Born Today! 17.06.2024

Charles-François Gounod (; French: [ʃaʁl fʁɑ̃swa ɡuno]; 17 June 1818 – 18 October 1893), usually known as Charles Gounod, was a French composer. He wrote twelve operas, of which the most popular has always been Faust (1859); his Roméo et Juliette (1867) also remains in the international repertory. He composed a large amount of church music, many songs, and popular short pieces including his "Ave Maria" (an elaboration of a Bach piece) and "Funeral March of a Marionette". Born in Paris into an artistic and musical family, Gounod was a student at the Conservatoire de Paris and won France's most prestigious musical prize, the Prix de Rome. His studies took him to Italy, Austria and then Prussia, where he met Felix Mendelssohn, whose advocacy of the music of Bach was an early influence on him. He was deeply religious, and after his return to Paris, he briefly considered becoming a priest. He composed prolifically, writing church music, songs, orchestral music and operas. Gounod's career was disrupted by the Franco-Prussian War. He moved to England with his family for refuge from the Prussian advance on Paris in 1870. After peace was restored in 1871 his family returned to Paris but he remained in London, living in the house of an amateur singer, Georgina Weldon, who became the controlling figure in his life. After nearly three years he broke away from her and returned to his family in France. His absence, and the appearance of younger French composers, meant that he was no longer at the forefront of French musical life; although he remained a respected figure he was regarded as old-fashioned during his later years, and operatic success eluded him. He died at his house in Saint-Cloud, near Paris, at the age of 75. Few of Gounod's works remain in the regular international repertoire, but his influence on later French composers was considerable. In his music there is a strand of romantic sentiment that is continued in the operas of Jules Massenet and others; there is also a strand of classical restraint and elegance that influenced Gabriel Fauré. Claude Debussy wrote that Gounod represented the essential French sensibility of his time.

Martin Krause (17 June 1853 – 2 August 1918) was a German concert pianist, piano teacher, music critic, and writer.

Fritz Steinbach (17 June 1855 – 13 August 1916) was a German conductor and composer who was particularly associated with the works of Johannes Brahms. Born in Grünsfeld, he was the brother of conductor Emil Steinbach. He studied at the Leipzig Conservatory and in Vienna. Among his teachers were Martin Gustav Nottebohm and Anton Door. In 1886, he succeeded Richard Strauss as the conductor of the Meiningen Court Orchestra. He remained there until 1902, during which time he often collaborated with Brahms and gave frequent guest performances at the court of Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. From 1898 to 1901, he was President of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein. He was the music director of the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne from 1902 to 1914. He served as the director of the Lower Rhenish Music Festival in 1904, 1907, 1910, and 1913. He taught conducting at the Cologne Conservatory where his pupils included Adolf Busch (in composition), Fritz Busch (in conducting), Allard de Ridder, Karl Elmendorff, Hans Knappertsbusch, Franz Mittler, Karl Aagard Østvig, Albert van Raalte and Erwin Schulhoff. His pupil Walter Blume continued his researches into Brahms. See: List of music students by teacher: R to S#Fritz Steinbach. Steinbach met Johannes Brahms in 1875, and the two maintained a relationship until Brahms's death; Steinbach's performances of Brahms's music repeatedly won praise from the composer. Although Steinbach performed music by composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Mahler, and Reger, he was most prominently associated with Brahms, influencing younger conductors such as Arturo Toscanini and Adrian Boult. In general, Steinbach's conducting favored the Classical, rhythm-focused style of Hans Richter over the Romantic, lyrically-driven style of conductors such as Arthur Nikisch, although Steinbach's flexibility of tempo also attracted admirers. He died in Munich. He was the great uncle of Peter Maag.

