Born Today! 07.05.2025

Carl Heinrich Graun (7 May 1704 – 8 August 1759) was a German composer and tenor. Along with Johann Adolph Hasse, he is considered to be the most important German composer of Italian opera of his time.

Carl Philipp Stamitz (Czech: Karel Stamic; baptized 8 May 1745 – 9 November 1801) was a German composer of partial Czech ancestry. He was the most prominent representative of the second generation of the Mannheim School. He was the eldest son of Johann Stamitz, a violinist and composer of the early classical period. Born in Mannheim, he received lessons from his father and Christian Cannabich, his father's successor as leader of the Mannheim orchestra. As a youth, Stamitz was employed as a violinist in the court orchestra at Mannheim. In 1770, he began travelling as a virtuoso, accepting short-term engagements, but never managing to gain a permanent position. He visited a number of European cities, living for a time in Strasbourg and London. In 1794, he gave up travelling and moved with his family to Jena in central Germany. His circumstances deteriorated and he descended into debt and poverty, dying in 1801. Papers on alchemy were found after his death. Stamitz wrote symphonies, symphonies concertantes, and concertos for clarinet, cello, flute, oboe, bassoon, basset horn, violin, viola, viola d'amore, and different combinations of these instruments. Some of his clarinet and viola concertos are particularly admired. He also wrote duos, trios, and quartets. Two operas, Der verliebte Vormund and Dardanus, are now lost. Stylistically, his music resembles that of Mozart or Haydn and is characterized by appealing melodies, although his writing for the solo instruments is not excessively virtuosic. The opening movements of his orchestral works, which are in sonata form, are generally followed by expressive and lyrical middle movements and the final movements in the form of a rondo.

Thomas Linley the younger (7 May 1756 – 5 August 1778), also known as Thomas Linley, Junior or Tom Linley, was the eldest son of the composer Thomas Linley and his wife Mary Johnson. He was one of the most precocious composers and performers that have been known in England. A highly talented violinist, Tom Linley was also the most promising of all native English composers between Henry Purcell and Edward Elgar, combining prodigious talent with a delightful personality. He is sometimes referred to as the "English Mozart". His early promise was cut short when he drowned in a boating accident, aged just 22 years.

Giuseppe Farinelli (7 May 1769 – 12 December 1836) was an Italian composer active at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century who excelled in writing opera buffas. Considered the successor and most successful imitator of Domenico Cimarosa, the greatest of his roughly 60 operas include I riti d'Efeso (1803, Venice), La contadina bizzarra (1810, Milan) and Ginevra degli Almieri (1812, Venice). More than 2/3 of his operas were produced between 1800 and 1810 at the height of his popularity. With the arrival of Gioachino Rossini his operas became less desirable with the public, and by 1817 his operas were no longer performed. His other compositions include 3 piano forte sonatas, 3 oratorios, 11 cantatas, 5 masses, 2 Te Deums, a Stabat Mater, a Salve Regina, a Tantum ergo, numerous motets, and several other sacred works.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ( chy-KOF-skee; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer during the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally. Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, his First Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, the Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy, several symphonies, and the opera Eugene Onegin. Although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant as there was little opportunity for a musical career in Russia at the time and no public music education system. When an opportunity for such an education arose, he entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1865. The formal Western-oriented teaching Tchaikovsky received there set him apart from composers of the contemporary nationalist movement embodied by the Russian composers of The Five, with whom his professional relationship was mixed. Tchaikovsky's training set him on a path to reconcile what he had learned with the native musical practices to which he had been exposed from childhood. From that reconciliation, he forged a personal but unmistakably Russian style. The principles that governed melody, harmony, and other fundamentals of Russian music diverged from those that governed Western European music, which seemed to defeat the potential for using Russian music in large-scale Western composition or for forming a composite style, and it caused personal antipathies that dented Tchaikovsky's self-confidence. Russian culture exhibited a split personality, with its native and adopted elements having drifted apart increasingly since the time of Peter the Great. That resulted in uncertainty among the intelligentsia about the country's national identity, an ambiguity mirrored in Tchaikovsky's career. Despite his many popular successes, Tchaikovsky's life was punctuated by personal crises and depression. Contributory factors included his early separation from his mother for boarding school followed by her early death, the death of his close friend and colleague Nikolai Rubinstein, his failed marriage to Antonina Miliukova, and the collapse of his 13-year association with the wealthy patroness Nadezhda von Meck. Tchaikovsky's homosexuality, which he kept private, has traditionally also been considered a major factor, though some scholars have downplayed its importance. His dedication of his Sixth symphony to his nephew Vladimir Davydov and the feelings he expressed about Davydov in letters to others have been cited as evidence for romantic love between the two. Tchaikovsky's sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to cholera, but there is an ongoing debate as to whether cholera was indeed the cause and whether the death was intentional. While his music has remained popular among audiences, critical opinions were initially mixed. Some Russians did not feel it sufficiently represented native musical values and expressed suspicion that Europeans accepted the music for its Western elements. In an apparent reinforcement of that claim, some Europeans lauded Tchaikovsky for offering music more substantive than exoticism, and said he transcended the stereotypes of Russian classical music. Others dismissed Tchaikovsky's music as deficient because it did not stringently follow Western principles.

