1660 André Campra baptized – French composer (d.1744); one of the leading French opera composers in the period between Jean-Baptiste Lully and Jean-Philippe Rameau.
1879 Sir Hamilton Harty – Irish composer (d.1941); best known for his arrangements for modern orchestra of Handel’s Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music.
1881 first performance of Peter Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in Vienna with soloist Adolph Brodsky; the original dedicatee, Leopold Auer, had said it was unplayable, but he later changed his mind and championed the work; after the premiere, the leading Viennese critic, Eduard Hanslick excoriated the concerto, famously saying that it “brought us face to face with the revolting thought that music can exist which stinks to the ear".
1898 first performance of Antonín Dvorák’s symphonic poem A Hero's Song in Vienna with Gustav Mahler conducting the Vienna Philharmonic; this music may be autobiographical like another piece that was completed in 1898, Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben.
1909 premiere of Wolf-Ferrari’s opera Il segreto di Susanna (The Secret of Susanna) in Munich, at the Hoftheater; spoiler alert - Susanna smokes cigarettes.
1910 Alex North – American film composer (d.1991); best known for A Streetcar Named Desire (one of the first jazz-based film scores), Viva Zapata!, Spartacus, Cleopatra, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.
1922 first performance of Sir Arnold Bax’s Symphony No. 1, in London; the outer movements of this three-movement work are based on an early piano sonata.
1940 Richard Robbins – American-born film composer (d.2012); he was an integral part of the highly successful Ismail Merchant/James Ivory team, having scored nearly every Merchant Ivory film from The Europeans (1979) onwards.