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 is first performed in Moscow at a Russian Musical Society concert.
• April 10 – The six movement version of Brahms' A German 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 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 m. George Job Elvey
• "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
• "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 m. Charles C. Converse
• "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

• Arrigo Boito – Mefistofele
• Gaetano Braga – Ruy Blas
• John Thomas Douglass – Virginia's Ball performed 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

Births

• January 6 – Vittorio Monti, Italian violinist, composer and conductor
• January 24 – Frank Peabody Atherton, composer, educator
• January 26 – Juventino Rosas, composer, band leader
• April 13 – John Blackwood McEwen, composer, educator
• April 19 – Max von Schillings, composer, conductor
• April 22 – José Vianna da Motta, composer, pianist
• July 19 – Florence Foster Jenkins, soprano
• August 7 – Granville Bantock, composer
• August 21 – Vess Ossman, ragtime banjo player
• September 8 – Seth Weeks, African American jazz mandolinist, composer, arranger and bandleader
• September 12 – Jan Brandts Buys, composer
• November 30 – Ernest Newman, critic
• Early? – Scott Joplin, African American ragtime composer, pianist

Deaths

• January 3 – Moritz Hauptmann, composer
• February 25 – Sophie Schröder, actress and singer
• March 2 – Carl Eberwein, composer
• April 3 – Franz Berwald, composer
• April 26 – Karel Strakatý, singer
• June 5 – Anselm Hüttenbrenner, composer
• July 6 – Samuel Lover, songwriter
• August 11 – Halfdan Kjerulf, composer
• November 13 – Gioacchino Rossini, composer
• November 25 – Franz Brendel, music critic
• December 23 – Karl Ferdinand Adam, composer and cantor
• date unknown
• *Berl Broder, singer and troubadour
• *Erik Jonsson Helland, Hardanger fiddle maker