Julius Buths (7 May 1851 – 12 March 1920) was a German pianist, conductor and minor composer. He was particularly notable in his early championing of the works of Edward Elgar in Germany. He conducted the continental European premieres of both the Enigma Variations and The Dream of Gerontius. He also had notable associations with Frederick Delius and Gustav Mahler.

Rudolf Raimann (7 May 1861, Veszprém, Hungary – 26 September 1913, Vienna, Austria) was a Hungarian composer. For many years he worked as the chief composer and music director to Prince Esterházy. He composed 15 operas and operettas for the court, of which Enoch Arden is considered his best work. He also wrote numerous art songs and songs for the piano-forte.

Virgilio Ranzato (May 7, 1882 in Venice – April 20, 1937 in Como) was an Italian composer and violinist.

Marcel Michel, Baron Poot (7 May 1901 – 12 June 1988) was a Belgian composer, professor, and musician who was born in Vilvoorde and died in Brussels.

Joseph Beer (German pronunciation: [ˈbeːr]; 7 May 1908 – 23 November 1987) was a composer who worked mainly in the genres of operettas, singspiele, and operas. Beer started composing music as a young man in Vienna in the 1930s. His operettas Der Prinz von Schiras and Polnische Hochzeit premiered at the Zürich Opera House in 1934 and 1937, respectively. Beer, ethnically Jewish, fled Austria in 1938 for France. His family stayed in Poland and subsequently perished in the Nazi extermination camps. Beer continued composing new works until the end of his life, and left a large number of composition for the stage.

Domenico Bartolucci (7 May 1917 – 11 November 2013) was an Italian cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was the former director of the Sistine Chapel Choir and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and was recognized in the field of music both as a director and a prolific composer. Considered among the most authoritative interpreters of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Bartolucci led the Sistine Chapel Choir in performances worldwide, and also directed numerous concerts with the Choir of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, including a tour of the former Soviet Union. On 20 November 2010, Pope Benedict XVI elevated him to the College of Cardinals. Because Bartolucci was over the age of 80, he was never eligible to participate in any papal conclave.

Cornelius Cardew (7 May 1936 – 13 December 1981) was an English experimental music composer, and founder (with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons) of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected experimental music, explaining why he had "discontinued composing in an avantgarde idiom" in his own programme notes to his Piano Album 1973.

José Antonio Abreu Anselmi (May 7, 1939 – March 24, 2018) was a Venezuelan orchestra conductor, pianist, economist, educator, activist, and politician best known for his association with El Sistema. He was honored with the 2009 Latin Grammy Trustees Award, an honor given to people who have contributed to music by the Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences.

Alison Margaret Bauld (born 7 May 1944) is an Australian writer and composer who lives and works in London, England.

Anne Jennifer Dudley (née Beckingham; born 7 May 1956) is an English composer, keyboardist, conductor and pop musician. She was the first BBC Concert Orchestra's Composer in Association in 2001. She has worked in the classical and pop genres, as a film composer, and was one of the core members of the synth-pop band Art of Noise. In 1998, Dudley won an Oscar for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score for The Full Monty. In addition to over twenty other film scores, in 2012 she served as music producer for the film version of Les Misérables, also acting as arranger and composing some new additional music.

Alan John (born 7 May 1958 in Sydney) is an Australian composer. He studied music at the University of Sydney, graduating in 1980. His compositions include original music for various plays, films (such as Holding the Man, Three Dollars and The Bank) and TV series (including Love My Way), and the musicals Jonah Jones, Orlando Rourke and Snugglepot and Cuddlepie.