1545 death of John Taverner - English composer and organist (c.55 years old); regarded as one of the most important English composers of his era; not to be confused with the 20th–21st century composer Sir John Tavener (with only one ‘r’).
1706 Baldassare Galuppi – Italian composer (d.1785); achieved international success, spending periods of his career in London and Saint Petersburg, but his music was largely forgotten until the late 20th century; his name was brought back to public notice by Robert Browning's 1855 poem A Toccata of Galuppi's, although, ironically, it appears that Galuppi never actually wrote a toccata.
1878 Miguel Llobet – Catalan composer and classical guitar virtuoso (d.1938); made well-known arrangements of Catalan folk songs for solo guitar; also composed original works.
1887 first performance of Johannes Brahms's Double Concerto in Cologne by the Gürzenich Orchestra; the composer conducted with Joseph Joachim, violin and Robert Hausemann, cello.
1896 Frederick Hollander – German film composer and author (d.1976); wrote music for over 100 films, including Destry Rides Again (1939), A Foreign Affair (1948), The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953 Academy Award nomination) and Sabrina (1954).
1904 first performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5 in Cologne by the Gürzenich Orchestra, with the composer conducting; conductor Herbert von Karajan said that when one hears Mahler's Fifth, “you forget that time has passed. A great performance of the Fifth is a transforming experience. The fantastic finale almost forces you to hold your breath."
1923 first performance of Sergei Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 at the Paris Opera with soloist Marcel Darrieux and the Paris Opera Orchestra led by Serge Koussevitzky; Igor Stravinsky made his debut as conductor at the same concert, leading the first performance of his Octet for Winds.
1943 first performance of Jerome Moross's Symphony No. 1 by the Seattle Symphony, Sir Thomas Beecham conducting; the composer said, “many people were feeling gloomy about the war and I thought it was right to try to cheer them up with a happy and hopeful piece."
1946 Howard Shore – Canadian composer (78 years old); has composed the scores for over 80 films, most notably the scores for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies; composed an opera, The Fly, based on the plot of the 1986 film of the same name; served as the original musical director for Saturday Night Live from 1975 to 1980.
1946 first performance of Aaron Copland's Symphony No. 3 with the Boston Symphony led by Serge Koussevitzky; the Fanfare for the Common Man is used as a theme in the fourth movement and fragments from the Fanfare are also used for primary thematic material in the first three movements.
1961 Wynton Marsalis – American trumpeter, composer, teacher, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City (63 years old); has won nine Grammys in the classical and jazz genres, and a jazz recording of his was the first of its kind to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music.