11808 Joseph Haydn gives his last public appearance at a performance of his oratorio The Creation in Vienna to mark the composer's 76th birthday on March 31; Ludwig van Beethoven was in the audience and Antonio Salieri conducted.
1851 Vincent d'Indy – French composer and teacher (d.1931); his best-known pieces are probably the Symphony on a French Mountain Air (1886), and Istar (1896), a symphonic poem in the form of variations in which the theme appears only at the end.
1892 Ferde Grofé – American composer, arranger and pianist (d.1972); arranger for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, 1920-1932, memorably arranging Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in 1924; his 1942 version for full orchestra is the one most frequently heard today; best known work is the Grand Canyon Suite.
1897 first performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 1 in Moscow; ultimately considered a fine work but its premiere was an absolute failure due to under-rehearsal and the poor performance of conductor Alexander Glazunov; the failure sent Rachmaninoff into a period of musical writer’s block which he overcame with the aid of hypnosis, after which he produced his Piano Concerto No. 2.
1914 first performance of the original version of Ralph Vaughan Williams's A London Symphony (Symphony No. 2) at Queen’s Hall in London conducted by Geoffrey Toye; went through several revisions before reaching its final form in 1933.
1917 premiere of Giacomo Puccini's opera La rondine (The Swallow) in Monte Carlo at the Opéra du Casino; written as a Viennese operetta and never among the composer’s most successful scores; Puccini’s editor, Tito Ricordi, dismissed it as "Bad Lehár".
1920 Richard Hayman – American composer, arranger and harmonica player (d.2014); for more than 30 years the principal arranger for the Boston Pops; pops conductor for the St. Louis Symphony, the Detroit Symphony and the Grand Rapids Symphony.
1949 Poul Ruders – Danish composer (75 years old); his Organ Symphony (2011) was a joint commission by the Dallas Symphony, Odense Symphony and the City of Birmingham Symphony.
1963 Bernard Labadie – Canadian conductor (61 years old); founded Les Violons du Roy in 1984 and the professional choir La Chapelle de Québec in 1985.