Born Today! 08.12.2024

Bernardo Pasquini (7 December 1637 – 21 November 1710) was an Italian composer of operas, oratorios, cantatas and keyboard music. A renowned virtuoso keyboard player, he was one of the most important Italian composers for harpsichord between Girolamo Frescobaldi and Domenico Scarlatti, having also made substantial contributions to opera and oratorio.

František Xaver Dušek (German: Franz Xaver Duschek or Dussek); 8 December 1731 – 12 February 1799) was a Czech composer and one of the most important harpsichordists and pianists of his time.

Pierre-Joseph Candeille (8 December 1744 – 24 April 1827) was a French composer and singer, born in Estaires. He studied at Lille before moving to Paris, where he worked singing basse-taille in the chorus of the Opéra and the Concert Spirituel between 1767 and 1781, except for a brief period (1771—1773) he spent in Moulins. From 1784, he became a full-time composer. He worked at the Opéra as choirmaster from 1800 to 1802 and again from 1804 to 1805, before retiring to live in Chantilly. Candeille wrote four symphonies, as well as ballets, divertissements and sacred music (including a mass and a Magnificat). None of his operas achieved much success, with the exception of his revision of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Castor et Pollux. Candeille's version was premiered at the Paris Opéra on 14 June 1791. By 1 January 1793, it had had 50 performances. It continued to be one of the most popular operatic works in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period and was last staged in 1817. Candeille retained much of Rameau's original music, including "almost all the dances." Candeille was the father of the composer, singer and actor Amélie-Julie Candeille.

Jacques-François Gallay (8 December 1795 – 18 October 1864) was a French horn player, academic and composer of music for the instrument. His Méthode for the natural horn was published in 1845.

Louis (Ludwig) Alexander Balthasar Schindelmeisser (8 December 1811 - 30 March 1864) was a nineteenth-century German clarinetist, conductor and composer. He was born Königsberg, Prussia, and studied in Berlin and Leipzig. He was an early and enthusiastic partisan of Richard Wagner, arranging his first performances in Wiesbaden and Darmstadt of Tannhäuser, of which he conducted the premiere, Rienzi and Lohengrin.

John Edmund Paul Aldous (8 December 1853 – 23 January 1934) was a Canadian organist, conductor, composer, and music educator of English birth. His compositional output includes many short pieces for piano, organ, choir, and voice. He also composed four operettas: Ptarmigan or A Canadian Carnival (published 1895), A Golden Catch, Nancy or All for Love, and The Poster Girl (published 1902). Some of his better-known works are Prelude and Fugue for organ, the choral works Grant, We Beseech Thee, Merciful Lord and Blessed Are the Dead That Die in the Lord, and the hymn Egypt, all of which have been reprinted several times.

Jean Sibelius (; Finland Swedish: [siˈbeːliʉs] ; born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius; 8 December 1865 – 20 September 1957) was a Finnish composer of the late Romantic and early modern periods. He is widely regarded as his country's greatest composer, and his music is often credited with having helped Finland develop a stronger national identity when the country was struggling from several attempts at Russification in the late 19th century. The core of his oeuvre is his set of seven symphonies, which, like his other major works, are regularly performed and recorded in Finland and countries around the world. His other best-known compositions are Finlandia, the Karelia Suite, Valse triste, the Violin Concerto, the choral symphony Kullervo, and The Swan of Tuonela (from the Lemminkäinen Suite). His other works include pieces inspired by nature, Nordic mythology, and the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala; over a hundred songs for voice and piano; incidental music for numerous plays; the one-act opera The Maiden in the Tower; chamber music, piano music, Masonic ritual music, and 21 publications of choral music. Sibelius composed prolifically until the mid-1920s, but after completing his Seventh Symphony (1924), the incidental music for The Tempest (1926), and the tone poem Tapiola (1926), he stopped producing major works in his last 30 years—a retirement commonly referred to as the "silence of Järvenpää" (the location of his home). Although he is reputed to have stopped composing, he attempted to continue writing, including abortive efforts on an eighth symphony. In later life, he wrote Masonic music and re-edited some earlier works, while retaining an active but not always favourable interest in new developments in music. Although this 'silence' has often perplexed scholars, in reality, Sibelius was clear: he felt he had written enough. The Finnish 100 mark note featured his image until 2002, when the euro was adopted. Since 2011, Finland has celebrated a flag flying day on 8 December, the composer's birthday, also known as the Day of Finnish Music. In 2015, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Sibelius's birth, a number of special concerts and events were held, especially in Helsinki, the Finnish capital.

