Born Today! 23.04.2024

Johann Friedrich Doles (23 April 1715 – 8 February 1797) was a German composer and pupil of Johann Sebastian Bach. Doles was born in Steinbach-Hallenberg. He attended the University of Leipzig. He was Kantor at the Leipzig Thomasschule, conducting the Thomanerchor from 1756 to 1789; in that year (1789) he directed the performance of Bach's motet Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied that reportedly made a deep impression on Mozart. Doles wrote a manuscript treatise on singing which may preserve some elements of Bach's own methods.

Alexander Robert Reinagle (23 April 1756 – 21 September 1809) was an English-born American composer, organist, and theater musician. He should not be confused with his nephew of the same name, Alexander Robert Reinagle (21 August 1799 – 6 April 1877), also a composer and organist, who lived all his life in Britain. He was a close friends with a young Mozart when he visited London. He was influenced by Haydn, Mozart and Clementi.

Alexander Robert Reinagle (23 April 1756 – 21 September 1809) was an English-born American composer, organist, and theater musician. He should not be confused with his nephew of the same name, Alexander Robert Reinagle (21 August 1799 – 6 April 1877), also a composer and organist, who lived all his life in Britain. He was a close friends with a young Mozart when he visited London. He was influenced by Haydn, Mozart and Clementi.

Eugène-Prosper Prévost (23 April 1809 – 19 August 1872) was a French composer and conductor.

Grigory Andreevich Lishin (Лишин, Григорий Андреевич St Petersburg, 23 April 1854 - 15 June 1888) was a poet, theatre critic and composer from the Russian Empire. He composed two operas after texts of Pushkin: Graf Nulin (after Count Nulin) and Tsigane (after The Gypsies), but was mainly known for his songs.

Ruggero (or Ruggiero) Leoncavallo (UK: LAY-on-kav-AL-oh, US: LAY-ohn-kə-VAH-loh, -⁠kah-, Italian: [rudˈdʒɛːro leˌoŋkaˈvallo]; 23 April 1857 – 9 August 1919) was an Italian opera composer and librettist. Although he produced numerous operas and songs throughout his career it is his opera Pagliacci (1892) that remained his lasting contribution, despite attempts to escape the shadow of his greatest success. Today he remains largely known for Pagliacci, one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the opera repertory. His other compositions include the song "Mattinata", popularized by Enrico Caruso, and the symphonic poem La Nuit de mai.

Otakar Šín (23 April 1881 – 21 January 1943) was a Czech composer, theoretician and pedagogue.

Albert Coates (* 11 jul./23 April 1881greg. [deviant: 1882] – 11 December 1953) was an English conductor and composer. Born in Saint Petersburg, where his English father was a successful businessman, he studied in Russia, England and Germany, before beginning his career as a conductor in a series of German opera houses. He was a success in England conducting Wagner at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1914, and in 1919 was appointed chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. His strengths as a conductor lay in opera and the Russian repertory, but he was not thought as impressive in the core Austro-German symphonic repertory. After 1923 he failed to secure a permanent conductorship in the UK, and for much of the rest of his life guest-conducted in continental Europe and the US. In his last years he conducted in South Africa, where he died at 71. As a composer, Coates is little remembered, but he composed seven operas, one of which, Pickwick, was performed at Covent Garden and was the first opera to be televised on the newly launched BBC, in November 1936. He also wrote some concert works for orchestral forces.

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (27 April [O.S. 15 April] 1891 – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who later worked in the Soviet Union. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous music genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His works include such widely heard pieces as the March from The Love for Three Oranges, the suite Lieutenant Kijé, the ballet Romeo and Juliet—from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken—and Peter and the Wolf. Of the established forms and genres in which he worked, he created—excluding juvenilia—seven completed operas, seven symphonies, eight ballets, five piano concertos, two violin concertos, a cello concerto, a symphony-concerto for cello and orchestra, and nine completed piano sonatas. A graduate of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Prokofiev initially made his name as an iconoclastic composer-pianist, achieving notoriety with a series of ferociously dissonant and virtuosic works for his instrument, including his first two piano concertos. In 1915, Prokofiev made a decisive break from the standard composer-pianist category with his orchestral Scythian Suite, compiled from music originally composed for a ballet commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev commissioned three further ballets from Prokofiev—Chout, Le pas d'acier and The Prodigal Son—which, at the time of their original production, all caused a sensation among both critics and colleagues. But Prokofiev's greatest interest was opera, and he composed several works in that genre, including The Gambler and The Fiery Angel. Prokofiev's one operatic success during his lifetime was The Love for Three Oranges, composed for the Chicago Opera and performed over the following decade in Europe and Russia. After the Revolution of 1917, Prokofiev left Russia with the approval of Soviet People's Commissar Anatoly Lunacharsky, and resided in the United States, then Germany, then Paris, making his living as a composer, pianist and conductor. In 1923 he married a Spanish singer, Carolina (Lina) Codina, with whom he had two sons; they divorced in 1947. In the early 1930s, the Great Depression diminished opportunities for Prokofiev's ballets and operas to be staged in America and Western Europe. Prokofiev, who regarded himself as a composer foremost, resented the time taken by touring as a pianist, and increasingly turned to the Soviet Union for commissions of new music; in 1936, he finally returned to his homeland with his family. His greatest Soviet successes included Lieutenant Kijé, Peter and the Wolf, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, Alexander Nevsky, the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, On Guard for Peace, and the Piano Sonatas Nos. 6–8. The Nazi invasion of the USSR spurred Prokofiev to compose his most ambitious work, an operatic version of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace; he co-wrote the libretto with Mira Mendelson, his longtime companion and later second wife. In 1948, Prokofiev was attacked for producing "anti-democratic formalism". Nevertheless, he enjoyed personal and artistic support from a new generation of Russian performers, notably Sviatoslav Richter and Mstislav Rostropovich: he wrote his Ninth Piano Sonata for the former and his Symphony-Concerto for the latter.

Henry Barraud (sometimes Henri) (23 April 1900 – 28 December 1997) was a French composer. He was born in Bordeaux. He was a student of Louis Aubert at the Conservatoire de Paris, but in 1927 failed to graduate, apparently because of his refusal to follow orthodox methods. Along with Pierre-Octave Ferroud and Jean Rivier, he helped to form the society Triton for the wider distribution of contemporary music. After the Liberation of Paris in 1944, he was named the Director of Paris Radio, and later, in 1948, of what later became ORTF, a position he held until his retirement in 1965.

Dame Gillian Karawe Whitehead (born 23 April 1941) is a New Zealand composer. She is of Māori Ngāi Te Rangi descent. Her Māori heritage has been an important influence on her composing.

Jorge de Freitas Antunes (born 23 April 1942) is a Brazilian composer of electroacoustic and acousmatic music. Jorge Antunes is an Avant-garde composer, who is known as the man who pioneered electronic music in Brazil. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Antunes entered the Escola de Música da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in 1959 where he studied violin. He went on to earn Master of Music degrees in both violin and composition from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a Doctor of Music in electroacoustic music from the University of Paris (1977).

Jean Rondeau (born 23 April 1991) is a French harpsichordist and pianist. He was taught by Blandine Verlet from an early age. He studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris and the Guildhall School of Music in London. He won the Young Soloist award in the 2014 Prix des Radios Francophones Publiques. He has released several solo albums.