Born Today! 05.07.2024

William Crotch (5 July 1775 – 29 December 1847) was an English composer and organist. According to the British musicologist Nicholas Temperley, Crotch was "a child prodigy without parallel in the history of music", and was certainly the most distinguished English musician in his day.

Stefano Gobatti (Bergantino, 5 July 1852 – Bologna, 17 December 1913) was an Italian opera composer. Gobatti was born in 1852 in the Province of Rovigo in a poor and humble peasant family. He passionately studied music and immediately had results, and was taught under Giuseppe Busi and Lauro Rossi. At just eighteen, he composed the opera I goti which was staged on 30 November 1873 at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. The work was an unprecedented success. Within a short period he was the "Freeman of the City of Bologna" and appointed Member of Honor of the Accademia Filarmonica in Bologna and appointed Knight of the Crown of Italy granted by King Vittorio Emanuele II. Under pressure from music publishers and their purely economic interests, his later works such as Luce (1875) and Cordelia (1881), were inevitably marked by conflicting adversity. Gobatti, disappointed and embittered, increasingly sought refuge in a Franciscan convent in the hills of Bologna, and lived there as a monk in extreme poverty. He died on 17 December 1913 and was buried at the Cimitero Monumentale Della Certosa.

Stephan Krehl (5 July 1864 – 9 April 1924, in Leipzig) was a German composer, teacher, and theoretician. His writings include Traité général de la musique and Théorie de la musique et de science de la composition. His pupils included Didia Saint Georges, Pablo Sorozábal, and Else Streit.

Joseph Charles Holbrooke, sometimes given as Josef Holbrooke, (5 July 1878 – 5 August 1958) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist.

Volkmar Andreae (5 July 1879 – 18 June 1962) was a Swiss conductor and composer.

Wanda Aleksandra Landowska (5 July 1879 – 16 August 1959) was a Polish harpsichordist and pianist whose performances, teaching, writings and especially her many recordings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord in the early 20th century. She was the first person to record Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations on the harpsichord in 1933. She became a naturalized French citizen in 1938.

Philippe Gaubert (5 July 1879 – 8 July 1941) was a French musician who was a distinguished performer on the flute, a respected conductor and a composer, primarily for the flute.

Jan Kubelík (5 July 1880 – 5 December 1940) was a Czech violinist and composer.

Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob CBE (5 July 1895 – 8 June 1984) was an English composer and teacher. He was a professor at the Royal College of Music in London from 1924 until his retirement in 1966, and published four books and many articles about music. As a composer he was prolific: the list of his works totals more than 700, mostly compositions of his own, but a substantial minority of orchestrations and arrangements of other composers' works. Those whose music he orchestrated range from William Byrd to Edward Elgar to Noël Coward.

Franz Adolf Syberg (5 July 1904 - 11 December 1955) was a Danish composer.

Hans Lang (5 July 1908, in Vienna – 28 January 1992, in Vienna) was an Austrian composer of light music, film music and Viennese songs. He wrote one operetta, the musikalisches Lustspiel, Lisa, benimm dich!, which premiered in Vienna on 21 March 1939.

Giulio Viozzi (born Trieste, 5 July 1912 – died Verona, 29 November 1984) was an Italian composer, conductor, pianist, and music critic. He was a pupil of Antonio Illersberg, and took his diploma in piano playing in 1931. Among his compositions are numerous operas, ballets, and symphonic works, as well as some chamber music and songs.

Annie Fischer (July 5, 1914 – April 10, 1995) was a Hungarian classical pianist.

Geraldine Thomson Mucha (5 July 1917 – 12 October 2012) was a Scottish composer. She was born in London and studied at the Royal Academy of Music. She married the Czech writer Jiří Mucha, son of the painter Alphonse Mucha, and in 1945 moved to Prague. She lived there for the greater part of the next sixty years.

George Rochberg (July 5, 1918 – May 29, 2005) was an American composer of contemporary classical music. Long a serial composer, Rochberg abandoned the practice following the death of his teenage son in 1964; he claimed this compositional technique had proved inadequate to express his grief and had found it empty of expressive intent. By the 1970s, Rochberg's use of tonal passages in his music had provoked controversy among critics and fellow composers. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania until 1983, Rochberg also served as chairman of its music department until 1968. He became the first Annenberg Professor of the Humanities in 1978.

Matthias Bamert (born July 5, 1942, in Ersigen, Canton of Bern) is a Swiss conductor and composer. In addition to studies in Switzerland, Bamert studied music in Darmstadt and in Paris, with Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and their influences can be detected in his own compositions from the 1970s. He spent the years 1965 to 1969 as principal oboist with the Salzburg Mozart Orchestra, but then switched to conducting. Bamert's conducting career began in North America as an apprentice to George Szell and later as assistant conductor to Leopold Stokowski, and resident conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra under Lorin Maazel. He was music director of the Swiss Radio Orchestra from 1977 to 1983. Bamert was principal guest conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and director of the Glasgow contemporary music festival Musica Nova from 1985 to 1990. He has conducted the world premieres of works by composers such as Toru Takemitsu, John Casken, James MacMillan and Wolfgang Rihm. He was director of the Lucerne Festival from 1992 to 1998. During his Lucerne tenure, a new concert hall was opened, and programme expansions included establishment of a new Easter Festival and a piano festival. Bamert served as principal guest conductor of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO) from 2000 to 2005, chief conductor of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO) from 2003 to 2006. His initial contract with WASO was through 2007, but dissatisfaction with his tenure caused the orchestra to terminate his contract 18 months early, in May 2006. Bamert was named chief conductor of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra in November 2004, and served in the post from 2005 to 2008. In October 2017, the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra announced the appointment of Bamert as its next chief conductor, effective with the 2018–2019 season, with an initial contract of three seasons. Sapporo Symphony Orchestra announced in February 2020 that they have extended Bamert's tenure through the 2023–2024 season. Bamert has conducted over 60 recordings, including recordings with Chandos Records of music by Josef Mysliveček, Parry (the complete symphonies) and Frank Martin (5 discs) with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the symphonies of Roberto Gerhard with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Dutch composers such as Johannes Verhulst and Cornelis Dopper with the Residentie Orchestra, a series devoted to Leopold Stokowski arrangements, concert music by Korngold and Ernő Dohnányi with the BBC Philharmonic. He has also conducted a series of recordings of John Field's compositions for piano and orchestra with Míceál O'Rourke. Among his own compositions, Bamert's Mantrajana was recorded by the Louisville Orchestra by their own record label (the composer conducting) in 1974 (Louisville Orchestra LS 741). Bamert has lived in London since 1987.

Steven Sharp Nelson (born July 5, 1977) is an American cellist. He is best known as "The Cello Guy" of the classical new-age musical group The Piano Guys, with whom he has released eight number-one albums and dozens of music videos. He also has three solo albums to his credit. He is considered a pioneer in "cello-percussion", which enhances traditional cello playing with pizzicato and percussive techniques.