Events
- January 6 – Johannes Brahms' Piano Sonata no. 3 is premiered in Vienna, played by the 29-year-old composer. Richard Wagner is among the audience. [1]
- January 29 – Established composer Giacomo Meyerbeer presents the young Jacques Offenbach to Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, the queen consort of Prussia. [1]
- February 8 – Richard Wagner conducts a concert of his own music in Prague; Antonín Dvořák is a member of the orchestra. [1]
- February-April – Richard Wagner conducts a concert of his own music in Saint Petersburg. Tchaikovsky and César Cui attend. Works performed included excerpts from Tristan und Isolde, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre and the overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
- February 25 – Johann Strauss II is appointed musical director of the Hofball. [1]
- March 15 – In Vienna, Franz Schubert's Der Entfernten D.331 for a male vocal quartet is performed in public for the first time, 35 years after the composer's death. [1]
- April 19 – Hector Berlioz is presented with the Cross of the Order of Hohenzollern. [1]
- May 10 – Violinist Joseph Joachim marries contralto Amalie Schneeweiss.
- May 12 – Richard Wagner takes up residence at Penzing, near Vienna. [1]
- June 20 – Franz Liszt takes up residence at the Dominican monastery of the Madonna del Rosario, Monte Mario, near Rome. [1]
- July 11 – Pope Pius IX visits Franz Liszt at Monte Mario, and the two hold an impromptu concert. [1]
- August 3 – 21-year-old Jules Massenet is awarded the First Grand Prix de Rome for his setting of the cantata David Rizzio. [1]
- September 30 – Georges Bizet's opera, Les pêcheurs de perles receives its première at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris.
- November 2 – John Knowles Paine performs at the inauguration of a new organ at the Music Hall in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. [1]
- November 4 – Les Troyens , opera by Hector Berlioz, debuts, also at the Théâtre Lyrique
- December 13 – Modest Mussorgsky becomes collegiate secretary at the chief engineering department of the Russian Ministry of Communications. [1] In the same year, he begins work on an opera, Salammbô, which is never finished.
