Born Today! 09.12.2024

Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi (9 December 1728 – 19 November 1804) was an Italian opera composer of the classical period.

Peter Josef von Lindpaintner (8 December 1791 – 21 August 1856) was a German composer and conductor. Born in Koblenz as the son of a tenor, he studied with Peter Winter and Joseph Graetz. From 1819 onwards he was based in Stuttgart. Some of his early operas were Singspiele, but under the influence of Carl Maria von Weber his interest shifted to Romantic opera. He died in Nonnenhorn, Bavaria, on Lake Constance.

Gilbert-Louis Duprez (6 December 1806 – 23 September 1896) was a French tenor, singing teacher and minor composer who famously pioneered the delivery of the operatic high C from the chest (Ut de poitrine, as Paris audiences called it). He also created the role of Edgardo in the popular bel canto-era opera Lucia di Lammermoor in 1835.

Karl Doppler (12 September 1825, Lemberg – 10 March 1900, Stuttgart) was a Hungarian flute virtuoso, conductor, music director, composer. He was the younger brother of the composer Franz Doppler and father of the composer Árpád Doppler. He worked until 1865 as music director at the Theater in Budapest, and from 1865 to 1898 as the Hofkapellmeister in Stuttgart. He composed several Hungarian operas, a collection of Hungarian folk dances and choirs.

Pekka Juhani "P. J." Hannikainen (December 9, 1854, Nurmes, Finland – September 13, 1924, Helsinki) was a Finnish composer and the head of the musical branch of the prominent Hannikainen family. His uncle was the writer and journalist Pietari Hannikainen. Hannikainen was born in Nurmes but moved to Jyväskylä to attend school. He then studied chemistry in Helsinki and later lived in Jyväskylä and Helsinki. Hannikainen was the founder and conductor of the first Finnish student choir, the YL Male Voice Choir, from 1882 to 1885. He also founded the Mieskuoro Sirkat choir in 1899. From 1887 to 1891, he was the editor of the first Finnish music magazine, Säveleitä. He was the father of the violinist and composer Arvo Hannikainen (1897-1942), the writer Lauri Hannikainen (1889-1921), the composer Väinö Hannikainen (1900–1960), the pianist and composer Ilmari Hannikainen (1892-1955) and the cellist Tauno Hannikainen (1896–1968). He is buried in Hietaniemi Cemetery in Helsinki.

Karel Kovařovic (9 December 1862 – 6 December 1920) was a Czech composer and conductor from Prague.

Sidney Homer, Sr. (9 December 1864 – 10 July 1953) was a classical composer, primarily of songs.

Joaquín Turina Pérez (9 December 1882 – 14 January 1949) was a Spanish composer of classical music.

Bolesław Kon (9 December 1906 – 10 June 1936) was a Polish concert pianist who won international acclaim in his brief career. Kon was born into a poor Jewish family in Warsaw. He began his piano training aged about 10, at the Moscow Conservatory under Konstantin Igumnov. In 1924, he returned to Poland and continued his studies, first at the Chopin Higher Academy, and then at the Warsaw Conservatory under Aleksander Michałowski and afterwards under Juliusz Wertheim and Zbigniew Drzewiecki. Even as a student, he showed extraordinary powers, and a front-rank career was anticipated for him. After graduation, he moved to Kraków as professor of piano at the Music Society Conservatory there, of which he became Director in 1929–1931. By now, he was giving orchestral concerts in Warsaw and Kraków, and in 1932, at Drzewiecki's urging, he entered the II International Chopin Piano Competition and won the third prize - having tied with Abram Lufer, and he won at the coin flipping. In the following year, after a short period of preparation living in Vienna, he entered the second International Music Competition there and obtained first prize. (It was on this occasion that Alfred Cortot, a member of the jury, walked out because the prize had been awarded to Kon and not to Dinu Lipatti, who took second prize.) Kon at once received many invitations to give concerts. However, he suffered from a form of existential depression and committed suicide in Warsaw in June 1936. He was afflicted with a hereditary mental illness and attended a sanatorium at regular intervals. The need to continue his career caused him to cut short a period of treatment, and it was in this way that the fatal melancholy overtook him. According to Professor Drzewiecki, Kon was the greatest pianistic genius that he ever heard; Mme Margerita Trombini-Kazuro described his playing as of great nobility and spontaneity. It is believed that he made no recordings.