Born Today! 02.08.2024

Cesare Sodero (August 2, 1886 – December 16, 1947) was an Italian conductor who spent much of his career working in the United States.

Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss (2 August 1891 – 27 March 1975) was an English composer and conductor. Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army. In the post-war years he quickly became known as an unconventional and modernist composer, but within the decade he began to display a more traditional and romantic side in his music. In the 1920s and 1930s he composed extensively not only for the concert hall, but also for films and ballet. In the Second World War, Bliss returned to England from the US to work for the BBC and became its director of music. After the war he resumed his work as a composer, and was appointed Master of the Queen's Music. In Bliss's later years, his work was respected but was thought old-fashioned, and it was eclipsed by the music of younger colleagues such as William Walton and Benjamin Britten. Since his death, his compositions have been well represented in recordings, and many of his better-known works remain in the repertoire of British orchestras.

Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss (2 August 1891 – 27 March 1975) was an English composer and conductor. Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army. In the post-war years he quickly became known as an unconventional and modernist composer, but within the decade he began to display a more traditional and romantic side in his music. In the 1920s and 1930s he composed extensively not only for the concert hall, but also for films and ballet. In the Second World War, Bliss returned to England from the US to work for the BBC and became its director of music. After the war he resumed his work as a composer, and was appointed Master of the Queen's Music. In Bliss's later years, his work was respected but was thought old-fashioned, and it was eclipsed by the music of younger colleagues such as William Walton and Benjamin Britten. Since his death, his compositions have been well represented in recordings, and many of his better-known works remain in the repertoire of British orchestras.

Karl Amadeus Hartmann (2 August 1905 – 5 December 1963) was a German composer. Sometimes described as the greatest German symphonist of the 20th century, he is now largely overlooked, particularly in English-speaking countries.

Ángel Sauce, (born in Caracas, Venezuela on August 2, 1911; died in Caracas, Venezuela on December 26, 1995) was a Venezuelan composer, violinist and conductor. He was founder of multiple choirs and orchestras, and for more than twelve years he directed the Venezuela Symphony Orchestra. He received two National Music Prizes in Venezuela, one in 1948 for his composition Cecilia Mujica and one in 1982 for general achievements in his lengthy career.

Lorne Matheson Betts (August 2, 1918 – August 5, 1985) was a Canadian composer, conductor, organist, and music critic. A member of the Canadian League of Composers and an associate of the Canadian Music Centre, many of his original scores and writings are part of the collection at the National Library of Canada. His compositional output includes two operas, two symphonies, two piano concertos, three string quartets, many songs and choral pieces, and other orchestral and chamber works.

Philippa Duke Schuyler (; August 2, 1931 – May 9, 1967) was an American concert pianist, composer, author, and journalist. A child prodigy, she was the daughter of black journalist George Schuyler and Josephine Schuyler, a white Texan heiress. Schuyler became famous in the 1930s for her talent, intellect, mixed race parentage, and the eccentric parenting methods employed by her mother. Hailed as "the Shirley Temple of American Negroes," Schuyler performed public piano recitals and radio broadcasts by the age of four. She performed two recitals at the New York World's Fair at the age of eight. Schuyler won numerous music competitions, including the New York Philharmonic Young People's Concerts at Carnegie Hall. At 11, she became the youngest member of the National Association for American Composers and Conductors. Schuyler encountered racism as she grew older, and had trouble coming to terms with her mixed-race heritage. She later became a journalist and was killed in a helicopter crash in South Vietnam in 1967.

Marvin David Levy (August 2, 1932 – February 9, 2015) was an American composer, best known for his opera Mourning Becomes Electra. Mourning Becomes Electra was given its world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in 1967. Although deemed a failure at the time, the work was revived in 1998 in a revised version by the composer to a triumphant success at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The New York City Opera and the Seattle Opera staged the work in 2003, and the Florida Grand Opera staged the opera in 2013. A disc featuring Canto de los Marranos (Song of the Marranos) and excerpts from Shir Shel Moshe (Song of Moses) was issued as part of the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music by Naxos in 2004. The Passaic, New Jersey-born Levy died in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on February 9, 2015, aged 82.

