Events
- January 2 – The Royal Danish Academy of Music opens in Copenhagen under the direction of Niels Gade.
- February 15 – First performance of Johann Strauss II's waltz "The Blue Danube" (An der schönen blauen Donau, composed 1866) at a concert of the Vienna Men's Choral Association (Wiener Männergesang-Verein). Strauss adapts it into its popular purely orchestral version for the International Exposition in Paris later this year.
- April 4 Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso by Saint-Saens is given its first performance at the Champs-Élysées, with Pablo de Sarasate playing the solo part and the composer conducting.
- April 22 – The Hyers Sisters make their professional debut at Sacramento's Metropolitan Theater.
- April 27 – Charles Gounod's opera Roméo et Juliette premiers in Théâtre Lyrique, Paris
- May 11 – The first comic opera with a score by Arthur Sullivan to be publicly performed, the one-act Cox and Box with libretto by F. C. Burnand, opens at the Adelphi Theatre in London and runs for 300 performances. It is followed by the two-act The Contrabandista, or The Law of the Ladrones by the same partnership which opens on December 18 at St. George's Hall, London.
- June 11 – Soprano Nina Grieg marries her cousin, composer Edvard Grieg, in Copenhagen.
- September – Premiere of the opera O ypopsifios (The Parliamentary Candidate) (music: Spyridon Xyndas, libretto: Ioannis Rinopoulos), the first full-scale opera in Greek.
- October - Richard Wagner completes Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
- December 1 – Johann von Herbeck conducts the first three movements of Brahms' A German Requiem in Vienna.
- Copyright restrictions in the new North German Confederation are lifted for composers dead for more than 30 years, leading to the introduction of popular editions of scores by Leipzig publishers Breitkopf & Härtel and Edition Peters. [1]
- "The Maple Leaf Forever" is written in Canada by Alexander Muir.