1775 Bernhard Crusell – Finnish clarinetist, composer and translator (d.1838); considered the outstanding Finnish composer before Sibelius; also a skillful linguist, translating the important Italian, French, and German operas for performances in Sweden.
1844 Friedrich Nietzsche – German philosopher and occasional composer (d.1900); his Also sprach Zarathustra inspired the tone poem by Richard Strauss and A Mass of Life by Frederick Delius.
1905 first performance of Claude Debussy's La mer (The Sea) in Paris, by the Orchestre Lamoureux under the direction of Camille Chevillard; a masterpiece of suggestion and subtlety in its rich depiction of the ocean, combining unusual orchestration with daring impressionistic harmonies.
1905 Dag Wirén – Swedish composer (d.1986); his most famous work is the Serenade for Strings (1937); retired from composing in 1970, commenting, "One should stop in time, while one still has time to stop in time."
1933 first performance of Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1, by the Leningrad Philharmonic with the composer as soloist; technically, it's the Concerto in C minor for Piano, Trumpet & String Orchestra Op 35, but the trumpet assumes relatively equal importance only in the finale.
1943 premiere of Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn & Strings in London; commissioned by horn virtuoso Dennis Brain, a setting of a selection of six poems by British poets on the subject of night.
1946 first concert performance of Benjamin Britten's A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (aka Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell) in Liverpool; written for an educational film The Instruments of the Orchestra; one of the three popularly-used scores in children's music education, along with Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals and Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.