Zbigniew Bujarski (21 August 1933 – 13 April 2018) was a Polish composer.

Anthony Edward Payne (2 August 1936 – 30 April 2021) was an English composer, music critic and musicologist. He is best known for his acclaimed completion of Edward Elgar's third symphony, which gained wide acceptance into Elgar's oeuvre. Payne is particularly noted for his chamber music, much of which was written for his wife, the soprano Jane Manning, and the couple's new music ensemble Jane's Minstrels. Initially an unrelenting proponent of modernist music, by the 1980s his compositions had embraced aspects of the late English romanticism, described by his colleague Susan Bradshaw as "modernized nostalgia". Born in London, Payne first seriously studied music at Durham University. His professional career began around 1969 with his first major work, the staunchly modernist Phoenix Mass for choir and brass band. He continued to write choral and vocal works, almost exclusively to British poets. From his 1981 chamber work A Day in the Life of a Mayfly on, he synthesised modernism with the English romanticism of Elgar, Delius and Vaughan Williams. Two orchestral commissions for The Proms, The Spirit's Harvest (1985) and Time's Arrow (1990) were well received. After his successful completion of Elgar's unfinished third symphony, Payne became unsure of his musical identity. He found difficulty in subsequent composition until a series of orchestral works for the Proms, Visions and Journeys (2002), The Period of Cosmographie (2010) and Of Land, Sea and Sky (2016). Payne held academic posts at various institutions throughout his career, including Mills College, the London College of Music, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the University of Western Australia and the University of East Anglia. Despite regular commissions from a variety of English ensembles, he was not a particularly mainstream composer and was forced to supplement his income with writings. A noted critic, he wrote for The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and Country Life. Other writings include publications on a variety of musical topics, notably Schoenberg (1968)—a study on the composer Arnold Schoenberg—and numerous works on the music of Frank Bridge, to whom he was particularly devoted.

Moya Patricia Henderson (born 2 August 1941 in Quirindi, New South Wales) is an Australian composer. A graduate of the University of Queensland, Henderson was Resident Composer at Opera Australia during their first season at the Sydney Opera House in 1973. In the mid-1970s, Henderson studied composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen and music-theatre with Mauricio Kagel at the Cologne Musikhochschule. Henderson's compositions include such pieces as the work for organ and pre-recorded tape, Sacred Site (1983), The Dreaming written for the Australian Chamber Orchestra, "Six Urban Songs: The Patrick White Song Cycle" for soprano and orchestra (1983), and an opera, Lindy (1997), with Judith Rodriguez (as co-librettist), based on the disappearance of baby Azaria Chamberlain at Uluru in 1980. The mother, Lindy Chamberlain, was tried for the murder of the child. The opera documents the travesty of justice as it was meted out to Lindy Chamberlain and her then husband, Michael. It premiered at the Sydney Opera House in 2002.

Joan Albert Amargós is a Spanish composer and conductor born in Barcelona in 1950. Amargós is an instrumentalist on piano and clarinet, and has composed a number of chamber and symphonic works. He is also a great connoisseur of Flamenco, which has served as the basis for some of his compositions, which always breathe a brightness and colour distinctly Mediterranean. He has earned a number of prizes, such as the prize for best arranger of Spain. The government of Catalonia awarded him the National Award for music for the opera Euridice in 2002. He also won the Ciudad de Barcelona Prize the same year, for his collaborations with Miguel Poveda. In 2008 his composition Northern Concerto was nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Classical Contemporary Composition; Michala Petri was the soloist on recorder. He also collaborated with Flamenco legends Paco de Lucía and Camarón de la Isla

Irvine Arditti (born 8 February 1953) is a British violinist, as well as the leader and founder of the Arditti Quartet.