Born Today! 04.03.2024

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741) was an Italian composer, virtuoso violinist and impresario of Baroque music. Along with Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, Vivaldi ranks amongst the greatest Baroque composers and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe, giving origin to many imitators and admirers. He pioneered many developments in orchestration, violin technique and programmatic music. He consolidated the emerging concerto form into a widely accepted and followed idiom. Vivaldi composed many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other musical instruments, as well as sacred choral works and more than fifty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as The Four Seasons. Many of his compositions were written for the all-female music ensemble of the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for abandoned children. Vivaldi began studying for the priesthood at the age of 15 and was ordained at 25, but was given dispensation to no longer say public Masses due to a health problem. Vivaldi also had some success with expensive stagings of his operas in Venice, Mantua and Vienna. After meeting the Emperor Charles VI, Vivaldi moved to Vienna, hoping for royal support. However, the Emperor died soon after Vivaldi's arrival, and Vivaldi himself died in poverty less than a year later. After almost two centuries of decline, Vivaldi's musical reputation underwent a revival in the early 20th century, with much scholarly research devoted to his work. Many of Vivaldi's compositions, once thought lost, have been rediscovered – some as recently as 2015. His music remains widely popular in the present day and is regularly played all over the world.

Antonio Buzzolla (2 March 1815 – 20 March 1871) was an Italian composer and conductor. A native of Adria, he studied in Venice, and later worked with Gaetano Donizetti and Saverio Mercadante. He composed five operas, but was better known in his lifetime for ariettas and canzonettas in the Venetian dialect. Beginning in 1855 he served as the maestro di cappella of the Cappella Marciana at St Mark's Basilica in Venice. Buzzolla was one of the composers invited by Giuseppe Verdi to contribute to the Messa per Rossini; he composed the opening movement, the Requiem e Kyrie. He died in Venice in 1871 and was interred at the San Michele cemetery on the Isola di San Michele in Venice.

Antonio Buzzolla (2 March 1815 – 20 March 1871) was an Italian composer and conductor. A native of Adria, he studied in Venice, and later worked with Gaetano Donizetti and Saverio Mercadante. He composed five operas, but was better known in his lifetime for ariettas and canzonettas in the Venetian dialect. Beginning in 1855 he served as the maestro di cappella of the Cappella Marciana at St Mark's Basilica in Venice. Buzzolla was one of the composers invited by Giuseppe Verdi to contribute to the Messa per Rossini; he composed the opening movement, the Requiem e Kyrie. He died in Venice in 1871 and was interred at the San Michele cemetery on the Isola di San Michele in Venice.

Paul-Jean-Jacques Lacôme d'Estalenx (4 March 1838 – 12 December 1920) was a French composer. Between 1870 and the turn of the century he produced a series of operettas and operas-bouffes that were popular both in France and abroad. Interest in his works revived briefly during the First World War, when they were successfully revived in Paris.

Alexander Fyodorovich Goedicke (Russian: Александр Фёдорович Гёдике, romanized: Aleksandr Fyodorovich Gyodike; 4 March 1877 [O.S. 20 February] – 9 July 1957) was a Russian and Soviet composer and pianist. Goedicke was a professor at Moscow Conservatory. With no formal training in composition, he studied piano at the Moscow Conservatory with Galli, Pavel Pabst and Vasily Safonov. Goedicke won the Anton Rubinstein Competition in 1900. Despite his lack of traditional guidance, his compositional efforts were rewarded when he won the Rubinstein Prize for Composition at the young age of 23. Goedicke died at the age of 80 on 9 July 1957. Alexander Goedicke was Nikolai Medtner's first cousin. Alexander's father Fyodor Goedicke, a minor composer and pianist, was Medtner's mother's brother and his first teacher.

Bjarne Brustad (4 March 1895, in Kristiania, now Oslo – 20 May 1978, in Oslo) was a Norwegian composer, violinist and violist. He played with symphonic orchestras in Stavanger and Oslo. In the 1920s he travelled to European cities such as Paris, Munich and Berlin, where he received musical inspiration and contacts. From 1928 to 1943, Brustad was viola soloist with Philharmonic Society Orchestra in Oslo. He wrote symphonies, compositions for violin and orchestra, chamber music and opera. His opera Atlantis was finished in 1945. After World War II he was also active in organizing work.As a teacher at the Oslo Conservatory of Music, his students included Bjørn Fongaard and Trond Øyen.

