Born Today! 25.12.2024

Orlando Gibbons (bapt. 25 December 1583 – 5 June 1625) was an English composer and keyboard player who was one of the last masters of the English Virginalist School and English Madrigal School. The best known member of a musical family dynasty, by the 1610s he was the leading composer and organist in England, with a career cut short by his sudden death in 1625. As a result, Gibbons's oeuvre was not as large as that of his contemporaries, like the elder William Byrd, but he made considerable contributions to many genres of his time. He is often seen as a transitional figure from the Renaissance to the Baroque periods. Gibbons was born into a musical family where his father was a wait, his brothers—Edward, Ellis and Ferdinand—were musicians and Orlando was expected to follow the tradition. It is not known under whom he studied, although it may have been with Edward or Byrd, but he almost certainly studied the keyboard in his youth. Irrespective of his education, he was musically proficient enough to be appointed an unsalaried member of the Chapel Royal in May 1603 and a full-fledged gentleman of the Chapel Royal as junior organist by 1605. By 1606 he had graduated from King's College, Cambridge with a Bachelor of Music degree. Throughout his professional career, Gibbons maintained good relations with many important people of the English court. King James I and Prince Charles were supportive patrons and others, such as Sir Christopher Hatton, even became close friends. Along with Byrd and John Bull, Gibbons was the youngest contributor to the first printed collection of English keyboard music, Parthenia, and published other compositions in his lifetime, notably, the First Set of Madrigals and Motets (1612) which includes the best known English madrigal: The Silver Swan. Other important compositions include "This Is the Record of John", the 8-part full anthem "O Clap Your Hands Together" and 2 settings of Evensong. The most important position achieved by Gibbons was his appointment in 1623 as the organist at Westminster Abbey which he held for 2 years until his death. Gibbons developed Byrd's foundations of the English madrigal, full and verse anthems, and by doing so he exerted significant influence on subsequent English composers. This generation included his oldest son Christopher, who would teach John Blow, Pelham Humfrey and Henry Purcell, the English pioneer of the Baroque era. After his death he was primarily remembered a composer of sacred music. Since the early music revival however, increased attention has come to his other compositions, with his keyboard works championed by Glenn Gould, while his madrigals and viol fantasies are popular among early music ensembles. By the 21st-century almost all of his music has been published and recorded.

Johann Adam Hiller (25 December 1728 – 16 June 1804) was a German composer, conductor and writer on music, regarded as the creator of the Singspiel, an early form of German opera. In many of these operas he collaborated with the poet Christian Felix Weiße. Hiller was a teacher who encouraged musical education for women, his pupils including Elisabeth Mara and Corona Schröter. He was Kapellmeister of Abel Seyler's theatrical company, and became the first Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

Anton Zimmermann (25 December 1741 in Široká Niva – 16 October 1781 in Bratislava) was a Silesian-born Slovak composer and contemporary of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Zimmermann spent most of his career in Bratislava, then capital of Hungary, where he worked as a composer, violinist, conductor, and artist manager. His music has been recorded by, among others, the Musica Aeterna Soloists for the Naxos record label.

Michael Kelly (25 December 1762 – 9 October 1826) was an Irish tenor, composer and theatrical manager who made an international career of importance in musical history. One of the leading figures in British musical theatre around the turn of the nineteenth century, he was a close associate of playwright and poet Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He also became friends with musicians such as Mozart and Paisiello, and created roles for the operas of both composers. With his friend and fellow singer Nancy Storace, he was one of the first tenors of that era from Britain and Ireland to become famous in Italy and Austria. In Italy he was also known as O'Kelly or even Signor Ochelli. Although the primary source for his life is his Reminiscences, doubt has been cast on the reliability of his own account, and it has been said that '[a]ny statement of Kelly's is immediately suspect.'

Albert Grisar (25 December 1808 – 15 June 1869) was a Belgian composer, mainly active in Paris.

Temistocle Solera (25 December 1815 – 21 April 1878) was an Italian opera composer and librettist.

