1868 in music explained

Events

January 5 – Max Bruch's Violin Concerto no. 1 in G minor is first performed in its revised version by Joseph Joachim in Bremen with Karl Martin Rheinthaler conducting.
February 3 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 1 ("Winter Daydreams") is first performed in Moscow at a Russian Musical Society concert (having been premièred in Saint Petersburg).
April 10 (Good Friday) – The six movement version of Brahms' A German Requiem (Ein deutsches Requiem) is premièred in Bremen Cathedral with Brahms conducting and Julius Stockhausen as the baritone soloist.
June 21 – Richard Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg debuts at the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater, Munich with Hans von Bülow conducting.
August 15 – Teatro Giuseppe Verdi opens in Busseto, Italy.
October – Modest Mussorgsky begins work on his opera Boris Godunov, which is completed six years later.
December 21 – The newly rebuilt Gaiety Theatre, London (in the West End) reopens with operatic parodies, including the burlesque Robert the Devil, or The Nun, the Dun, and the Son of a Gun, setting new lyrics by W. S. Gilbert to popular continental opera tunes.
Aristide Cavaillé-Coll's organ at Notre-Dame de Paris is dedicated.
Edvard Grieg writes his Piano Concerto while staying on Zealand.

"Captain Jinks"
"Come Back To Erin" by Claribel
"Crown Him with Many Crowns" w. Matthew Bridges (1851) m. George Job Elvey (1868)
"Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still" w. J.E. Carpenter m. W.T. Wrighton
"I Cannot Sing The Old Songs" w.m. Claribel
"Little Footsteps" w. Michael Bennett Leavitt m. James A. Barney
"The Man on the Flying Trapeze" by George Leybourne, Gaston Lyle, & Alfred Lee (first published the previous year)
"The Sweet By and By" w. S. Fillmore m. Joseph P. Webster
"Walking In The Zoo" w. Hugh Willoughby Sweny m. Alfred Lee
"What a Friend We Have in Jesus" w. Joseph M. Scriven (1855) m. Charles C. Converse (1868)
"The Whispering Hope" by Septimus Winner
"The Widow In The Cottage By The Sea" w.m. Charles A. White
"Yield Not To Temptation" w.m. Horatio R. Palmer

Jean-Baptiste Accolay – Concerto for Violin No. 1 in A minor
Georges Bizet – Variations chromatiques de concert for piano
Ignaz Brüll – Piano Concerto No. 2 in C, op. 24
Johannes Brahms
- Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45
- 5 Lieder, op. 49
Anton Bruckner - Symphony No. 1
Camille Saint-Saëns – Piano Concerto No. 2
Johann Strauss II – Tales from the Vienna Woods
- - Peter Tchaikovsky Songs Without Words
- Fatum

Arrigo Boito – Mefistofele^[1]
Gaetano Braga – Ruy Blas
John Thomas Douglass – Virginia's Ball performed (once) at the Stuyvesant Institute on Broadway in New York City, generally regarded as the first opera written by a black composer
Gialdino Gialdini – Rosmunda premiered March 5 at the Teatro Pergola, Florence
Jacques Offenbach – The Island of Tulipatan
Richard Wagner – Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, premièred in the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater, Munich

La Belle Hélène (Music by Jacques Offenbach Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy) New York production opened at Pike's Opera House on November 2 and ran for 14 performances
Ixion Broadway production opened at Wood's Museum and Metropolitan on September 28 and ran for 120 performances. Starring Lydia Thompson.
The White Fawn Broadway production opened at Niblo's Garden on January 17 and ran for 176 performances

January 6 – Vittorio Monti, Italian violinist, composer and conductor (d. 1922)^[2]
January 24 – Frank Peabody Atherton, composer, educator (d. 1911)
January 26 – Juventino Rosas, composer, band leader (d. 1894)
April 13 – John Blackwood McEwen, composer, educator (d. 1948)
April 19 – Max von Schillings, composer, conductor (d. 1933)
April 22 – José Vianna da Motta, composer, pianist (d. 1948)
July 19 – Florence Foster Jenkins, soprano (d. 1944)^[3]
August 7 – Granville Bantock, composer (d. 1946)^[4]
August 21 – Vess Ossman, ragtime banjo player (d. 1923)
September 8 – Seth Weeks, African American jazz mandolinist, composer, arranger and bandleader (d. 1953)
September 12 – Jan Brandts Buys, composer (d. 1933)
November 30 – Ernest Newman, critic (d. 1959)^[5]
Early? (or November 24?) – Scott Joplin, African American ragtime composer, pianist (d. 1917)

January 3 – Moritz Hauptmann, composer (b. 1792)^[6]
February 25 – Sophie Schröder, actress and singer (b. 1781)
March 2 – Carl Eberwein, composer (b. 1786)
April 3 – Franz Berwald, composer (b. 1796)^[7]
April 26 – Karel Strakatý, singer (b. 1804)
June 5 – Anselm Hüttenbrenner, composer (b. 1794)
July 6 – Samuel Lover, songwriter (b. 1797)
August 11 – Halfdan Kjerulf, composer (b. 1815)^[8]
November 13 – Gioacchino Rossini, composer (b. 1792)^[9]
November 25 – Franz Brendel, music critic (b. 1811)^[10]
December 23 – Karl Ferdinand Adam, composer and cantor (b. 1806)^[11]
date unknown
- Berl Broder, singer and troubadour (b. 1815)
- Erik Jonsson Helland, Hardanger fiddle maker (b. 1816)

Book: Lorna Fitzsimmons. Charles McKnight. The Oxford Handbook of Faust in Music. 2019. Oxford University Press. 978-0-19-993518-5. 306.
Book: Philip James Bone. The Guitar and Mandolin: Biographies of Celebrated Players and Composers. Schott. 1914. 243.
Book: Nicholas Martin. Jasper Rees. Florence Foster Jenkins. 5 May 2016. Pan Macmillan. 978-1-5098-2469-4. 12.
Book: H. Orsmond Anderton. Granville Bantock. 1915. John Lane. 14.
Book: Ernest Newman. Fanfare for Ernest Newman. A. Barker. 1955. 2. 9781404792340.
Book: The Musical World. 1868. J. Alfredo Novello. 60.
Book: BBC Music Magazine. 2000. BBC Magazines. 45–47.
Book: Arthur Hubbell Palmer. Poems and Songs of Björnstjerne Björnson. 25 September 2019. BoD – Books on Demand. 978-3-7340-8923-7. 174.
Book: Edward Ledger. The Era Almanack, Dramatic & Musical. 1874. Era. 2.
Book: Franz Liszt. From Paris to Rome. Years of travel as virtuoso. 1894. Charles Scribner's Sons. 164.
Book: Albert Ernest Wier. The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians: In One Volume. 1938. Macmillan. 11.