1621 death of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck – Dutch composer and organist (age c. 59); his career stood astride the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras; among the first major keyboard composers of Europe, and helped establish the north German organ tradition.
1679 Jan Dismas Zelenka baptized – Czech composer (d.1745); his music is admired for its harmonic invention and counterpoint.
1821 Franz Doppler - Polish-born Hungarian flute virtuoso and composer (d.1883); known for the orchestral arrangements of six of Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies; Liszt set his student Doppler the exercise of orchestrating the works and even though every single bar of the arrangements was revised by Liszt upon publication, he graciously allowed Doppler's name to remain on the title page; Liszt frequently bestowed such help to his students, which gave rise to the notion that he didn't—or couldn't—orchestrate his own works.
1891 first concert of the Chicago Symphony (as the ‘Chicago Orchestra’) with Theodore Thomas conducting; the CSO makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival; current music director Riccardo Muti began his tenure in 2010..
1926 premiere of Zoltán Kodály's Háry János, an ‘Hungarian folk opera’ (that is, a spoken play with songs) at the Royal Hungarian Opera House in Budapest; it's the story is of a veteran in the Austrian army in the first half of the 19th century who sits in the village inn regaling his listeners with fantastic tales of heroism.
1938 premiere of Aaron Copland's Billy the Kid in Chicago by the Ballet Caravan Company, with pianists Arthur Gold and Walter Hendel performing a two-piano version of the score; some sources list the date as October 6th.
1942 premiere of Aaron Copland's Rodeo in New York at the Metropolitan Opera House, choreographed by Agnes de Mille for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo; it received 22 curtain calls.
1956 Marin Alsop – American conductor and violinist (67 years old); music director laureate of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Chief Conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Ravinia Festival. She was the first woman to win the Koussevitzky Prize for conducting, and the first conductor to win a Macarthur Fellowship. On June 5, 2023, she was named Artisitic Direcctor and Conductor of the Polist National Radio Symphony Orchestra.
1992 first performance of Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 3 (dedicated to conductor JoAnn Falletta) by the Kansas City Symphony conducted by Bill McGlaughlin.