Born Today! 02.05.2025

Pietro Alessandro Gaspare Scarlatti (2 May 1660 – 22 October 1725) was an Italian Baroque composer, known especially for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the most important representative of the Neapolitan school of opera. Nicknamed by his contemporaries "the Italian Orpheus", he divided his career between Naples and Rome, where he received his training; a significant part of his works was composed for the papal city. He is often considered the founder of the Neapolitan school, although he has only been its most illustrious representative: his contribution, his originality and his influence were essential, as well as lasting, both in Italy and in Europe. Particularly known for his operas, he brought the Italian dramatic tradition to its maximum development, begun by Monteverdi at the beginning of 17th century and continued by Cesti, Cavalli, Carissimi, Legrenzi and Stradella, designing the final form of the Da capo aria, imitated throughout Europe. He was also the inventor of the Italian overture in three movements (which was of the highest importance in the development of the symphony), of the four-part sonata (progenitor of the modern string quartet), and of the technique of motivic development. He was a model for the musical theater of his time, as evoked by Händel's Italian works, deeply influenced by his theatrical music. Eclectic, Scarlatti also worked on all the other common genres of his time, from the sonata to the concerto grosso, from the motet to the mass, from the oratorio to the cantata, the latter being a genre in which he was an undisputed master. He was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.

Anastasio Martín Ignacio Vicente Tadeo Francisco Pellegrin Martín y Soler (2 May 1754 – 30 January or 10 February 1806) was a Spanish composer of opera and ballet. Although relatively obscure now, in his own day he was compared favorably with his contemporary and admirer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as a composer of opera buffa. In his time he was called "Martini lo spagnuolo" ("Martini the Spaniard"); in modern times, he has been called "the Valencian Mozart". He was known primarily for his melodious Italian comic operas and his work with Lorenzo Da Ponte in the late 18th century, as well as the melody from Una cosa rara quoted in the dining scene of Mozart's Don Giovanni.

Giuseppe Balducci (2 May 1796 – 1845) was an Italian composer, primarily of operas. Born in Iesi, he spent most of his career in Naples and was one of the originators of the "salon opera" genre, the forerunner of chamber opera.

Achille Graffigna (5 May 1816, San Martino dall'Argine - 19 July 1896, Padua) was an Italian composer and conductor. He composed a total of 18 operas, two of which premiered at La Scala in Milan: La conquista di Granata (1839) and Ildegonda e Rizzardo (1841). Several of his operas premiered at the Teatro Regio di Torino as well where he was also active as a conductor. His 1858 opera, Veronica Cybo, used a libretto by Giovanni Peruzzini.

Carl Michael Ziehrer (more rarely spelled Karl Michael Ziehrer) (2 May 1843 – 14 November 1922) was an Austrian composer. In his lifetime, he was one of the fiercest rivals of the Strauss family; most notably Johann Strauss II and Eduard Strauss.

Zygmunt Noskowski (2 May 1846 – 23 July 1909) was a Polish composer, conductor, and teacher.

Marie François Maurice Emmanuel (2 May 1862 – 14 December 1938) was a French composer of classical music and musicologist born in Bar-sur-Aube, a small town in the Champagne-Ardenne region of northeastern France. It was there where he first heard his grandfather's printing press which according to his granddaughter, Anne Eichner-Emmanuel, first gave him the feeling of rhythm. Brought up in Dijon, Maurice Emmanuel became a chorister at Beaune cathedral after his family moved to the city in 1869. According to his granddaughter, Anne Eichner-Emmanuel, he was influenced by the brass bands on the streets of Beaune and by the "songs of the grape pickers which imprinted melodies in his memory so different from all the classical music he was taught in the academy of music." Subsequently, he went to Paris, and in 1880 he entered the Paris Conservatoire, where his composition teacher was Léo Delibes. His other teachers included Théodore Dubois (harmony) and Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray (history). Emmanuel also studied classics, poetics, philology and art history at the Sorbonne and École du Louvre. Delibes' strong disapproval of his early modal compositions (Cello Sonata, Op. 2, Sonatinas No. 1, Op. 4 and No. 2, Op. 5) caused a rift between them and his expulsion from Delibes' class. Emmanuel subsequently went to study with Ernest Guiraud, also at the Conservatoire. At the Conservatoire he came to know Claude Debussy who was also a pupil there. In addition, he attended the Conservatoire classes of César Franck, about whom he wrote a short book in 1930 (César Franck: Etude Critique). Emmanuel pursued a notable academic career. He wrote a treatise in 1895 on the music of Ancient Greece, for which he earned a doctorate in 1896. He taught art history at the Lycée Racine and Lycée Lamartine until 1904, when he became choirmaster at the church of Sainte-Clotilde, assisted by Émile Poillot, during the tenure of organist Charles Tournemire, serving until 1907. He was appointed professor of the history of music at the Conservatoire in 1909, and taught there until 1936. His students included Robert Casadesus, Yvonne Lefébure, Georges Migot, Jacques Chailley, Olivier Messiaen and Henri Dutilleux. Emmanuel destroyed all but 30 works composed up to 1938; he died in Paris that year. Emmanuel's interests included folksong, Oriental music, and exotic modes — his use of these modes in various of his works had appalled Delibes, who had vetoed his entering for the Prix de Rome. The compositions of Emmanuel, seldom heard today even in France, include operas after Aeschylus (Prométhée enchaîné and Salamine) as well as symphonies and string quartets. Probably the creations of his most often performed now are his six sonatines for solo piano, which (like many of his other pieces) demonstrate his eclectic academic interests. The first of the sonatines draws on the music of Burgundy, while the second incorporates birdsong, the third uses a Burgundian folk tune in its finale, and the fourth is subtitled en divers modes hindous ("in various Hindu modes").

