1841 first performance of Robert Schumann’s ‘Concert Fantasy’ for piano and orchestra, at a closed rehearsal of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Felix Mendelssohn, with Clara Schumann (8 and 1/2 months pregnant at the time) as the soloist; the work was later revised as the first movement of Schumann's Piano Concerto in a Op 54, which Clara Schumann premiered in Dresden on December 4, 1845 at a concert conducted by Ferdinand Hiller.
1876 first complete performance of Richard Wagner's cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) opened the new Bayreuth Festspielhaus with a performance of Das Rheingold (this music drama had received its premiere performance in Munich on Sept. 22, 1869).
1879 John Ireland – English composer (d.1962); developed his own brand of ‘English Impressionism,’ related more to French and Russian models than to the folk-song style then prevailing in English music.
1948 Kathleen Battle – African American lyric-coloratura soprano (76 years old); has retired from opera, but remains active in concert and recital performances.
1964 first performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 10 as arranged for performance by the English musicologist Deryck Cooke; this first complete performance was by the London Symphony conducted by Berthold Goldschmidt.
1976 premiere of Duke Ellington’s ballet and last major work Three Black Kings (posthumously), at the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater conducted by Mercer Ellington; the three movements depict Balthazar, the Black king of the Nativity, Solomon, King of Israel and Martin Luther King, Jr.