) was a Ukrainian composer, pianist and teacher at Lysenko Musical Academy who was blacklisted for most of his life because of his participation in the White movement during the Russian Civil War.

Paul Burkhard (21 December 1911 – 6 September 1977) was a Swiss composer. He primarily wrote oratorios, musicals and operettas. The contemporaneous and similarly named Swiss composer Willy Burkhard was no relation to him. Probably his most famous artistic creation was the song "O mein Papa" ("Oh! My Pa-Pa") about the death of a beloved clown-father, written for the musical Der schwarze Hecht (re-issued in 1950 as Das Feuerwerk) that premiered in April 1939. The song rose to #1 on the Sheet Music Chart and stayed in the chart for 26 weeks. The song has been performed and recorded by numerous artists since then, including Alan Breeze, Billy Cotton, Billy Vaughn, Connie Francis, Diana Decker, Eddie Calvert, Eddie Fisher, The Everly Brothers, Harry James, Lys Assia, Ray Anthony & his Orchestra, Russ Morgan & his Orchestra, and many others.

Ilja Zeljenka (21 December 1932 – 13 July 2007) was a Slovak composer. Born in Bratislava, Zeljenka studied music with Ján Cikker from 1951-1956. During the 1970s his more experimental idiom was suppressed by the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, and he produced music based on folk music and neoromantic styles. His very large output includes three operas (including Bátoryčka (1994), based on the story of Elizabeth Báthory and Posledné dni Veľkej Moravy [The Last Days of Greater Moravia] (1996)), film music, piano works (including two pieces for piano and bongos), fourteen string quartets, nine symphonies, theatre music and electronic music. Among his vocal compositions is the cantata Oświęcim (1959), about the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Miklós Kocsár (21 December 1933 – 29 August 2019) was a Hungarian composer. He was born in Debrecen, Hungary, (son of László Kocsár and Erzsébet Borsy) and studied composition at the Academy of Music in Budapest with Ferenc Farkas, graduating in 1959. After completing his studies, he took a position in 1972 as Professor at the Béla Bartók Conservatory in Budapest, teaching theory and composition. From 1974–95, he worked in Hungarian Radio. In 1973 he won the Erkel Prize.

Vyacheslav Lavrent'yevich Nagovitsin (Russian: Вячеслав Лаврентьевич Наговицин; 21 December 1939 – 20 June 2023) was a Russian composer. He was a student of Dmitri Shostakovich at the Leningrad Conservatory and he graduated in 1966 (postgraduate school, he graduated from the undergraduate school of the Conservatory in 1963). In 1963–1964 he worked in Ulan-Ude Opera and Ballet Theater. In 1966–1970 he was a lecturer at the Mussorgsky Music School in Leningrad. In 1968–1970 he also worked as the Music Director of the Leningrad Comedy Theatre. Since 1970 he became a professor at the Leningrad Conservatory. He orchestrated two unfinished operas of Modest Mussorgsky: Zhenitba and Salammbô. His orchestration of Salammbô was used by Valery Gergiev at the Mérida festival in 1991. Nagovitsin died on 20 June 2023, at the age of 83.