George Herbert Bunning (2 May 1863 – 26 November 1937) was an English composer and musical director active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He had one opera produced at Covent Garden, but was better known as a composer of lighter works and incidental music for stage productions.

Gilardo Gilardi (May 25, 1889 - January 16, 1963) was an Argentine composer, pianist, and conductor who was the eponym of the Gilardo Gilardi Conservatory of Music in La Plata, Buenos Aires. He was born in San Fernando, Argentina and first learned music from his father before studying with the composer Arturo Berutti in Buenos Aires. He began composing as a teenager and he premiered his first opera, Ilse, at Teatro Colón opera house, aged 23. He co-founded the group Renovación (Renovation) in 1929, but left three years later, in 1932. He was professor at the University of La Plata and wrote an elementary course on harmony. Gilardi experimented with the pentatonic scale and Americas' Indigenous music. Some of their works are the operas Ilse (1923) and La leyenda del Urutaú (The legend of the Urutaú) (1935), Primera serie argentina, (First Argentine series), Evocación quechua, Gaucho con botas nuevas (Gaucho with new boots) (1938, orchestra), a symphonic poem which won a national prize in 1939. Among his religious music Réquiem (1933) and Misa de Gloria (Glory Mass) (1936) are particularly esteemed. He also composed chamber music pieces: Sonata for violin and piano, Songs for voice and piano, Argentine popular Sonata for violin and piano and various piano pieces. Gilardi's pupils included Regina Benavente, Ana Serrano Redonnet, Julia Stilman-Lasansky, and Susana Baron Supervielle. His son Miguel Angel Gilardi is orchestra conductor.

Øivin Fjeldstad (2 May 1903 – 16 October 1983) was a Norwegian conductor and violinist. Fjeldstad was artistic director and principal conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic from 1962 to 1969.

Maurice Thiriet (French: [tiʁjɛ]; 2 May 1906 – 28 September 1972) was a French composer of classical and film music.

Jan Hanuš (May 2, 1915 – July 30, 2004) was a prolific Czech composer of the 20th century. Almost every category of composition is represented among his works, many of which are overtly political, expressing anti-Nazi, anti-Fascist and anti-Communist sentiments.

Svatopluk Havelka (born 2 May 1925 – 24 February 2009) was a Czech composer.

Philippe Maria François Herreweghe, Knight Herreweghe (born 2 May 1947) is a Belgian conductor and choirmaster. Herreweghe founded La Chapelle Royale and Collegium Vocale Gent and is renowned as a conductor, with a repertoire ranging from Renaissance to early Romantic classical music. He specialises in Baroque music, with a particular focus on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Elliot Goldenthal (born May 2, 1954) is an American composer of contemporary classical music and film and theatrical scores. A student of Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, he is best known for his distinctive style and ability to blend various musical styles and techniques in original and inventive ways. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 2002 for his score to the motion picture Frida, directed by his longtime partner Julie Taymor.

Yeol Eum Son (Korean: 손열음; born May 2, 1986) is a South Korean classical pianist. She is an interpreter of the classical period of composers, especially Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, as well as such later composers as Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Ravel. Son has achieved global acclaim for her performances of Mozart’s piano concertos. Son is an internationally recognized concert pianist with major orchestras, performing with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and with such conductors as Lorin Maazel, Sir Neville Marriner, Valery Gergiev, Sir Antonio Pappano, and Jaap van Zweden. She performs recitals at Carnegie Hall in New York City, USA, at Wigmore Hall in London, UK and at the Edinburgh International Festival in UK.