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.
 * 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 (London: R. Bremner)
 * Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach
 * Die Israeliten in der Wüste (oratorio), 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 (Berlin: Georg Ludewig Winter)
 * 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 (oratorio)
 * 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 (died 1808)
 * Nannette Streicher, German piano maker, composer, music educator and writer (died 1833)
 * January 9 – William Robert Spencer, librettist and poet (died 1834)
 * February 12 – Friedrich Rochlitz, music editor and writer (died 1842)
 * February 13 – Ivan Krylov, librettist and writer (died 1844)
 * February 17 – Johannes Baptista von Albertini, librettist and botanist (died 1831)
 * March 7 – Josef Alois Ladurner, Austrian composer and music educator (died 1851)
 * March 8 – Katerina Veronika Anna Dusíkova, Bohemian singer, harpist, pianist and composer (died 1833)
 * March 25 – Salvatore Viganò, choreographer, dancer and composer (died 1821)
 * March 28 – Schack von Staffeldt, librettist and poet (died 1826)
 * April 11 – Johann Georg Lickl, organist and composer (died 1843)
 * April 25 – Charles Borremans, violinist and conductor (died 1827)
 * June 1 – Józef Elsner, composer and music teacher, Chopin's future teacher (died 1854)
 * June 5 – Marianne Kirchgessner, German musician (d. 1808)
 * June 14 – Domenico Della-Maria Italian and French composer (died 1800)
 * July 4 – Louis-Luc Loiseau de Persuis, violinist, conductor and composer (died 1819)
 * July 23 – Alexey Nikolayevich Titov, violinist and composer (died 1827)
 * July 29 – Louis-Benoît Picard, librettist and writer (died 1769)
 * August 14
 * Richard Barry, composer and English rake (died 1793)
 * Friedrich Dülon, flautist (died 1826)
 * August 30 – Bonifazio Asioli, Italian composer (died 1832)
 * September 8 – Marie-Martin Marcel Marin, composer (died c. 1850)
 * September 12 – Reginald Spofforth, organist, conductor and composer (died 1827)
 * November 12 – Amelia Opie, librettist and author
 * December 26 – Ernst Moritz Arndt, librettist and antisemitic author (died 1860)
 * Date unknown –
 * Jean-Jacques Grasset, composer and violinist (died 1839)
 * Charles Hague, composer (died 1821)
 * Daniil Kashin, Russian composer (Died 1841)

Deaths

 * January 2 – James Oswald, composer, 57
 * February 21 – William Falconer, librettist and writer (born 1732)
 * April 3 – Gerhard Tersteegen, librettist and theologian (born 1697)
 * June 7 – Antoine-Alexandre-Henri Poinsinet, librettist, drowned (born 1735)
 * 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 (born 1715)
 * date unknown – Antonio Palomba, Italian opera librettist, poet, harpsichordist and music educator, 63