Born Today! 23.11.2024

Étienne-Joseph Floquet (23 November 1748 – 10 May 1785) was a French composer, mainly of operas. He was born in Aix-en-Provence and began his career by writing church music, before moving to Paris in 1767. There, Floquet made a name for himself with the requiem he wrote for the funeral of the composer Jean-Joseph de Mondonville in 1772. Floquet's first work for the Paris Opéra, the ballet héroïque L'union de l'amour et les arts, was a triumph, enjoying 60 performances between its premiere in September 1773 and January 1774. The audience at the premiere was so enthusiastic that the performance had to be stopped several times because of the applause and, at the final curtain, Floquet was presented on stage, the first composer in the history of the Paris Opéra to enjoy such an honour. However, the arrival of the German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck in Paris later that year changed French musical taste and Floquet's style became unfashionable. After the failure of his next opera, Azolan, Floquet decided to travel to Italy to perfect his musical education. There he studied composition under Nicola Sala in Naples and counterpoint under Padre Martini in Bologna, where he turned momentarily back to church music composing a Te Deum. Floquet returned to France in 1777 to find the Parisian public was now split between the supporters of Gluck and the partisans of the Italian Niccolò Piccinni. There was little demand for operas by native French composers and Floquet struggled to have his tragédie lyrique Hellé staged. When it eventually appeared in 1779, it was booed, despite Floquet's attempt to imitate the style of Piccinni, and ran for only three performances. Floquet had more success with the lighter Le seigneur bienfaisant and La nouvelle Omphale. He turned to a tragic subject once more when he produced a new musical score for Philippe Quinault's libretto Alceste, originally set by Jean-Baptiste Lully in 1674. Floquet's version was rehearsed but then rejected by the Paris Opéra. The composer was in poor health and the disappointment at his failure to have Alceste staged was said to have contributed to his early death soon afterwards. He left two unfinished operas, one of which, the "fairyland opera" (opéra féerie) Alcindor, was completed by Nicolas Dezède and given its unsuccessful première on 17 April 1787.

Thomas Attwood (23 November 1765 – 24 March 1838) was an English composer and organist. Attwood studied under Mozart and he was friendly with Felix Mendelssohn.

James Kwast (23 November 1852 – 31 October 1927) was a Dutch-German pianist and renowned teacher of many other notable pianists. He was also a minor composer and editor.

Manuel de Falla y Matheu (Spanish pronunciation: [maˈnwel de ˈfaʎa], 23 November 1876 – 14 November 1946) was a Spanish composer and pianist. Along with Isaac Albéniz, Francisco Tárrega, and Enrique Granados, he was one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century. He has a claim to being Spain's greatest composer of the 20th century, although the number of pieces he composed was relatively modest.

Pylyp Omelyanovych Kozytskiy (Ukrainian: Пилип Омелянович Козицький; 23 October, 1893 – 27 April, 1960) was a Soviet and Ukrainian composer, musicologist, professor, head of the department of history of music at the Kyiv Conservatory, and Honored Art Worker of the Ukrainian SSR (1943). Greatly influenced by expressionism, Kozytsky's musical works are a mixture of elements of Ukrainian folk music with social and patriotic characteristics, strongly rooted to the national school of classical music of Ukraine established by Mykola Lysenko.

Viktor Stepanovych Kosenko (Ukrainian: Віктор Степанович Косенко; 23 November [O.S. 11 November] 1896 – 3 October 1938) was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, and educator. He was regarded by his contemporaries as a master of lyricism. Kosenko's life is conclusively divided into three distinct phases, in Warsaw, where he studied with renowned teacher Aleksander Michałowski, in Zhytomyr, where he began teaching piano and music theory at the Music Technicum, later becoming director of the Zhytomyr Music School, and finally in Kyiv, where he devoted more time to symphonic compositions such as his Heroic Overture, which brought him due recognition in the world of Soviet music. Kosenko's music combines a post-romantic idiom with intonations of Slavic folk songs and Western-European influences. His vocal, chamber and symphonic works are among the most important pieces of that time in USSR.

Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki (Polish: [ˈkʂɨʂtɔf pɛndɛˈrɛt͡skʲi] ; 23 November 1933 – 29 March 2020) was a Polish composer and conductor. His best-known works include Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, Symphony No. 3, his St Luke Passion, Polish Requiem, Anaklasis and Utrenja. His oeuvre includes five operas, eight symphonies and other orchestral pieces, a variety of instrumental concertos, choral settings of mainly religious texts, as well as chamber and instrumental works. Born in Dębica, Penderecki studied music at Jagiellonian University and the Academy of Music in Kraków. After graduating from the academy, he became a teacher there and began his career as a composer in 1959 during the Warsaw Autumn festival. His Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra and the choral work St. Luke Passion have received popular acclaim. His first opera, The Devils of Loudun, was not immediately successful. In the mid-1970s, Penderecki became a professor at the Yale School of Music. From the mid-1970s his composition style changed, with his first violin concerto focusing on the semitone and the tritone. His choral work Polish Requiem was written in the 1980s and expanded in 1993 and 2005. Penderecki won many prestigious awards, including the Prix Italia in 1967 and 1968; the Wihuri Sibelius Prize of 1983; four Grammy Awards in 1987, 1998 (twice), and 2017; the Wolf Prize in Arts in 1987; and the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 1992. In 2012, Sean Michaels of The Guardian called him "arguably Poland's greatest living composer". In 2020 the composer's Alma Mater, the Academy of Music in Kraków, was named after Krzysztof Penderecki.

Ioseb Bardanashvili (Georgian: იოსებ (სოსო) ბარდანაშვილი; Hebrew: יוסף ברדנשווילי; born 23 November 1948 in Batumi, Georgia) is an Israeli and Georgian composer. His works span classical to contemporary composition for film.

Emil Viklický (born 23 November 1948) is a Czech jazz pianist and composer.

Philippe Fénelon (born 23 November 1952, Suèvres, Loir-et-Cher) is a French classical composer.

Jean-François Zygel (born 23 November 1960) is a French pianist, improviser, composer and improvisation teacher for piano at the Conservatoire de Paris. Born in Paris, he is also known for his work in introducing classical music on television and radio. Zygel's music is nourished by synagogue cantillation. Two of his great-grandfathers were hazzanim in Poland.

Igor Jankowski (born November 23, 1983, in Minsk, Belarus) – Polish-Belarusian composer, teacher and music activist.