Born Today! 16.12.2023

Orazio Vecchi (6 December 1550 (baptized) in Modena – 19 February 1605) was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance. He is most famous for his madrigal comedies, particularly L'Amfiparnaso.

Andrea Basili (Città della Pieve, 16 December 1705 – Loreto, 28 August 1777), was an Italian composer and music theorist. He was father of Francesco Basili. His teacher was Tommaso Gaffi. He was maestro di capella at Cathedral of San Lorenzo Martire, Tivoli, then Basilica della Santa Casa.

Georgy Vasilyevich Sviridov (Russian: Георгий Васильевич Свиридов; 16 December 1915 – 6 January 1998) was a Soviet and Russian neoromantic composer. He is most widely known for his choral music, strongly influenced by the traditional chant of the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as his orchestral works which often celebrate elements of Russian culture. Sviridov employed, especially in his choral music, rich and dense harmonic textures, embracing a romantic-era tonality; his works would come to incorporate not only sacred elements of Russian church music, including vocal work for the basso profundo, but also the influence of Eastern European folk music, 19th-century European romantic composers (especially Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky), and neoromantic contemporaries outside of Russia. He wrote musical settings of Russian Romantic poetry by poets such as Mikhail Lermontov, Fyodor Tyutchev, and Alexander Blok. Sviridov enjoyed critical acclaim for much of his career in the Soviet Union and Russia.

Alice Parker (born December 16, 1925) is an American composer, arranger, conductor, and teacher. She has authored five operas, eleven song-cycles, thirty-three cantatas, eleven works for chorus and orchestra, forty-seven choral suites, and more than forty hymns, all original compositions. Also to be noted are wealth of arrangements based on pre-existing folk-songs and hymns, many of which were produced in collaboration with Robert Shaw. Parker is best known for these kinds of arrangements of spirituals, mountain hymns, and folk songs, early-American hymns, and international folk-songs, most notably in French, Spanish, Hebrew, and Ladino.

Rodion Konstantinovich Shchedrin (Russian: Родион Константинович Щедрин, IPA: [rədʲɪˈon kənstɐnʲˈtʲinəvʲɪtɕ ɕːɪˈdrʲin]; born 16 December 1932) is a Soviet and Russian composer and pianist, winner of USSR State Prize (1972), the Lenin Prize (1984), and the State Prize of the Russian Federation (1992), and is a former member of the Inter-regional Deputies Group (1989–1991). He is also a citizen of Lithuania and Spain.

Marco Frisina (born 16 December 1954, in Rome) is an Italian Roman Catholic priest and composer. He is director of the Pastoral Worship Center at the Vatican.

Timothy Richard Sullivan is a Canadian composer, pianist, and music educator. A member of the Canadian League of Composers and an associate of the Canadian Music Centre, he has been commissioned to write works for ARRAYMUSIC, Donald Bell, and the Stratford Festival among others. He is particularly known for his operas and was notably composer-in-residence at the Canadian Opera Company in 1987-1988. His composition are noted for their use of various media and incorporation of several musical idioms, including jazz, chance music, traditional harmony, and serialism.

Edward Barnes (born December 16, 1958) is an American composer and producer.

Ian Wilson (born 26 December 1964) is an Irish composer.

Benoît Mernier (born 16 December 1964) is a Belgian classical organist and composer.