# 1868 in music
## 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.

## Published popular music

* "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

## Classical music

* 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

## Opera

* "Morgenlich leuchtend im rosigen Schein"
* 1910 Edison Records recording of Walther's Prize Song from Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg by Leo Slezak.
* Problems playing this file? See media help.
* Arrigo Boito – Mefistofele
* 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

## Musical theatre

* 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

## Births

* January 6 – Vittorio Monti, Italian violinist, composer and conductor (d. 1922)
* 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)
* August 7 – Granville Bantock, composer (d. 1946)
* 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)
* Early? (or November 24?) – Scott Joplin, African American ragtime composer, pianist (d. 1917)

## Deaths

* January 3 – Moritz Hauptmann, composer (b. 1792)
* February 25 – Sophie Schröder, actress and singer (b. 1781)
* March 2 – Carl Eberwein, composer (b. 1786)
* April 3 – Franz Berwald, composer (b. 1796)
* 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)
* November 13 – Gioacchino Rossini, composer (b. 1792)
* November 25 – Franz Brendel, music critic (b. 1811)
* December 23 – Karl Ferdinand Adam, composer and cantor (b. 1806)
* date unknown
** Berl Broder, singer and troubadour (b. 1815)
** Erik Jonsson Helland, Hardanger fiddle maker (b. 1816)