1672 Francesco Bonporti (baptized) – Italian priest, amateur composer and violinist (d.1748).
1864 Richard Strauss – German composer and conductor (d.1949); a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, known for his operas such as Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after Wagner.
1899 George Frederick McKay – American composer (d.1970); founded the Composition Department at the University of Washington, where he was a professor of music for more than 40 years.
1926 Carlisle Floyd – American composer (died September 20th 2021); his best known opera, Susannah (1955), is based on a story from the Apocrypha transferred to rural Tennessee; helped create a distinctively American idiom for opera using national folk and religious idioms; based many of his operas in the American South.
1960 premiere of Benjamin Britten’s opera A Midsummer Night's Dream in Aldeburgh at the Jubilee Hall.
1970 first performance of And God Created Great Whales by Alan Hovhaness, scored for taped song of humpback whales and orchestra, at a New York Philharmonic Promenade concert conducted by André Kostelanetz.
1987 premiere of Michael Torke’s ballet Purple at the New York State Theater, by the New York City Ballet Orchestra, Lukas Foss conducting.