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
• 14-year-old Mozart hears Allegri's Miserere for the first time, returns home and copies it down note for note.
• Charles Burney receives an honorary doctorate in music from the University of Oxford.
• Antonio Maria Gaspare Sacchini arrives in Venice.

Opera

• Jean-François Cailhava - Les Etrennes de l'amour

Classical music

• Johann Albrechtsberger - Concerto for Trombone in B flat major
• Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach - Die Israeliten in der Wüste (oratorio)
• François Joseph Gossec - Sei quartetti per flauto e violino o sia per due violini, alto e basso, op. 14
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Te Deum in C
• Johann Baptist Vanhal - Quartet for Strings in B flat major, Op. 2 no 3

Births

• January 17 - Ole Andreas Lindeman, composer
• March 7 - Josef Alois Ladurner, composer
• March 25 - Salvatore Viganò, composer
• April 11 - Johann Georg Lickl, composer
• April 12 - Giovanni Agostino Perotti, composer
• May 4 - Charles Hague, composer
• June 14 - Dominique Della-Maria, composer
• June 1 - Joseph Elsner, Chopin's future teacher
• July 4 - Louis-Luc Loiseau de Persuis, composer
• July 23 - Alexey Nikolayevich Titov, composer
• August 14 - Friedrich Ludwig Dulon, flautist
• August 16 - Jean Aime Vernier, composer
• August 18 - Alexandre Stievenard, composer
• August 30 - Bonifacio Asioli, composer

Deaths

• March 27 - Josef Antonin Gurecky, composer
• October 9 - Marianus Konigsperger, composer
• unknown date - James Oswald, composer