Born Today! 12.03.2024

Thomas Augustine Arne (; 12 March 1710 – 5 March 1778) was an English composer. He is best known for his patriotic song "Rule, Britannia!" and the song "A-Hunting We Will Go", the latter composed for a 1777 production of The Beggar's Opera, which has since become popular as a folk song and a nursery rhyme. Arne was a leading British theatre composer of the 18th century, working at the West End's Drury Lane and Covent Garden. He wrote many operatic entertainments for the London theatres and pleasure gardens, as well as concertos, sinfonias, and sonatas.

Friedrich Wilhelm Pixis (1786 – 20 October 1842) was a German violinist. He became professor of violin at Prague Conservatory and was important in the musical life of Prague.

Sir August Friedrich Manns (12 March 1825 – 1 March 1907) was a German-born British conductor who made his career in England. After serving as a military bandmaster in Germany, he moved to England and soon became director of music at London's Crystal Palace. He increased the resident band to full symphonic strength and for more than forty years conducted concerts at popular prices. He introduced a wide range of music to London, including many works by young British composers, as well as works by German masters hitherto neglected in England. Among his British protégés were Arthur Sullivan, Charles Villiers Stanford, Hubert Parry, Hamish MacCunn, Edward Elgar and Edward German. Manns performed the works of more than 300 composers, and was reckoned to have given more than 12,000 concerts during his tenure at the Crystal Palace, between 1855 and 1901. He became a British citizen in 1894 and was knighted in 1903.

Jan Kapr (12 March 1914, in Prague – 29 April 1988, in Prague) was one of the most prolific Czech composers of the second half of the 20th century.

Janina Gressel (born Janina Garścia; March 12, 1920 – March 1, 2004) was a Polish composer, pianist, and teacher.

Gloria Wilson Swisher (born March 12, 1935) was an American composer, music educator and pianist. She died July 23, 2023 in Edmonds, Washington.

Dimitri Terzakis (Greek: Δημήτρης Τερζάκης; born March 12, 1938, in Athens) is a Greek composer. His father was the author Angelos Terzakis. From 1959–1964 Terzakis studied composition with Yannis Papaioannou at the Athens Hellenic Conservatory, followed by five years spent at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne, Germany where he studied composition with Bernd Alois Zimmermann and electronic music with Herbert Eimert. Works by Terzakis have been performed at the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival in Basle (1970), the Darmstadt Artists' Colony summer courses (1970) and the Hamburg Das Neue Werk series (1972). He taught counterpoint and fugue (1974–94) and Byzantine music and composition (1989–94) at the Musikhochschule, Düsseldorf. In 1980 he began to organize summer courses in Western and south-eastern European music in Nafplion. In 1985–6 he was guest professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler. From 1994 to his retirement he held the chair for composition at the Leipzig Felix Mendelssohn College of Music and Theatre. He has been a German citizen since 1985 and is living and composing in Leipzig, Germany, and Nafplion, Greece.

Erkki Olavi Salmenhaara (March 12, 1941 – March 19, 2002) was a Finnish composer and musicologist.

Semyon Avangardovich Son is a Russian pianist, composer, professor of Barcelona Academy of Music.