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.
• The Concert des Amateurs is founded by François-Joseph Gossec in Paris.
• 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.^[1] 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