Frank Vincent Zappa ( ZAP-ə; December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works; he also produced almost all of the 60-plus albums that he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. His work is characterized by nonconformity, improvisation sound experimentation, musical virtuosity and satire of American culture. Zappa also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. He is considered one of the most innovative and stylistically diverse musicians of his generation. As a mostly self-taught composer and performer, Zappa had diverse musical influences that led him to create music that was sometimes difficult to categorize. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for 20th-century classical modernism, African-American rhythm and blues, and doo-wop music. He began writing classical music in high school, while simultaneously playing drums in rhythm and blues bands, later switching to electric guitar. His debut studio album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out! (1966), combined satirical but seemingly conventional rock and roll songs with extended sound collages. He continued this eclectic and experimental approach throughout his career. Zappa's output is unified by a conceptual continuity he termed "Project/Object", with numerous musical phrases, ideas, and characters reappearing across his albums. His lyrics reflected his iconoclastic views of established social and political processes, structures and movements, often humorously so, and he has been described as the "godfather" of comedy rock. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship. Unlike many other rock musicians of his generation, he disapproved of recreational drug use, but supported decriminalization and regulation. Zappa was a highly productive and prolific artist with a controversial critical standing; supporters of his music admired its compositional complexity, while detractors found it lacking emotional depth. He had greater commercial success outside the US, particularly in Europe. Though he worked as an independent artist, Zappa mostly relied on distribution agreements he had negotiated with the major record labels. He remains a major influence on musicians and composers. His many honors include his posthumous 1995 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the 1997 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Michael Tilson Thomas (born December 21, 1944) is an American conductor, pianist and composer. He is Artistic Director Laureate of the New World Symphony, an American orchestral academy in Miami Beach, Florida, Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, and Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra. He gave his last performance with the San Francisco Symphony in January 2024 while fighting brain cancer. He led the Houston Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Beethoven's 9th Symphony on November 14, 2024.

Mykola Petrovich Suk (Ukrainian: Микола Петрович Сук; born December 21, 1945) is a Ukrainian American pianist and Merited Artist of Ukraine.

Francisco Sánchez Gómez (Spanish: [fɾanˈθisko ˈsantʃeθ ˈɣomeθ]; 21 December 1947 – 25 February 2014), known as Paco de Lucía (Spanish: [ˈpako ðe luˈθi.a]), was a Spanish virtuoso flamenco guitarist, composer, and record producer. A leading proponent of the new flamenco style, he was one of the first flamenco guitarists to branch into classical and jazz. Richard Chapman and Eric Clapton, authors of Guitar: Music, History, Players, describe de Lucía as a "titanic figure in the world of flamenco guitar", and Dennis Koster, author of Guitar Atlas, Flamenco, has referred to de Lucía as "one of history's greatest guitarists". De Lucía was noted for his fast and fluent picados (fingerstyle runs). A master of contrast, he often juxtaposed picados and rasgueados (flamenco strumming) with more sensitive playing and was known for adding abstract chords and scale tones to his compositions with jazz influences. These innovations saw him play a key role in the development of traditional flamenco and the evolution of new flamenco and Latin jazz fusion from the 1970s. He received acclaim for his recordings with flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla in the 1970s, recording ten albums which are considered some of the most important and influential in flamenco history. Some of de Lucía's best known recordings include "Río Ancho" (later fused with Al Di Meola's "Mediterranean Sundance"), "Entre dos aguas", "La Barrosa", "Ímpetu", "Cepa Andaluza" and "Gloria al Niño Ricardo". His collaborations with guitarists John McLaughlin, Al Di Meola and Larry Coryell in the late 1970s saw him gain wider popularity outside his native Spain. De Lucía formed the Paco de Lucía Sextet in 1981 with his brothers, singer Pepe de Lucía and guitarist Ramón de Algeciras, and collaborated with jazz pianist Chick Corea on their 1990 album, Zyryab. In 1992, he performed live at Expo '92 in Seville and a year later on the Plaza Mayor in Madrid. He also collaborated with guitarist Juan d'Anyelica on his album Cositas Buenas. After 2004 he greatly reduced his public performances, retiring from full touring, and typically only gave several concerts a year, usually in Spain and Germany and at European festivals during the summer months.

Sir András Schiff (Hungarian: [ˈɒndraːʃ ˈʃiff]; born 21 December 1953) is a Hungarian-born British classical pianist and conductor. He has received numerous awards and honours, including the Grammy Award, Gramophone Award, Mozart Medal, and Royal Academy of Music Bach Prize, and was appointed Knight Bachelor in the 2014 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to music. He is also known for his public criticism of political movements in Hungary and Austria. Schiff is a distinguished visiting professor of piano at the Barenboim–Said Akademie in Berlin, and the first artist-in-residence of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Boris Yoffe (born 21 December 1968 in St. Petersburg) is a Russian-born Israeli composer, resident of Karlsruhe, Germany.

Rachel Flowers (born December 21, 1993) is an American multi-instrumentalist and composer.