1712 death of Juan Bautista Cabanilles – Spanish composer and organist (age c. 67); considered by many to be the greatest Spanish Baroque composer, and has been called the ‘Spanish Bach’.
1879 Sir Thomas Beecham – English conductor, impresario and occasional orchestrator-arranger of Handel scores (d. 1961); co-founded the London Philharmonic in 1932 and founded the Royal Philharmonic in 1946.
1885 Wallingford Riegger – American composer (d.1961); well known for orchestral and modern dance music, and film scores.
1899 Edward Kennedy ‘Duke’ Ellington – African-American composer, pianist, and big-band leader (d.1974); a major figure in the history of jazz, his music stretched into various other genres, including blues, gospel, film scores, popular, and classical.
1920 Harold Shapero – American composer (d.2013); his major work was the Symphony for Classical Orchestra (1947), 45-minute work in four movements modeled after Beethoven.
1929 Peter Sculthorpe - Australian composer (d.2014); known primarily for his orchestral and chamber music, such as Kakadu (1988) and Earth Cry (1986), which evoke the sounds and feeling of the Australian outback.
1936 Zubin Mehta – Indian Parsi conductor of western classical music (88 years old); Music Director for Life of the Israel Philharmonic.
1936 Mary Ann Griebling – composer (88 years old), married to composer Stephen Griebling and mother of composer Mary Ann Griebling; studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Baldwin Wallace College, Ohio State University and Cambridge in England; has written in virtually all genres.
1948 Leslie Howard – Australian pianist and composer (76 years old); the only pianist to have recorded the complete solo piano works of Franz Liszt.
1980 first performance of John Williams’s The Reivers (suite for narrator and orchestra) to a text by William Faulkner, as part of the first concert Williams conducted as music director of the Boston Pops, with Burgess Meredith as narrator.
1993 first performance of Michael Torke’s Run for orchestra, by the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Slatkin conducting.