u/Little_Grapefruit636

Rossi's birthday is the shakiest one I'll post here, so let me explain the reasoning instead of just stating it.

No birth record survives for him. The date of August 19, 1570 comes from a piece of number-puzzle detective work: his first published collection, a set of canzonettas from 1589, contains exactly nineteen pieces, and the first letters of the first seven spell out VIVAT S R, "long live Salamone Rossi." Musicologist Don Harrán read the nineteen as a coded reference to Rossi's age at the time of publication, and worked backward to 1570. A more recent paper argues the acrostic instead marks a Jewish coming-of-age at twenty-five, which would put his birth in 1564 instead, so even the year isn't settled.

What's solid is the work itself. Rossi composed at the Gonzaga court in Mantua alongside Monteverdi, and wrote some of the earliest Hebrew-texted polyphony, settings of psalms for multiple voices collected as Hashirim asher li-Shlomo (The Songs of Solomon), along with early instrumental trio sonatas. He's thought to have died around 1630, possibly in the plague that followed the sack of Mantua, though that isn't fully certain either.

Music of Salamone Rossi (playlist): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6-gAiQzhQYhq5wT18aIx1amtV8Hghfj6

Enescu was the leading figure in Romanian classical music of his generation, not just as a composer but as an active violinist, pianist, and conductor throughout his career.

His music blends Romanian folk material with a late Romantic harmonic language, audible both in the compact Ballade for Violin and in the much larger Symphony No. 2, written between 1912 and 1914.

Ballade for Violin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B\_jvGUrKxZQ

Symphony No. 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKQPsVPWNK8

Salieri was born on this day in Legnago, in the Republic of Venice, and spent most of his career in Vienna, where he held the post of Imperial Kapellmeister for more than three decades. His students there included Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt.

The popular image of Salieri today comes almost entirely from Amadeus, which dramatizes a rivalry with Mozart that has no solid documentary basis. In his own time, he was simply one of the most successful composers working in Vienna, with operas performed across Europe and a court position he held until 1824, a year before his death.

Adagio from Piano Concerto in B-flat Major: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv9ooDrxTm8

Francesco da Milano was nicknamed "Il Divino" by contemporaries, for what they considered unmatched mastery of the lute. He served at the papal court in Rome under three successive popes.

His death date is actually disputed — sources give either January 2 or April 15, 1543, and even the location isn't certain. What isn't in question is his influence: his fantasias and ricercars were copied and printed across Europe for more than a hundred years after his death, at a time when instrumental music valued as its own art form, rather than as accompaniment to dance or song, was still a fairly new idea.

Lute Works (selection of Fantasias & Ricercars), performed by Caius Hera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHGWJ-jZ6NU

Porpora was one of the most sought-after singing teachers of the eighteenth century, training Farinelli and Caffarelli among others, while also composing prolifically for the opera stage. In 1735 he wrote Polifemo for London's Opera of the Nobility, the company set up in direct rivalry with Handel's, with Farinelli in the cast. Its aria "Alto Giove" is the piece most listeners encounter him through today.

Alto Giove: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A5KyAJ-xnw

Pierné is mostly remembered today for one piece, his Konzertstück for Harp and Orchestra — but his bigger role in music history happened from the podium, not the page. He studied composition with Massenet and organ with Franck at the Paris Conservatoire, won the Prix de Rome at nineteen, and in 1890 succeeded Franck as organist at Sainte-Clotilde.

From 1910 to 1934 he was principal conductor of the Concerts Colonne in Paris. In that role he conducted the premieres of Debussy's Ibéria, the first suite from Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, and Stravinsky's The Firebird — three works that would end up far more famous than anything he wrote himself.

Konzertstück for Harp and Orchestra, Op. 39: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ53z1A4BfM

Flute Sonata, Op. 36 – II. Allegretto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtnljQDu-6c

Vietnam-born French composer and violinist. This was my first encounter with Fauré's chamber music — this piece, in this performance: Jean Hubeau and his colleagues, in what was practically the definitive recording of the 1970s.

Fauré – Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15: III. Adagio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUPd7t25VUs

New Jersey-born pianist, captured here in a 1968 rehearsal of Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand — one of his last recorded performances before his death from lung cancer the following year, at 42.

