1682 Jean-Joseph Mouret – French composer (d.1738); famous for writing the PBS Masterpiece theme.
1689 possible premiere of Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas in Chelsea (London) at Josias Priest's School for Young Ladies; April 30 is also cited as a possibility.
1727 probable first performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig; final revision of 1743-46 is the one performed today.
1770 Leopold Mozart and his son Wolfgang attend a Holy Week service at St. Peter's in Rome and hear Gregorio Allegri's Miserere performed by the Chapel Choir; the Vatican had jealously guarded Allegri's score as their exclusive property, and under threat of excommunication, the Vatican choir was forbidden to let the score be taken out of the Chapel, copied, or even seen by any outsider; that same evening, after one hearing, the 14-year-old Wolfgang transcribed the piece from memory.
1814 first performance of Beethoven's Piano Trio No. 7 'Archduke' in Vienna, with the composer in his last public appearance as pianist; composer Ludwig Spohr was there, and wrote that the piano was badly out of tune but Beethoven was too deaf to notice.
1916 Alberto Ginastera – Argentine composer (d.1983); he grouped his music into three periods: ‘Objective Nationalism’ (1934–1948), ‘Subjective Nationalism’ (1948–1958), and ‘Neo-Expressionism’ (1958–1983).
1919 first performance of Maurice Ravel’s piano suite Le tombeau de Couperin by Marguerite Long in the Salle Gaveau in Paris; each movement is dedicated to the memory of a friend of the composer (or in one case, two brothers) who had died fighting in World War I; the concluding Rigaudon is in memory of Captain Joseph de Marliave, a musicologist and the husband of Marguerite Long; the work retains a light-hearted flavor which prompted some criticism; Ravel’s reply: "The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence."