Born Today! 18.12.2023

Jean-Baptiste Rey (18 December 1734 – 15 July 1810) was a French conductor and composer. Rey was born at Lauzerte. He remains the longest-serving conductor of the Paris Opera; his tenure spans from the last years of the monarchy to Napoleon's Empire (1776–1810). As such, he conducted most performances of masterpieces by Gluck, Piccini, Sacchini, Salieri, Gretry, Méhul, Haydn, Mozart, Spontini, etc., many of whom he cooperated with closely. He was the author of an opera, Apollon et Coronis (1781) and several other pieces and arrangements. Rey also wrote the third act of Sacchini's Arvire et Évélina (1788).Before his nomination at the Academie royale, Rey gained fame as a conductor in the theatres of Toulouse, Montpellier, Marseille, Bordeaux and Nantes. He was called to Paris in 1776 to assist the then first conductor, Louis-Joseph Francœur, whom he replaced in 1781. In 1779, he was named Maître de musique of Louis XVI's royal chamber. In 1781, Apollon et Coronis, the opera he composed with his brother, the cellist Louis-Charles-Joseph Rey, was performed. He kept his position at the Opera throughout the Revolution and participated in a number of revolutionary ceremonies. In 1799, he entered the recently established Conservatoire to teach harmony. He composed some of the Conservatoire's solfeges but was soon expelled along with the composer Jean-Francois Le Sueur, following internal dissensions. In 1803, both Le Sueur and Rey were called by Napoleon to join his chapel: Le Sueur replaced Paisiello as director, while Rey was named first conductor, with Persuis as his assistant. On 2 December 1804, Rey and Persuis conducted two giant orchestras in Notre-Dame for Napoleon's imperial coronation. He died in Paris.

Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber (c. 18 November 1786 – 5 June 1826) was a German composer, conductor, virtuoso pianist, guitarist, and critic of the early Romantic period. Best known for his operas, he was a crucial figure in the development of German Romantische Oper (German Romantic opera).Throughout his youth, his father, Franz Anton, relentlessly moved the family between Hamburg, Salzburg, Freiberg, Augsburg and Vienna. Consequently he studied with many teachers—his father, Johann Peter Heuschkel, Michael Haydn, Giovanni Valesi, Johann Nepomuk Kalcher, and Georg Joseph Vogler—under whose supervision he composed four operas, none of which survive complete. He had a modest output of non-operatic music, which includes two symphonies, two concertos and a concertino for clarinet and orchestra, a bassoon concerto, a horn concertino, two concertos and a Konzertstück for piano and orchestra, piano pieces such as Invitation to the Dance; and many pieces that featured the clarinet, usually written for the virtuoso clarinetist Heinrich Baermann. His mature operas—Silvana (1810), Abu Hassan (1811), Der Freischütz (1821), Die drei Pintos (comp. 1820–21), Euryanthe (1823), Oberon (1826)—had a major impact on subsequent German composers including Marschner, Meyerbeer, and Wagner; his compositions for piano influenced those of Mendelssohn, Chopin and Liszt. His best known work, Der Freischütz, remains among the most significant German operas.

Karl Schröder II (18 December 1848, Quedlinburg – 22 September 1935, Bremen) was a German cellist, composer and conductor, and son of violinist Karl Schröder. He studied as a child with his father and with Karl Drechsler in Dessau. He had three brothers, Carl Hermann Schroeder (1843-1909), who became a composer and violin professor in Berlin, Franz Schröder (before 1855-?) would work as a conductor in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the youngest brother, Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) was a German-American cellist best known as leading cellist in the Boston Symphony. In his early youth Karl studied with Friedrich Kiel and was appointed to the Sondershausen Hofkapelle at the age of 14. He toured Europe with his family's acclaimed string quartet traveling throughout Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, and even as far as St. Petersburg. In 1872 he was appointed Kapellmeister of the Kroll Oper in Berlin; late that year, the string quartet was disbanded on his appointment to the Brunswick Hofkapelle commencing in 1873. A year later he became solo cellist of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and professor at the conservatory. He returned to Sondershausen in 1881, replacing Max Erdmannsdörfer as Hofkapellmeister and founding a music school; this he sold to A. Schultze in 1886 when he was appointed conductor of the Duitse Opera in Rotterdam. He held similar posts in Berlin (1887) and in Hamburg (1888), where he succeeded Joseph Sucher at the Neues Stadt Theater. His former music school having become a state conservatory, he returned to Sondershausen in 1890 as its director, remaining until 1909. In 1911 he took up his last post, as professor at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, where he remained for more than a decade before retiring to Bremen. Schröder's compositions include symphonic works, chamber music pieces, string quartets, songs for solo instruments, two operas and an operetta. In addition to his compositions and educational works he produced careful editions of Classical cello pieces.

Gaetano Coronaro (18 December 1852 – 5 April 1908) was an Italian conductor, pedagogue, and composer. He was born in Vicenza and had his initial musical training there followed by study from 1871 to 1873 at the Milan Conservatory under Franco Faccio. He composed orchestral works, sacred music, and chamber pieces as well as five operas. La Creola, which premiered at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna in 1878, was the only one to have any success.Coronaro had settled in Milan by 1876 where he conducted at La Scala and taught at the Milan Conservatory. In 1894 he was made professor of composition there. Amongst his students was the composer Arrigo Pedrollo. Coronaro died in Milan at the age of 55. His brothers, Antonio (1851–1933) and Gellio Coronaro (1863–1916) were opera composers as well. Antonio was also the organist at the Cathedral of Vicenza from 1885 until his death.

Edward Alexander MacDowell (December 18, 1860 – January 23, 1908) was an American composer and pianist of the late Romantic period. He was best known for his second piano concerto and his piano suites Woodland Sketches, Sea Pieces and New England Idylls. Woodland Sketches includes his most popular short piece, "To a Wild Rose". In 1904 he was one of the first seven Americans honored by membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Samuel Moiseyevich Maykapar (Russian: Самуил Моисеевич Майкапар) (18 December 1867 – 8 May 1938) was a Russian romantic composer, pianist, professor of music at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and author of a number of piano practice pieces.

Arseny Nikolayevich Koreshchenko (Russian: Арсений Николаевич Корещенко, 18 December 1870 – 6 January 1921) was a pianist and composer of classical music, including operas and ballets. He was from the Russian Empire.

Saburō Takata (高田 三郎, Nagoya 18 December 1913 – 22 October 2000) was a Japanese Roman Catholic composer.

Dina Yoffe (born in Riga, Latvia on 18 December 1952) is a pianist, pedagogue and winner of many musical competitions.

Julia Wolfe (born December 18, 1958) is an American composer and professor of music at New York University. According to The Wall Street Journal, Wolfe's music has "long inhabited a terrain of its own, a place where classical forms are recharged by the repetitive patterns of minimalism and the driving energy of rock". Her work Anthracite Fields, an oratorio for chorus and instruments, was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Music. She has also received the Herb Alpert Award (2015) and was named a MacArthur Fellow (2016).