Tuesday, February 3, 2026

Today's Birthdays

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594)
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847)
Sidney Lanier (1842-1881)
Priaulx Rainier (1903-1986)
Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975)
Blas Galindo Dimas (1910-1993)
Jehan Alain (1911-1940)
Helga Dernesch (1939)

and

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
Georg Trakl (1887-1914)
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Alvar Aalto (1898-1978)
James Michener (1907-1997)
Simone Weil (1909-1943)
Richard Yates (1926-1992)
Paul Auster (1947)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1844, Berlioz's "Roman Carnival" Overture, in Paris was premiered at the Salle Herz, with the composer conducting.

Monday, February 2, 2026

Today's Birthdays

Louis Marchand (1669-1732)
Leo Fall (1873-1925)
Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962)
Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987)
Stan Getz (1927-1991)
Skip Battin (1934-2003)
Martina Arroyo (1937)
Sir Andrew Davis (1944)
Ursula Oppens (1944)
Eliane Aberdam (1964)

And

James Joyce (1882-1941)
James Dickey (1923-1997)
Tom Smothers (1937-2023)

Sunday, February 1, 2026

Today's Birthdays

Francesco Stradivari (1671-1743)
Francesco Maria Veracini (1690-1768)
Johan Joachim Agrell (1701-1765)
Victor Herbert (1859-1924)
Julius Conus (1869-1942)
Clara Butt (1872-1936)
Sándor Veress (1907-1999)
Mozart Camargo Guarnieri (1907-1993)
Renata Tebaldi (1922-2004)
Ursula Mamlok (1928-2016)
Michael G. Shapiro (1951)

and

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
S. J. Perelman (1904-1979)
Muriel Spark (1918- 2006)
Galway Kinnell (1927-2014)

Friday, January 30, 2026

Today's Birthdays

François Devienne (1759-1803)
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Caroline Miolan‑Carvalho (1827-1895)
James Huneker (1857-1921)
Ernest John Moeran (1894-1950)
Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940)
Nathan Milstein (1904-1992)
Benjamin Frankel (1906-1973)
Alan Lomax (1915-2002)
Jaap Schröder (1925-2020)
Odetta (1930-2008)
Philip Glass (1937)
Stephen Cleobury (1948)
Donna Summer (1948-2012)
George Benjamin (1960)
Jennifer Higdon (1962)

and

Henri Matisse (1869-1954)
Zane Grey (1872-1939)
John O'Hara (1905-1970)
Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

Today's Birtdays

Johann Joachim Quantz (1697-1773)
Charles Martin Loeffler (1861-1935)
Walter Damrosch (1862-1950)
Mitch Leigh (1928-2014)
Lynn Harrell (1944-2020)
Silvia Marcovici (1952)
Gerald Finley (1960)

and

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)
Barbara Tuchman (1912-1989)
Shirley Hazzard (1931-2016)
Richard Brautigan (1935-1984)

Thursday, January 29, 2026

Today's Birthdays

Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715-1777)
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782-1871)
Frederic Hymen Cowen (1852-1935)
Frederick Delius (1862-1934)
Havergal Brian (1876-1972)
Blanche Selva (1884-1942)
Luigi Nono (1924-1990)
Myer Fredman (1932-2014)
Malcolm Binns (1936)
Cho-Liang Lin (1960)

and

W. C. Fields (1880-1946
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
Edward Abbey (1927-1989)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1826 was the premiere of Schubert's String Quartet in D minor, "Death and the Maiden," as a unrehearsed reading at the Vienna home of Karl and Franz Hacker, two amateur musicians. Schubert, who usually played viola on such occasions, could not perform since he was busy copying out the parts and making last-minute corrections.
and from The Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1845 that Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” was published in the New York Evening Mirror. It was a huge sensation: Abraham Lincoln memorized it and Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a fan letter to Poe. He was paid $9 for “The Raven,” and it was extensively reprinted without his permission, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had written an unsigned article for the Mirror before about copyright law saying, “Without an international copyright law, American authors may as well cut their throats,” but there was no such law until 1891. His income in 1844 was $424; in 1845, he made $549.

Wednesday, January 28, 2026

Today's Birthdays

Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni (1757-1821)
Ferdinand Herold (1791-1833)
Alexander Mackenzie (1822-1892)
Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
Vittorio Rieti (1898-1994)
Michael Head (1900-1976)
Ronnie Scott (1927-1996)
Acker Bilk (1929-2014)
Sir John Tavener (1944-2013)
Richard Danielpour (1956)

and

Colette (1873-1954)
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)
Claes Oldenburg (1929-2022)
David Lodge (1935-2025)

Tuesday, January 27, 2026

Today's Birthdays

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Juan Crisostomo Arriage (1806-1826)
Edouard Lalo (1823-1892)
Jerome Kern (1885-1945)
Jack Brymer (1915-2003)
Skitch Henderson (1918-2005)
Helmut Zacharias (1920-2002)
Fritz Spiegl (1926-2003)
John Ogdon (1937-1989)
Jean-Philippe Collard (1948)
Emanuel Pahud (1970)
James Ehnes (1976)

and

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)
Dmitry Mandeleyev (1834-1907)
Mikhail Baryshnikov (1948)