Events

• Antonio Salieri is appointed court composer to the Emperor Joseph II.
• Domenico Cimarosa is invited to Rome for the opera season.
• Charles Burney writes A Plan for a Music School.
• Pascal Taskin becomes keeper of the King's instruments.

Opera

• Pasquale Anfossi - La finta giardiniera; Olimpiade
• Christoph Willibald Gluck - Iphigenie en Aulide

Classical music

• Great Organ Mass by Joseph Haydn
• Concerto for Viola no 1 in D major by Carl Stamitz

Births

• January 24 - Karl Moser, composer
• February 16 - Pierre Rode, violinist, composer, (d. 1830)
• March 5 - Christoph Ernst Friedrich Weyse, composer
• April 17 - Václav Jan Křtitel Tomášek, organist and composer
• October 7 - Ferdinando Orlandi, composer
• November 14 - Gaspare Spontini, composer
• November 18 - William Horsley, composer
• December 20 - Guillaume-Perre-Antoine Gatayes, composer

Deaths

• January 20 - Florian Leopold Gassmann, composer
• January 30 - Frantisek Ignac Antonin Tuma and Jean-Pierre Guignon, composers
• July 7 - Giuseppi Maria Carretti, composer
• August 25 - Niccolò Jommelli, composer
• December 2 - Johann Friedrich Agricola, composer
• date unknown - František Tůma, organist and composer
• date unknown - Vodicka Vaclav