Ferdinand Leitner (4 March 1912 in Berlin – 3 June 1996 in Zürich) was a German conductor. Leitner studied under Franz Schreker, Julius Prüwer, Artur Schnabel and Karl Muck. He also was a composition student with Robert Kahn. Starting as a pianist, through the help of Fritz Busch, he became a conductor in the 1930s. He was conductor of the Nollendorfplatz Theater in Berlin from 1943 to 1945; in Hanover from 1945 to 1946; in Munich from 1946 to 1947; and the General Music Director of the Württemberg State Opera house (German "Staatstheater Stuttgart") in Stuttgart from 1947 until 1969. To honour him, the city of Stuttgart has named a pedestrian bridge, that connects the Upper part (where the Staatstheater is located) and the Central part of the "Schlossgarten" (castle) park, after him (Ferdinand-Leitner-Steg). He is famous as a conductor of opera, his favourite composers being Wagner, Richard Strauss, Mozart, and twentieth-century composers Carl Orff and Karl Amadeus Hartmann. He succeeded Erich Kleiber in 1956 as conductor for the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. From 1976 to 1980, he worked in The Hague as principal conductor of Het Residentie Orkest. Among his more than 300 recordings is a celebrated recording of Ferruccio Busoni's Doktor Faust. He also conducted the Berlin Philharmonic for Wilhelm Kempff's 1961 cycle of Beethoven's piano concertos.

Carlos Lund (or Carles Suriñach) i Wrokona (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈkaɾləs suɾiˈɲak]; March 6, 1915 – November 12, 1997) was a Spanish-born composer and conductor.

Samuel Hans Adler (born March 4, 1928) is an American composer, conductor, author, and professor. During the course of a professional career which ranges over six decades he has served as a faculty member at both the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. In addition, he is credited with founding and conducting the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra which participated in the cultural diplomacy initiatives of the United States in Germany and throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Adler's musical catalogue includes over 400 published compositions. He has been honored with several awards including Germany's Order of Merit – Officer's Cross.

Mario Davidovsky (March 4, 1934 – August 23, 2019) was an Argentine-American composer. Born in Argentina, he emigrated in 1960 to the United States, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He is best known for his series of compositions called Synchronisms, which in live performance incorporate both acoustic instruments and electroacoustic sounds played from a tape.

Aribert Reimann (born 4 March 1936) is a German composer, pianist and accompanist, known especially for his literary operas. His version of Shakespeare's King Lear, the opera Lear, was written at the suggestion of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who sang the title role. His opera Medea after Grillparzer's play premiered in 2010 at the Vienna State Opera. He was a professor of contemporary Lied in Hamburg and Berlin. In 2011, he was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for his life's work.

Werner Jacob (4 March 1938 – 23 May 2006) was a German organist, composer and academic.

Zoltán Jeney (4 March 1943 – 28 October 2019) was a Hungarian composer. Jeney was born in Szolnok Hungary. He first studied piano and attended Pongrácz's composition classes at the Debrecen Secondary Music School, later continuing composition studies with Ferenc Farkas at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest (1961–66), and pursuing postgraduate studies with Goffredo Petrassi at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome (1967–68).Jeney's earliest compositions exhibit the influences of Béla Bartók, Luigi Dallapiccola, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, the new Polish school, György Kurtág, and Zsolt Durkó. In the late 1960s, he began to take an interest in Pierre Boulez's theories, Karlheinz Stockhausen's compositions, and oriental philosophy—a direction intensified as a result of his contact with John Cage's philosophy. In the 1970s Jeney began composing music in the minimal style, and his works are often characterized by an extremely spare and static quality. From 1986 on Jeney was a professor at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary where, since 1995, he served as Head of the Department of Composition. Several of his compositions have been released on the Hungaroton label.

Tassis Christoyannis (born Athens, 1967) is a Greek operatic baritone. He studied conducting and composing at the Athens Conservatory and singing with Aldo Protti, winning the Aldo Protti Gold Medal in 1994. In addition to operatic roles he is known for his recordings of French melodies with American pianist Jeff Cohen, primarily for the Palazzetto Bru Zane and Aparté.