1781 Vincent Novello – English composer and publisher (d.1861); introduced unknown works of great masters such as the Masses of Haydn and Mozart, music of Palestrina and innumerable, now well-known, great compositions.
1791 premiere of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera La Clemenza di Tito [The Clemency of Titus] at the Estates Theater in Prague; for a long time, Mozart scholars regarded Tito as an inferior effort, but in recent years it has undergone a reappraisal.
1882 John Powell – American pianist, ethnomusicologist and composer (d.1963).
1884 Emerson Whithorne – Cleveland-born composer and researcher into the history of music (d.1958); an authority on the music of China.
1910 premiere of Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis at the Gloucester Festival, conducted by the composer; calls for an expanded string orchestra in 3 parts: a full-sized string orchestra (Orchestra 1), two players from each section (Orchestra 2), and a string quartet.
1912 Wayne Barlow – Elyria-born composer (d.1996); also a professor of music, organist, and choir director; quote: “To me music is rather indivisible—which is to say, while it is impossible to know all about everything involved in the art of music, it is just as impossible to be a totally successful teacher, or composer, or musicologist, or theorist, or performer, or conductor without knowing something about how ALL these pieces of the art fit together.”
1938 Joan Tower – American composer, pianist and conductor (85 years old); praised by the New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time."