Year 1620 (MDCXX) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Saturday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar.
Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (c.1620–23 – between 29 February and 20 March 1680) was an Austrian composer and violinist of the Baroque era. Almost nothing is known about his early years, but he seems to have arrived in Vienna during the 1630s, and remained composer and musician at the Habsburg court for the rest of his life. He enjoyed a close relationship with Emperor Leopold I, was ennobled by him, and rose to the rank of Kapellmeister in 1679. He died during a plague epidemic only months after getting the position.
Schmelzer was one the most important violinists of the period, and an important influence on later German and Austrian composers for violin. He made substantial contributions to the development of violin technique and promoted the use and development of sonata and suite forms in Austria and South Germany. He was the leading Austrian composer of his generation, and an influence on Heinrich Ignaz Biber.
Heinrich Schmelzer was a Hauptsturmführer (Captain) in the Waffen SS who was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves during World War II. He joined the SS-Pioniersturmbann in June, 1935 and in September 1939 was a section commander in the 3rd Company. Later as an SS-Oberscharführer (Technical Sergeant) he was the half platoon leader in the same 3rd Company, during April 1941. He moved to the Motorcycle Battalion as engineer reconnaissance platoon leader between May and August 1941. In December 1943 he was given command of the mixed Pionier Company of the Kampfgruppe Das Reich which he led until the forming of the 4th Heavy Company which he commanded until it was dissolved in August 1944. At that time he became the 2nd Company Commander until Christmas 1944, then moved to the 3rd Company which he commanded until the end of the war. Schmelzer won the Oakleaves for his actions as sector commander of the Das Reich battlegroup near Cielle and Laroche, France on 7 January.
Antonio de Cabezón (30 March 1510 – 26 March 1566) was a Spanish Renaissance composer and organist. Blind from childhood, he quickly rose to prominence as performer and was eventually employed by the royal family. He was among the most important composers of his time and the first major Iberian keyboard composer.
Cabezón was born in Castrillo Matajudíos, a municipality near Burgos, in the north of Spain. Nothing is known about his formative years. He became blind in early childhood, and he may have been educated at the Palencia Cathedral by the organist there, García de Baeza. At the time, the country was slowly entering its Golden Age. On 14 March 1516 Charles V was proclaimed King of Castile and of Aragon jointly with his mother, the first time the crowns of Castile and Aragon were united under the same king. After the death of his paternal grandfather, Maximilian, in 1519, Charles also inherited the Habsburg lands in Austria, and later went on to become Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and one of the most powerful monarchs in the world.
Carlo Saraceni (Venice 1579-Venice, 16 June 1620) was an Italian early-Baroque painter, whose reputation as a "first-class painter of the second rank" was improved with the publication of a modern monograph in 1968.
Though he was born in Venice, his paintings are distinctly Roman in style; he moved to Rome in 1598, joining the Accademia di San Luca in 1607. He never visited France, though he spoke fluent French and had French followers and a French wardrobe. His painting, however, was influenced at first by the densely forested, luxuriantly enveloping landscape settings for human figures of Adam Elsheimer, a German painter resident in Rome; "there are few landscapes by Saraceni which have not been attributed to Elsheimer," Malcolm Waddingham observed, and Anna Ottani Cavina has suggested the influences may have travelled both ways. and Elsheimer's small cabinet paintings on copper offered a format that Saraceni employed in six landscape panels illustrating The Flight of Icarus; in Moses and the Daughters of Jethro and Mars and Venus.