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (17 June [O.S. 5 June] 1882 – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music. Born to a famous bass in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Stravinsky grew up taking piano and music theory lessons. While studying law at the University of Saint Petersburg, he met Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and studied under him until his death in 1908. Stravinsky met the impresario Sergei Diaghilev soon after, who commissioned the composer to write three ballets for the Ballets Russes's Paris seasons: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913), the last of which caused a near-riot at the premiere due to its avant-garde nature and later changed the way composers understood rhythmic structure. Stravinsky's compositional career is often divided into three periods: his Russian period (1913–1920), his neoclassical period (1920–1951), and his serial period (1954–1968). During his Russian period, Stravinsky was heavily influenced by Russian styles and folklore. Works such as Renard (1916) and Les noces (1923) drew upon Russian folk poetry, while compositions like L'Histoire du soldat (1918) integrated these folk elements with popular musical forms, including the tango, waltz, ragtime, and chorale. His neoclassical period exhibited themes and techniques from the classical period, like the use of the sonata form in his Octet (1923) and use of Greek mythological themes in works like Apollon musagète (1927), Oedipus rex (1927), and Persephone (1935). In his serial period, Stravinsky turned towards compositional techniques from the Second Viennese School like Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954) was the first of his compositions to be fully based on the technique, and Canticum Sacrum (1956) was his first to be based on a tone row. Stravinsky's last major work was the Requiem Canticles (1966), which was performed at his funeral. While many supporters were confused by Stravinsky's constant stylistic changes, later writers recognized his versatile language as important in the development of modernist music. Stravinsky's revolutionary ideas influenced composers as diverse as Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, Béla Bartók, and Pierre Boulez, who were all challenged to innovate music in areas beyond tonality, especially rhythm and form. In 1998, Time magazine listed Stravinsky as one of the 100 most influential people of the century. Stravinsky died of pulmonary edema on 6 April 1971 in New York City, having left six memoirs written with his friend and assistant Robert Craft, as well as an earlier autobiography and a series of lectures.

Slavko Osterc (17 June 1895 – 23 May 1941), was a Slovenian composer. Osterc was born in Veržej. He studied under Emerik Beran, who was a pupil of Leoš Janáček, in his youth before attending the Prague Conservatory from 1925 to 1927. While there he studied under Karel Boleslav Jirák, Vítězslav Novák, and Alois Hába. Osterc was a professor at the Ljubljana Conservatory for much of his career, remaining there until his death. He was much the leading composer of Slovenia in the 1930s, as Marij Kogoj had been in the 1920s. One of his pupils was Pavel Šivic.

Hermann Reutter (German: ['hɛʁman 'ʁɔʏtɐ]; 17 June 1900 – 1 January 1985) was a German composer and pianist who worked as an academic teacher, university administrator, recitalist, and accompanist. He composed several operas, orchestral works, and chamber music, and especially many lieder, setting poems by authors writing in German, Russian, Spanish, Icelandic, English, and ancient Egyptian and Greek, among others. He was director of Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium in Frankfurt from 1936 to 1945 and of the Musikhochschule Stuttgart from 1956 to 1966. He then taught master classes, regularly at the Musikhochschule München and at universities in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. He founded the Internationale Hugo-Wolf-Akademie in Stuttgart in 1968, serving as its president until his death.

Boris Sergeyevich Mayzel' (Russian: Борис Серге́евич Майзель, 17 June 1907 [O.S. 4 June] – 9 July 1986) was a Soviet composer. He was born in Saint Petersburg to a family of physicist Sergey Mayzel. He studied with Maximilian Steinberg and Pyotr Ryazanov at the Leningrad Conservatory. He graduated in 1936. Early on, he had worked on stage works. He participated in the civil defense of Leningrad during the blockade. He was afterwards evacuated to Sverdlovsk from 1942 to 1944. He lived in Moscow from 1944 to his death. He primarily wrote symphonies, but his works also include concertos and operas.

John Weedon Verrall (June 17, 1908 – April 15, 2001) was an American composer of contemporary classical music.

Herbert Owen Reed (June 17, 1910 – January 6, 2014) was an American composer, conductor, and author.

Romuald Twardowski (Polish pronunciation: [rɔˈmu.alt tfarˈdɔfskʲi]; 17 June 1930 – 13 January 2024) was a Polish composer, pianist, organist and academic teacher who studied in Vilnius, Warsaw and Paris. In a style described as "developed neoclassicism", he composed operas, ballets, instrumental music and vocal works, especially sacred music for both Catholic use and the Orthodox Church. He achieved international prizes for his compositions, and many works were recorded in anthologies, including the Violin Concerto, chamber music, and sacred and secular choral music such as the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. He was professor at the State Academy of Music in Warsaw from 1972 to 2008.

Gérard Henri Grisey (; French: [ɡʁizɛ]; 17 June 1946 – 11 November 1998) was a twentieth-century French composer of contemporary classical music. His work is often associated with the Spectralist Movement in music, of which he was a major pioneer.

Brice Pauset (born 17 June 1965 in Besançon) is a French composer living in Germany.