Rehearsal footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utxtl-tuuIo

Brahms — 3 Intermezzi, Op. 117 (Julius Katchen)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMnGu675ThQ

English composer and pianist Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji wrote some of the most extreme works in the piano repertoire — his Opus Clavicembalisticum (1930) runs over four hours. After receiving hostile reviews, he banned public performances of his music in 1936; the ban wasn't lifted until the 1970s.

Piece: In the Hothouse for Piano (1918)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdwCj8jLKdU

French composer Pierre Schaeffer trained as an engineer, and while working at French Radio in the late 1940s he began building compositions entirely out of recorded sounds — turntables, trains, percussion. His 1948 Cinq études de bruits is considered the founding work of musique concrète.

Piece: Bilude (1979), based on a theme by Bach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2U-WKmeJSM

On August 13, 1876, the first Bayreuth Festival opened with the premiere of Das Rheingold, conducted by Hans Richter. It was the start of the first complete staged performance of Wagner's Ring cycle, a project that took him roughly a quarter-century from first sketches to premiere. The audience included European royalty and other prominent composers of the day.

The festival wasn't the triumph it aimed to be — it closed deeply in debt, and financial trouble kept Wagner from staging a second Bayreuth Festival until Parsifal's premiere in 1882.

Ring - Solti (2022 mastering)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs1oeJCZ4VmCSVMu91rW4ZGfzO\_blE9PP

Best spent nearly forty years as organist of Liverpool's St. George's Hall, giving recitals three times a week to whoever showed up. His repertoire ran to some 5,000 pieces, and in his final years he edited Bach's complete organ works.

Digging around for his 200th, I found his own organ transcription of the Larghetto from Mozart's Clarinet Quintet. It's wonderful — it sounds like it could have been written for organ from the start, gentle and warm in a way that feels completely natural on the instrument.

Mozart, Clarinet Quintet: Larghetto (organ transcription by W.T. Best): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAeFbB3lyX8

Five Short Preludes (Walter Gatti, organ): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOeiTLaiquM

David Munrow was born in Birmingham, England, on August 12, 1942. He founded the Early Music Consort of London in 1967, and through recordings, broadcasts, and concerts did more than almost anyone to bring medieval and Renaissance instruments back into public hearing.

He died in 1976, at 33.

David Munrow & The Early Music Consort Of London - Renaissance Suite - The Dream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1UkI\_d0n7g

Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber was baptized on August 12, 1644, in what is now the Czech Republic; his actual birth date wasn't recorded, only the baptism.

He's best known today for his Rosary Sonatas, a set of violin sonatas that call for a different tuning of the strings in nearly every movement (scordatura), producing a distinct sonority for almost each piece in the set.

Rosary Sonatas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq-SrUZUluU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IBlivYSrBo

Giovanni Legrenzi was baptized in Clusone, near Bergamo, on August 12, 1626. No record of his actual birth date survives, only the baptism, which is why sources list this date with that caveat rather than as a straightforward birthday.

He went on to become one of the leading composers of the Venetian school, eventually serving as maestro di cappella at St Mark's Basilica. This year is the 400th anniversary of his baptism, marked by a season-long festival in his hometown, Musica Mirabilis, running from August through October 2026.

Sonata a due, tre, cinque e sei istromenti, Opera ottava: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32090VgbI\_U

Ginette Neveu was born in Paris on August 11, 1919. At fifteen she won first prize at the 1935 International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition, ahead of David Oistrakh (then 27), who took second.

She died at 30, when the Air France flight carrying her to a concert tour of the US crashed in the Azores on October 28, 1949. Everyone aboard was killed, including her brother Jean-Paul, a pianist who had become her regular accompanist.

A recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto, made with Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt and the NDR Symphony Orchestra about a year before her death, is still widely regarded as one of the finest ever committed to record.

Brahms Violin Concerto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS2VSYV9n44

Glazunov was born in St. Petersburg and became one of the leading voices of Russian Romanticism — lyrical and elegant, less overtly nationalist than the "Mighty Five" composers who came before him.

If you only have time for one piece, the Violin Concerto (1904) is probably the one to reach for. For something shorter, the Meditation offers a quieter few minutes.

Violin Concerto (Hilary Hahn, live): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq8oxIgyp8E

Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8fj7qOPYCw