Fran Lhotka (25 December 1883 – 26 January 1962) was a Czech-born Croatian composer of classical music. A student of Antonín Dvořák, in 1909 he moved to Zagreb where as a professor of harmony he would teach almost every Croatian contemporary composer. He composed orchestral music, music for the stage, chamber music, piano music, film music etc.

Mana-Zucca (December 25, 1885 – March 8, 1981) was an American actress, singer, pianist and composer.

David Vladimirovitch Ashkenazi (Russian: Дави́д Влади́мирович Ашкена́зи; 25 December 1915 – 19 February 1997) was a Russian-Jewish pianist, accompanist and composer. Ashkenazi was born on 25 December 1915 in Nizhny Novgorod. He studied piano at the local music college and at the Moscow Conservatory. He worked as an accompanist with a number of celebrated Soviet pop singers, including Isabella Yuryeva, Klavdiya Shulzhenko, Lyudmila Zykina, Marina Gordon, Vadim Kozin, Mark Bernes, Iosif Kobzon and others. He was made People's Artist of Russia in 1996. In 1964 he and violinist Naum Latunsky performed in an episode of the film The Garnet Bracelet, which was an adaptation of the celebrated novella of the same name by Alexander Kuprin. He set to music the Yakov Polonsky's poem titled "When in a separation presentiment", and his song was covered by many singers. David Ashkenazi was the father of the famous pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy. He died on 19 February 1997 in Moscow, Russia.

Noël Lee (December 25, 1924 – July 15, 2013) was an American classical pianist and composer. Born in 1924 in Nanjing, China, Lee studied music in Lafayette, Indiana, then attended Harvard University, studying with Walter Piston, Irving Fine, and Tillman Merritt and was also a student at the Longy School of Music in the early 1940s. Following World War II, he traveled to Paris where he studied music with Nadia Boulanger and was a friend of Douglas Allanbrook. He composed orchestral, chamber, piano, vocal, and film music. In addition, he completed several unfinished piano works by Franz Schubert, and composed cadenzas for piano concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. He was also well known for his piano accompaniment. Lee was a visiting professor at Brandeis University, Cornell University, and Dartmouth College. He received numerous awards throughout his career, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his creative work in 1959, and from France, twice laureate of the Fondation de France, in 1998, the grade of Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and, in 1999, from the city of Paris, the Grand Prix de la Musique. Lee's first recordings were for the Valois label of Michel Bernstein. He recorded, together with French pianist Christian Ivaldi, the complete works for four hands by Schubert for the label Arion. He was the pianist for the American violinist Paul Makanowitzki (1920-1998), the Dutch baritone Bernard Kruysen (1933-2000) and the French soprano Anne-Marie Rodde. As a pianist, he toured on six continents and recorded 198 LPs and CDs since 1955, particularly of Schubert (including the complete sonatas), Debussy, Ravel, Charles Ives, Bartók, Stravinsky, Aaron Copland and Elliott Carter. He was instrumental to the rediscovery of American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–69), and his Gottshalk recording (CD Erato reissued on Warner Classics/Apex) was used in the soundtrack to the 1994 Michel Deville film Aux petits bonheurs. Thirteen of these recordings have received a Grand Prix du Disque.

Lili Haydn (born December 25, 1969) is a Canadian-born rock violinist, vocalist, actress, and composer. As a child, she pursued a career as an actress; at age eight she discovered the violin and began to focus on classical music. By the time Haydn was 15, she had played with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. After graduating from Brown University with a BA in political science, Haydn started composing original songs and became one of the most requested session violinists around Los Angeles. By the time she signed with Atlantic in 1997, she had embraced a variety of genres, having played with Quwaali musician Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Porno for Pyros, Tracy Chapman, The Jayhawks, Brandy, Tony! Toni! Tone!, No Doubt, Tom Petty and more. In addition, she has played with, sung with, and opened for Sting, Josh Groban, Herbie Hancock, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, Matchbox 20, Seal, and George Clinton, who calls her "the Jimi Hendrix of the violin".