Paul Émile Ladmirault (8 December 1877 – 30 October 1944) was a French composer and music critic whose music expressed his devotion to Brittany. Claude Debussy wrote that his work possessed a "fine dreamy musicality", commenting on its characteristically hesitant character by suggesting that it sounded as if it was "afraid of expressing itself too much". Florent Schmitt said of him: "Of all the musicians of his generation, he was perhaps the most talented, most original, but also the most modest". Peter Warlock dedicated his Capriol Suite to him and Swan Hennessy his Trio, Op. 54.

Manuel María Ponce Cuéllar (8 December 1882 – 24 April 1948), known in Mexico as Manuel M. Ponce, was a Mexican composer active in the 20th century. His work as a composer, music educator and scholar of Mexican music connected the concert scene with a mostly forgotten tradition of popular song and Mexican folklore. Many of his compositions are strongly influenced by the harmonies and form of traditional songs.

Vicente Emilio Sojo (December 8, 1887 – August 11, 1974) was a Venezuelan musicologist, educator and composer, born in Guatire, Miranda.

Bohuslav Jan Martinů (Czech: [ˈboɦuslaf ˈmarcɪnuː] ; December 8, 1890 – August 28, 1959) was a Czech composer of modern classical music. He wrote 6 symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. He became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and briefly studied under Czech composer and violinist Josef Suk. After leaving Czechoslovakia in 1923 for Paris, Martinů deliberately withdrew from the Romantic style in which he had been trained. During the 1920s he experimented with modern French stylistic developments, exemplified by his orchestral works Half-time and La Bagarre. He also adopted jazz idioms, for instance in his Kitchen Revue (Kuchyňská revue). In the early 1930s he found his main fount for compositional style: neoclassicism, creating textures far denser than those found in composers treating Stravinsky as a model. He was prolific, quickly composing chamber, orchestral, choral and instrumental works. His Concerto Grosso and the Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano and Timpani are among his best-known works from this period. Among his operas, Juliette and The Greek Passion are considered the finest. He has been compared to Prokofiev and Bartók in his innovative incorporation of Czech folk elements into his music. He continued using Bohemian and Moravian folk melodies throughout his oeuvre, for instance in The Opening of the Springs (Otvírání studánek). His symphonic career began when he emigrated to the United States in 1941, fleeing the German invasion of France. His six symphonies were performed by all the major US orchestras. Eventually Martinů returned to live in Europe for two years starting in 1953, then was back in New York until returning to Europe in May 1956. He died in Switzerland in August 1959.

Zoltán Székely (Hungarian: Székely Zoltán; 8 December 1903 in Kocs, Hungary – 5 October 2001 in Banff, Canada) was a Hungarian violinist and composer.

Ernst Hermann Ludimar Meyer (8 December 1905 – 8 October 1988) was a German composer and musicologist, noted for his expertise on seventeenth-century English chamber music.

