1685 Johann Sebastian Bach – German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist (d.1750); his music is revered for its intellectual depth, technical command, and artistic beauty; regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time and many would say the greatest.
1839 Modest Mussorgsky – Russian composer (d.1881); one of the group known as ‘The Five’ (with Balakirev, Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin), sharing the idea of producing a specifically Russian kind of art music.
1839 first public performance of the final symphony completed by Franz Schubert, 11 years after his death, the Symphony No. 9 in C; originally called ‘The Great C major’ to distinguish it from Schubert’s Symphony No. 6, the subtitle is now usually taken as a reference to the symphony's majesty; the conductor in the Leipzig Gewandhaus was Felix Mendelssohn; Robert Schumann (who had brought the work to Mendelssohn) hailed the symphony for its 'heavenly length'.
1904 first performance of Richard Strauss’s tone poem Sinfonia Domestica; the composer led the Wetzler Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York; a musical reflection of the secure domestic life so valued by the composer, harmoniously conveying daily events and family life.
1925 premiere of Maurice Ravel's one-act opera L'Enfant et les sortileges (The Child and Spells) at the Grand Théatre in Monte Carlo, conducted by Victor de Sabata.
1942 Owain Arwel Hughes – Welsh conductor (82 years old); became well known after a rousing televised performance of William Walton's Belshazzar’s Feast, which won the praise of the composer himself.