01.04.1649, - 05.03.1732,
Joseph François Salomon (April 1649 – 5 March 1732) was a French composer of the Baroque era. Born in Toulon, he learnt to play the bass viol and the harpsichord, and went to Paris to work as a musician for the royal family. He was 52 when he composed his first opera, the tragédie en musique Médée et Jason.
01.04.1728, Linz - 29.07.1786, Vienna
Franz Asplmayr (1 April 1728 – 29 July 1786) was an Austrian composer and violinist. There are many variants of his name, including Franz Aspelmayr, Franz Aschpellmayr and Franz Appelmeyer. He is best known for an opera on Greek myths and for a few symphonies and string trios which were once attributed to Joseph Haydn. Among the few scholars who have studied his music, there are differing opinions as to the quality. J. Murray Barbour says of Asplmayr's 80 minuets "scored mostly for oboes, horns, and strings, without violas" that "all are extremely boring, as if written between beers". Temperly, on the other hand, finds advances "with respect to harmony and developmental techniques".Asplmayr was born in Linz. His father taught him violin and, by the 1750s, he had steady employment playing violin in Vienna. In 1761, he took over Christoph Willibald Gluck's duty of writing ballet music for the German troupe. Although he was paid to write symphonies, few of those scores have survived.
01.04.1834, Paris - 15.09.1916, Boulogne-Billancourt
Isidore Edouard Legouix (1 April 1834 – 15 September 1916) was a 19th-century French composer.
01.04.1866, Empoli - 27.07.1924, Berlin
Ferruccio Busoni (1 April 1866 – 27 July 1924) was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor, editor, writer, and teacher. His international career and reputation led him to work closely with many of the leading musicians, artists and literary figures of his time, and he was a sought-after keyboard instructor and a teacher of composition. From an early age, Busoni was an outstanding, if sometimes controversial, pianist. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory and then with Wilhelm Mayer and Carl Reinecke. After brief periods teaching in Helsinki, Boston, and Moscow, he devoted himself to composing, teaching, and touring as a virtuoso pianist in Europe and the United States. His writings on music were influential, and covered not only aesthetics but considerations of microtones and other innovative topics. He was based in Berlin from 1894 but spent much of World War I in Switzerland. He began composing in his early years in a late romantic style, but after 1907, when he published his Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, he developed a more individual style, often with elements of atonality. His visits to America led to interest in North American indigenous tribal melodies which were reflected in some of his works. His compositions include works for piano, among them a monumental Piano Concerto, and transcriptions of the works of others, notably Johann Sebastian Bach (published as the Bach-Busoni Editions). He also wrote chamber music, vocal and orchestral works, and operas—one of which, Doktor Faust, he left unfinished when he died, in Berlin, at the age of 58.
01.04.1873, Starorussky Uyezd - 28.03.1943, Beverly Hills
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff (1 April [O.S. 20 March] 1873 – 28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music. Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russian composers gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom notable for its song-like melodicism, expressiveness, dense contrapuntal textures, and rich orchestral colours. The piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninoff's compositional output and he used his skills as a performer to fully explore the expressive and technical possibilities of the instrument. Born into a musical family, Rachmaninoff began learning the piano at the age of four. He studied piano and composition at the Moscow Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1892, having already written several compositions. In 1897, following the disastrous premiere of his Symphony No. 1, Rachmaninoff entered a four-year depression and composed little, until supportive therapy allowed him to complete his well-received Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1901. Rachmaninoff went on to become conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre from 1904–06, and relocated to Dresden, Germany, in 1906. He later embarked upon his first tour of the United States as a pianist in 1909. After the Russian Revolution, Rachmaninoff and his family left Russia permanently, settling in New York in 1918. Following this, he spent most of his time touring as a pianist through the US and Europe, from 1932 onwards spending his summers at his villa in Switzerland. During this time, Rachmaninoff's primary occupation was performing, and his compositional output decreased significantly, completing just six works after leaving Russia. By 1942, his declining health led him to move to Beverly Hills, California, where he died from melanoma in 1943.
01.04.1905, Würzburg - ?18.12.1963, ?17.12.1963, Hamburg
Winfried Zillig (1 April 1905 – 18 December 1963) was a German composer, music theorist, and conductor. Zillig was born in Würzburg. After leaving school, Zillig studied law and music. One of his teachers there was Hermann Zilcher. In Vienna he was a private pupil of Arnold Schönberg, later following him to Berlin. His first compositions date from this time. In 1927 he became the assistant of Erich Kleiber at the Berlin State Opera. A short time later he became repetiteur to the Oldenburg Opera. In the years 1932 to 1937, he acted as repetiteur and Kapellmeister at the Düsseldorf Opera. Positions followed as Kapellmeister in Essen and at the beginning of the 1940s as the musical leader of the Posen Opera. After the end of World War II he became the first Kapellmeister of the Düsseldorfer Oper. In the years 1947 to 1951 he occupied the position of conductor at the HR-Sinfonieorchester. He also acted as guest conductor of the Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra in the early months of 1953. After 1959 he led the musical division of Norddeutscher Rundfunk. Zillig died in 1963 in Hamburg. Winfried Zillig was very productive as a composer. His output includes operas, oratorios, passions, choral music, serenades, string quartets, and other Chamber music, as well as lieder and suites. He was also responsible for completing the score of the oratorio Die Jakobsleiter, which his former teacher Arnold Schönberg had left unfinished, at the request of Schönberg's widow. Furthermore, he made a name for himself as a music theorist with an emphasis on twelve-tone technique.
01.04.1907, Karlovy Vary - 09.09.1984, Bloomington
Walter Kaufmann (1 April 1907 – 9 September 1984) was a composer, conductor, ethnomusicologist, librettist and educator. Born in Karlsbad, Bohemia (at that time part of Austria-Hungary), he trained in Prague and Berlin before fleeing the Nazi persecution of Jews to work in Bombay until Indian Independence. He then moved to London and Canada before settling in the USA as a professor of musicology at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana in 1957. In 1964, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen.
01.04.1917, Tehran - 04.01.1995,
Heshmat Sanjari, also transcribed as Sandjari (Persian: حشمت سنجری, April 1, 1917 – January 4, 1995) was a well-known Persian (Iranian) conductor and composer, the son of Hossein Sanjari who was well-known player on tar in Persia.
01.04.1921, Oakland - 18.03.1994, Seattle
William Laurence Bergsma (April 1, 1921 – March 18, 1994) was an American composer and teacher. He was long associated with Juilliard School, where he taught composition, until he moved to the University of Washington as head of their music school until 1971.
01.04.1923, Paris - 09.11.2005, Paris
Jean Catoire (1 April 1923 – 9 November 2005) was a French composer of contemporary classical music.He studied with Olivier Messiaen and developed a personal style that was spiritual in outlook; in this regard his output is comparable to that of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. He was prolific, producing 604 opus numbers by 1996. The first recording of his music was released in 1999. Pianist Nicolas Horvath is one of the leading interpreters of Catoire's music.
01.04.1965, - ,
Robert Steadman (born 1 April 1965) is a British composer of classical music who mostly works in a post-minimalist style but also writes lighter music, including musicals, and compositions for educational purposes. He also teaches, writes articles for music education journals, notably Classroom Music, and has written several revision guides for GCSE Music and A-level Music Technology.
01.04.1970, Cheltenham - ,
Nicholas O'Neill (born 1 April 1970) is an English composer, arranger, organist and choral director.
01.04.1972, Norway - ,
Eivind Gullberg Jensen (born 1 April 1972) is a Norwegian conductor.