1863 in music
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.
- January 29 – Established composer Giacomo Meyerbeer presents the young Jacques Offenbach to Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, the queen consort of Prussia.
- February 8 – Richard Wagner conducts a concert of his own music in Prague; Antonín Dvořák is a member of the orchestra.
- 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.
- 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.
- April 19 – Hector Berlioz is presented with the Cross of the Order of Hohenzollern.
- May 10 – Violinist Joseph Joachim marries contralto Amalie Schneeweiss.
- May 12 – Richard Wagner takes up residence at Penzing, near Vienna.
- June 20 – Franz Liszt takes up residence at the Dominican monastery of the Madonna del Rosario, Monte Mario, near Rome.
- July 11 – Pope Pius IX visits Franz Liszt at Monte Mario, and the two hold an impromptu concert.
- August 3 – 21-year-old Jules Massenet is awarded the First Grand Prix de Rome for his setting of the cantata David Rizzio.
- 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.
- 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. In the same year, he begins work on an opera, Salammbô, which is never finished.
Published popular music
Classical music
Opera
Musical theater
Ixion London production opened at the Royalty Theatre on September 28 and ran for 153 performances
Births
- February 4 – Pauline de Ahna, operatic soprano
- February 5 – Armand Parent, composer
- February 13 – Hugo Becker, composer
- February 19 – Emánuel Moór, composer
- February – George J. Gaskin, tenor
- March 20 – Ernesto Nazareth, pianist and composer
- March 21 – Hugo Kaun, conductor, composer and music teacher
- April 3 – Wilhelm Middelschulte, composer
- April 4 – Blanche Marchesi, operatic contralto
- April 9 – Ernst Heuser, German composer
- April 19 – Felix Blumenfeld, Russian composer, pianist
- May 10
- *Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, Bengali writer, painter, violin player and composer
- *Charles René, composer
- May 12
- *Charles Bordes, composer
- *Henry Expert, musicologist
- June 2 – Felix von Weingartner, composer, conductor
- June 5
- *Arthur Somervell
- *Adolf Schuppan, composer
- June 13 – Josef Venantius Wöss, composer
- June 16 – Paul Antonin Vidal, composer
- July 20 – W. H. Neidlinger, composer
- July 28 – Carl Adolph Preyer, composer, pianist
- August 11 – Árpád Szendy, composer
- August 16 – Gabriel Pierné, composer
- September 2 – Isidor Philipp, composer
- September 15 – Horatio Parker, composer
- November 1 – Alfred Reisenauer, composer
- December 7 – Pietro Mascagni, composer
- December 17 – Ion Vidu, composer
- December 24 – Enrique Fernández Arbós, violinist, conductor and composer
Deaths
- February 4 – Giuseppe Lillo, composer, 38
- February 25 – Laure Cinti-Damoreau, operatic soprano, 62
- March 23 – Charles William Glover, composer
- April 8 – Joseph Netherclift, composer, 70
- May 14
- *Ferdinand Beyer, composer
- *Émile Prudent, composer, 46
- June – Filippo Colini, operatic baritone, 51
- June 7 – Franz Xaver Gruber, composer of "Silent Night", 75
- June 12 – Pietro Alfieri, Roman Catholic music writer, 61
- June 20 – Luigi Felice Rossi, composer, 57
- June 22 – Carl Schuberth, composer
- July 23 – Sophie Lebrun, pianist and composer, 82
- August 5 – Adolf Friedrich Hesse, composer, 53