Petr Eben (22 January 1929 – 24 October 2007) was a Czech composer of modern and contemporary classical music, organist and choirmaster.

Born in Žamberk in northeastern Bohemia, Eben spent his youth in Český Krumlov in southern Bohemia. There he studied piano, and later cello and organ. The years of German occupation and World War II were especially difficult for him. Although Eben was raised as a Catholic, his father was a Jew and in 1943 Eben was expelled from school and interned by the Nazis in Buchenwald for the duration of the war.

After the war he was admitted to the Prague Academy for Music where he studied piano with František Rauch and composition with Pavel Bořkovec. He graduated in 1954. Beginning in 1955 Eben taught for many years in the music history department at Charles University in Prague. In 1955 he was appointed to the staff of the Music Department of the University of Prague. From 1978 - 1979 he was professor of composition at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester. In 1990 he became professor of composition at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and President of the Prague Spring Festival.

Dame Gillian Constance Weir DBE (born 17 January 1941) is a New Zealand organist.

Gillian Weir was born in Martinborough, New Zealand in 1941. When she was 19, she was a co-winner of the Auckland Star Piano Competition, playing Mozart. A year later she won a scholarship of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in London. There, she studied with the concert pianist Cyril Smith and the renowned organist Ralph Downes, and in her second year (1964) won the prestigious St. Albans International Organ Competition.

Her performance in 1964 of a work by Olivier Messiaen came at a time when his music was little-known outside France, and she became particularly associated with this composer; she has several times performed his complete works in series. Her recording for Collins Classics was hailed as "one of the major recording triumphs of the century" in In Tune Magazine.^{[citation needed]}

Her pre-eminent position as a Messiaen interpreter has been further underlined by her CD release of his complete organ works to great acclaim as well as by her contribution to Faber's The Messiaen Companion and other publications. At Messiaen's request she gave the first UK performance in January 1973 of the Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité at the Royal Festival Hall from the composer's manuscript, given to her after he gave the world premiere in Washington D.C.