Birthdays in Music
- Jan 21 Henri Duparc, French composer
- Feb 6 Luigi Mancinelli, composer
- Feb 23 Thomas Paine Westendorf, composer
- Feb 27 Hubert Parry, English musicologist and composer (Jerusalem), born in Bournemouth, England (d. 1918)
- Mar 9 Martin Pierre Joseph Marsick, Belgian composer, born in Jupille-sur-Meuse, Liège, Belgium (d. 1924)
- Mar 12 Cyrill Kistler, composer
- Mar 17 Horace Wadham Nicholl, composer
- Mar 31 John Henry Roberts, composer
- Apr 28 Ludvig Schytte, composer
- May 5 Adalbert von Goldschmidt, composer
- Jun 1 Otto Valdemar Malling, composer
- Jul 16 Henri[cus A] Viotta, Dutch conductor/composer (Lexicon of Music)
- Jul 27 Vladimir de Pachmann, Russian-German pianist
- Jul 31 Jean Robert Planquette, French composer (Bells of Corneville), born in Paris (d. 1903)
- Aug 1 František Kmoch, Czech composer and conductor
- Sep 5 Manuel Giro, Spanish composer, born in Barcelona (d. 1916)
- Nov 24 Lilli Lehmann, opera singer
- Dec 17 Frederick Grant Gleason, composer
- Dec 18 Karl Schroder, composer
- Dec 21 Edward Everett Rice, composer
- Dec 30 Mary Frances Allitsen, composer
Weddings in Music
- Mar 20 King Louis I of Bayern abdicates to marry dancer Lola Montez
Deaths in Music
- Jan 5 Ferdinando Orlandi, composer, dies at 73
- Apr 8 Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti, Italian composer, dies at 50
- Apr 24 Francois van Campenhout, Belgian composer (Brabanconne), dies at 69
- Jul 22 Karl Guhr, German composer, dies at 60
- Aug 6 Nicola Vaccai, Italian composer, dies at 58
- Aug 15 Timothy Olmstead, early American composer, dies at 88
- Sep 11 Henri-Philippe Gerard, Belgian composer, dies at 87
- Oct 4 Louis Massonneau, composer, dies at 82
- Oct 27 Alexander Egorovich Varlamov, composer, dies at 46
- Nov 23 Alfred Julius Becher, Austrian journalist and composer, dies at 45
- Dec 25 Johan Erik Nordblom, Swedish composer, dies at 60
- Dec 31 Oliver Shaw, early American composer, dies at 69