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 ("Winter Daydreams") is first performed in Moscow at a Russian Musical Society concert (having been premièred in Saint Petersburg).
 * April 10 (Good Friday) – The six movement version of Brahms' A German Requiem (Ein deutsches 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 (in the West End) 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 (1851) m. George Job Elvey (1868)
 * "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 (first published the previous year)
 * "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 (1855) m. Charles C. Converse (1868)
 * "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 (once) 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

 * La Belle Hélène (Music by Jacques Offenbach Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy) New York production opened at Pike's Opera House on November 2 and ran for 14 performances
 * Ixion Broadway production opened at Wood's Museum and Metropolitan on September 28 and ran for 120 performances. Starring Lydia Thompson.
 * The White Fawn Broadway production opened at Niblo's Garden on January 17 and ran for 176 performances

Births

 * January 6 – Vittorio Monti, Italian violinist, composer and conductor (d. 1922)
 * January 24 – Frank Peabody Atherton, composer, educator (d. 1911)
 * January 26 – Juventino Rosas, composer, band leader (d. 1894)
 * April 13 – John Blackwood McEwen, composer, educator (d. 1948)
 * April 19 – Max von Schillings, composer, conductor (d. 1933)
 * April 22 – José Vianna da Motta, composer, pianist (d. 1948)
 * July 19 – Florence Foster Jenkins, soprano (d. 1944)
 * August 7 – Granville Bantock, composer (d. 1946)
 * August 21 – Vess Ossman, ragtime banjo player (d. 1923)
 * September 8 – Seth Weeks, African American jazz mandolinist, composer, arranger and bandleader (d. 1953)
 * September 12 – Jan Brandts Buys, composer (d. 1933)
 * November 30 – Ernest Newman, critic (d. 1959)
 * Early? (or November 24?) – Scott Joplin, African American ragtime composer, pianist (d. 1917)

Deaths

 * January 3 – Moritz Hauptmann, composer (b. 1792)
 * February 25 – Sophie Schröder, actress and singer (b. 1781)
 * March 2 – Carl Eberwein, composer (b. 1786)
 * April 3 – Franz Berwald, composer (b. 1796)
 * April 26 – Karel Strakatý, singer (b. 1804)
 * June 5 – Anselm Hüttenbrenner, composer (b. 1794)
 * July 6 – Samuel Lover, songwriter (b. 1797)
 * August 11 – Halfdan Kjerulf, composer (b. 1815)
 * November 13 – Gioacchino Rossini, composer (b. 1792)
 * November 25 – Franz Brendel, music critic (b. 1811)
 * December 23 – Karl Ferdinand Adam, composer and cantor (b. 1806)
 * date unknown
 * Berl Broder, singer and troubadour (b. 1815)
 * Erik Jonsson Helland, Hardanger fiddle maker (b. 1816)