Mieczysław Weinberg (December 8, 1919 – February 26, 1996) was a Polish, Soviet, and Russian composer and pianist. Born in Warsaw to parents who worked in the Yiddish theatre in Poland, his early years were surrounded by music. He taught himself to play the piano at a young age and eventually became skilled enough to substitute for his father as a conductor at Warsaw's Jewish Theatre. During this period, he began to compose. At the age of 12, he started formal music lessons and soon thereafter enrolled at the Warsaw Conservatory. He studied piano with Józef Turczyński, who considered him and Witold Małcużyński as one of his best students. In 1938, Weinberg played for Josef Hofmann, who offered to teach him at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Weinberg declined, because he preferred to focus on composition instead; the invasion of Poland that initiated World War II in 1939 also made it impossible for him to accept. As the Wehrmacht advanced on Warsaw, Weinberg left his parents behind and fled with his sister towards the Soviet border. Discomfort forced his sister to turn back in mid-journey—he never saw her or the rest of his family again. During his only subsequent visit to Poland in 1966, he learned that his family had been murdered at the Trawniki concentration camp. Weinberg took refuge in the Soviet Union, where he officially adopted a Russified version of his name. He settled first in Minsk, where he studied composition with Vasily Zolotarev, then in Tashkent. It was in that city that Weinberg met and married Natalya Mikhoels, the daughter of the actor Solomon Mikhoels. From there, Weinberg sent a copy of his Symphony No. 1 to Dmitri Shostakovich through an intermediary, which resulted in an official invitation from the Committee on the Arts to come to Moscow. Upon arriving in the capital, Weinberg successfully established himself as a composer. Changes in Soviet cultural policy in the postwar led to increased repression against minority groups, including Jews. This led to the murder of Weinberg's father-in-law on the orders of Stalin in 1948. Although Weinberg's music was praised by critics and colleagues—including Tikhon Khrennikov, general secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers—and continued to be played, he was surveilled and harassed by the MVD. On February 6, 1953, Weinberg was arrested; he was jailed at Lubyanka Prison. Intercession on his behalf by Shostakovich to Lavrenty Beria and Stalin's death led to Weinberg's release on April 25. For the next few years, he focused his efforts on music for film and stage. By the end of the 1950s, he turned his attention again to concert music. He experienced his greatest professional success in the 1960s, when his music was played by musicians such as Rudolf Barshai, the Borodin Quartet, Timofei Dokschitzer, Mikhail Fichtenholz, Leonid Kogan, Kirill Kondrashin, and Mstislav Rostropovich, among others. His score for Fyodor Khitruk's cartoon Winnie-the-Pooh was an immediate success; the verses sung by its titular character entered the Russian popular lexicon. Weinberg later said that its music had contributed the most to the preservation of his legacy. In the mid-1960s, Weinberg began an extramarital affair with Olga Rakhalskaya, daughter of the psychiatrist Yuliy Rakhalsky, that quickly developed into a romantic relationship; they married in 1972. Starting in this period, his personal life stabilized and was dominated mostly by work. His concert music was played with less frequency as many of its former exponents had left the Soviet Union, severed their friendships with Weinberg, or died. He acquired a few new advocates, including Maxim Shostakovich and Vladimir Fedoseyev. Despite being awarded the People's Artist of the RSFSR in 1980, shifts in musical tastes and chronic health problems led to the neglect of Weinberg's music. He continued to compose prolifically through the 1980s, but Crohn's disease and the collapse of the Soviet Union had immediate adverse consequences for him and his output. The loss of state patronage and healthcare prevented him from receiving treatment for his broken hip in late 1992, which left him homebound, and eventually bedridden. Belated recognition of his music outside of Russia began in the 1990s through the advocacy of Tommy Persson, a Swedish judge. In 1994, Poland awarded Weinberg the Meritorious Activist of Culture. After consultations with his wife in late 1995, he converted to Orthodox Christianity a few weeks before his death on February 26, 1996.

Rudolf Komorous (born 8 December 1931, Prague, Czechoslovakia) is a Czech-born Canadian composer. His works include Twenty-Three Poems about Horses (1978), based on the poetry of Li Ho, the opera No no miya (1988) which uses elements of Noh theatre and the Li Ch’ing Chao Madrigals (1985).

Pierre-Marie François Pincemaille (8 December 1956 – 12 January 2018) was a French organist, improviser, and pedagogue. He was known for his organ improvisations, both in concert and on CD and for his recordings of Charles-Marie Widor's complete organ symphonies played on organs built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, as well as his recordings of the complete organ works of Maurice Duruflé and César Franck, and organ works of Pierre Cochereau and Louis Vierne in particular. He was titular organist at the Basilica of Saint-Denis until his death and was regarded as one of the finest organists of his generation.

Marco Stroppa (born 8 December 1959, in Verona) is an Italian composer who writes computer music as well as music for instruments with live electronics.