1769 in music

Events

• Luigi Boccherini goes to Madrid as the court chamber music composer to the Infante Don Luis.
• Wenzel Pichl becomes musical director for Count Ludwig Hartig in Prague
• Charles Burney receives an honorary doctorate in music from the University of Oxford.
• Antonio Maria Gaspare Sacchini arrives in Venice.
• The Concert des Amateurs is founded by François-Joseph Gossec in Paris.
• James Hook is appointed composer to Marylebone Gardens.
• December – 13-year-old Mozart embarks on a tour of Italy with his father, beginning in Verona. In Rome he hears Allegri's Miserere for the first time, returns home and copies it down note for note.

Opera

• Jean-François Cailhava – Les Etrenes de l'amour
• Christoph Willibald von Gluck – Le feste d'Apollo
• André Grétry
• *Lucile
• *Le tableau parlant
• Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny – Le déserteur
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – La finta semplice
• Josef Mysliveček – Demofoonte
• Giovanni Paisiello
• *L’arabo cortese, R.1.22
• *Don Chisciotte della Mancia, R.1.21
• Niccolò Piccinni – ''Lo sposo burlato''

Classical music

• Carl Friedrich Abel – 6 String Quartets, Op. 8
• Johann Albrechtsberger – Concerto for Alto Trombone and Orchestra in B-flat major
• Charles Avison – Six Concertos in Seven Parts, for Four Violins, One Alto Viola, a Violoncello, and a Thorough Bass for the Harpsichord, Op. 10
• Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach
• *Die Israeliten in der Wüste, H.775
• *Harpsichord Concerto in E-flat major, H.469
• Luigi Boccherini
• *6 Violin Sonatas, G. 25–30
• *6 String Quartets, G. 165–170
• João de Sousa Carvalho – L'Amore Industrioso
• François Joseph Gossec – Sei quartetti per flauto e violino o sia per due violini, alto e basso, op. 14
• Joseph Haydn
• *String Quartets, Op. 9
• *Violin Concerto in G major, Hob. VIIa:4
• *Piano Trio in F major, Hob.XV:2
• Ignaz Holzbauer – 3 Symphonies, Op. 4
• Johann Philipp Kirnberger – Vermischte Musikalien
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• *Cassation in D major, K. 100/62a
• *Te Deum in C
• Pasquale Pericoli – 6 Cello Sonatas
• Johann Heinrich Rolle – Der Tod Abels
• Johann Baptist Wanhal
• *Symphony in A minor, Bryan a2
• *Quartet for Strings in B-flat major, Op. 2, No. 3
• Johann Adolph Hasse
• *L'Armonica
• *La Gelosia

Methods and theory writings

• François-Joseph Lécuyer – ''Principes de l'art du chant''

Births

• January 2
• *Thomas Haigh, arranger and musician
• *Nannette Streicher, German piano maker, composer, music educator and writer
• January 9 – William Robert Spencer, librettist and poet
• February 12 – Friedrich Rochlitz, music editor and writer
• February 13 – Ivan Krylov, librettist and writer
• February 17 – Johannes Baptista von Albertini, librettist and botanist
• March 7 – Josef Alois Ladurner, Austrian composer and music educator
• March 8 – Katerina Veronika Anna Dusíkova, Bohemian singer, harpist, pianist and composer
• March 25 – Salvatore Viganò, choreographer, dancer and composer
• March 28 – Schack von Staffeldt, librettist and poet
• April 11 – Johann Georg Lickl, organist and composer
• April 25 – Charles Borremans, violinist and conductor
• June 1 – Józef Elsner, composer and music teacher, Chopin's future teacher
• June 5 – Marianne Kirchgessner, German musician
• June 14 – Domenico Della-Maria Italian and French composer
• July 4 – Louis-Luc Loiseau de Persuis, violinist, conductor and composer
• July 23 – Alexey Nikolayevich Titov, violinist and composer
• July 29 – Louis-Benoît Picard, librettist and writer
• August 14
• *Richard Barry, composer and English rake
• *Friedrich Dülon, flautist
• August 30 – Bonifazio Asioli, Italian composer
• September 8 – Marie-Martin Marcel Marin, composer
• September 12 – Reginald Spofforth, organist, conductor and composer
• November 12 – Amelia Opie, librettist and author
• December 26 – Ernst Moritz Arndt, librettist and antisemitic author
• Date unknown –
• *Jean-Jacques Grasset, composer and violinist
• *Charles Hague, composer
• *Daniil Kashin, Russian composer

Deaths

• January 2 – James Oswald, composer, 57
• February 21 – William Falconer, librettist and writer
• April 3 – Gerhard Tersteegen, librettist and theologian
• June 7 – Antoine-Alexandre-Henri Poinsinet, librettist, drowned
• August 17 – Vasily Trediakovsky, librettist and poet
• September – Henri Hemsch, harpsichord maker, 69
• December 6 – William Felton, composer, 56
• December 13 – Christian Fürchtegott Gellert, librettist and poet
• date unknown – Antonio Palomba, Italian opera librettist, poet, harpsichordist and music educator, 63