Born Today! 10.05.2025

Jean-Marie Leclair l'aîné (Jean-Marie Leclair the Elder) (10 May 1697 – 22 October 1764) was a French Baroque violinist and composer. He is considered to have founded the French violin school. His brothers, the lesser-known Jean-Marie Leclair the younger (1703–77) as well as Pierre Leclair (1709–84) and Jean-Benoît Leclair (1714–after 1759), were also musicians.

Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (French: [klod ʒozɛf ʁuʒɛ d(ə) lil]; 10 May 1760 – 26 June 1836) was a French army officer of the French Revolutionary Wars. Lisle is known for writing the words and music of the Chant de guerre pour l'armée du Rhin, which would later be known as La Marseillaise and become the French national anthem.

Sir George Thomas Smart (10 May 1776 – 23 February 1867) was an English musician. Smart was born in London, his father being a music-seller. He was a choir-boy at the Chapel Royal, and was educated in music, becoming an expert violinist, organist, teacher of singing and conductor. He taught for many years at the Royal Academy of Music where his notable pupils included Elizabeth Greenfield, John Orlando Parry, Mary Shaw, and Willoughby Weiss. In 1811 he was knighted by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, having conducted a number of successful concerts in Dublin. On 1 April 1822 he was appointed organist at the Chapel Royal. From that time onwards, Sir George Smart was one of the chief musical leaders and organizers in England, directing the music for the opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851, conducting at the Royal Philharmonic Society, Covent Garden, the provincial festivals, etc., and in 1838 being appointed composer to the Chapel Royal. He was a master of the Handelian traditions, was personally acquainted with Beethoven and a close friend of Weber, who died in his house. Some of his church music and glees became well known. He died in London and is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. His brother Henry (1778–1823), father of the composers Harriet Anne Smart and Henry Smart, was a well-known violinist. Smart wrote a journal, Leaves from the Journals of Sir George Smart, that was published in 1907.

Nikolai Alexeyevich Titov (Russian: Николай Алексеевич Титов; 10 May 1800 in St. Petersburg – 22 December 1875 in St. Petersburg) was a Russian composer, violinist, and Major General in various regiments during the 19th century. He is considered to be the "Grandfather of the Russian Romance." His compositional style was considered to be in the pre-classical orientation, thus setting the groundwork for the developments by Glinka and his contemporaries. He is considered to be one of the most popular romance composers of the 19th century. His songs were praised for their homely sensibility and ruminative harmonic language, albeit encased in simple yet effect forms that appealed to the at-home Amateurs and seasons musicians alike. His repertoire can still be heard today.

Pietro Magri (May 10, 1873 in Vigarano Mainarda – July 24, 1937 in Oropa) was an Italian composer, conductor and organist.

Maximilian Raoul Steiner (10 May 1888 – 28 December 1971) was an Austrian composer and conductor who emigrated to America and became one of Hollywood's greatest musical composers. Steiner was a child prodigy who conducted his first operetta when he was twelve and became a full-time professional, proficient at composing, arranging, and conducting, by the time he was fifteen. Threatened with internment in England during World War I, he fled to Broadway; and in 1929 he moved to Hollywood, where he became one of the first composers to write music scores for films. He is often referred to as "the father of film music", as Steiner played a major part in creating the tradition of writing music for films, along with composers Dimitri Tiomkin, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman, Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann, and Miklós Rózsa. Steiner composed over 300 film scores with RKO Pictures and Warner Bros., and was nominated for 24 Academy Awards, winning three: The Informer (1935); Now, Voyager (1942); and Since You Went Away (1944). Besides his Oscar-winning scores, some of Steiner's popular works include King Kong (1933), Little Women (1933), Jezebel (1938), and Casablanca (1942), though he did not compose its love theme, "As Time Goes By". In addition, Steiner scored The Searchers (1956), A Summer Place (1959), and Gone with the Wind (1939), which ranked second on the AFI's list of best American film scores, and is the film score for which he is best known. He was also the first recipient of the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, which he won for his score for Life with Father. Steiner was a frequent collaborator with some of the best known film directors in history, including Michael Curtiz, John Ford, and William Wyler, and scored many of the films with Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and Fred Astaire. Many of his film scores are available as separate soundtrack recordings.

Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He was a Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship recipient, recognized for his serial and electronic music.

Yūzō Toyama (外山 雄三, Toyama Yūzō, 10 May 1931 – 11 July 2023) was a Japanese composer and conductor. A native of Tokyo, he was a pupil of Kan'ichi Shimofusa; he studied conducting with Kurt Wöss and Wilhelm Loibner and, like them, later became a conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra. As a conductor he served with numerous orchestras throughout Japan; as a composer his prime influences are Béla Bartók and Dmitri Shostakovich. Mstislav Rostropovich performed the world premiere of the composer's six-movement 1967 First Cello Concerto, a piece described by Gramophone as "attractive", with the additional comment that it "sounds like Japanese folk music rendered orchestral by Kodaly". His best-known work is a Rhapsody for Orchestra based on Japanese folk songs. Toyama won the Suntory Music Award in 1982. Toyama died on 11 July 2023, at the age of 92.

Piotr Paleczny (born 10 May 1946 in Rybnik, Poland) is a Polish classical pianist, winner of the 3rd prize of the VIII International Chopin Piano Competition in 1970. In 1990 he served on the jury of the Paloma O'Shea Santander International Piano Competition; in 2010 on The Sendai International Music Competition in Japan; and in 2011 on the jury of the Prix AmadèO de Piano 2011. He teaches piano at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, and has been a professor at the university since 1998.

Klaus Ager (born 10 May 1946) is an Austrian composer and conductor. Born in Salzburg, Ager studied piano, composition, and conducting at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and musicology at Salzburg University. He continued his studies in composition with Pierre Schaeffer and Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. From 1975 to 1986 he directed the Österreichische Ensemble für Neue Musik (Austrian Ensemble for New Music). From 1995 to 2000 he was rector of the Mozarteum Hochschule in Salzburg. Beginning in 2000, Ager dedicated himself primarily to working as a guest composer and lecturer in South and North America, and to campaigning throughout Europe for an improved standing for composers. In 2003 he was able to achieve through his mustering of relevant subsidies and innovative articles, that the Arovell-Musikzeitschrift was expanded to a color edition with a circulation of 700 copies per quarter. Since April 2004 he has been president of the Austrian Composers Association. In this office he initiated, amongst other things, the congress "Komponieren im Europa des 21. Jahrhunderts", which took place from 2 to 5 February 2006 in the Gläsernen Saal of the Wiener Musikverein. From 2006 to 2014, he was chairman of the European Composers' Forum (ECF) in Brussels.

Bernd Redmann (born 10 May 1965 in Bamberg) is a German composer, music theorist, and musicologist.