1842 in music

Events

• May 31 – Frederick William IV of Prussia creates a new order of merit for the arts and sciences. Those honoured include: Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Liszt and Gioacchino Rossini.
• October 20 – Hans von Bülow attends the first performance of Wagner's Rienzi in Dresden.
• Louis Gottschalk leaves the United States to obtain a classical training in Europe. Pierre Zimmerman, professor of piano at the Paris Conservatory, refuses to hear him because 'America is a country of Steam Engines'.
• Franz von Suppé makes his debut as a singer as Dulcamara in Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore at the Ödenburg Theatre.
• Camille Saint-Saëns begins studying piano under Camille-Marie Stamaty.

  Popular music

• Frederick Ellard – Sydney Corporation Quadrilles
• Antoine Gérin-Lajoie – "Un Canadien errant"

  Classical music

• Franz Berwald
• *Symphony No. 1 in G minor "Sinfonie sérieuse"
• *Symphony No. 2 in D "Sinfonie capricieuse"
• *Ernste und heitere Grillen, for orchestra
• *Erinnerung an die norwegischen Alpen, for orchestra
• Frédéric Chopin – Polonaise for Piano in A flat major, B 147/Op. 53 "Heroic"
• Josef Lanner – Die Schönbrunner Waltzer
• Felix Mendelssohn – Symphony No. 3
• Robert Schumann
• *Three String Quartets in A minor, F and A, Op. 41
• *Piano Quintet in E flat, Op. 44
• *Piano Quartet in E flat, Op. 47

  Opera

• Angelo Catelani – Caràttaco
• Gaetano Donizetti – Linda di Chamounix, May 19 at Theater am Kärntnertor, Vienna
• Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka – Ruslan and Lyudmila, November 27 at Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre, Saint Petersburg
• Albert Lortzing – Der Wildschütz, December 31 at Stadttheater, Leipzig
• Giuseppe Verdi – Nabucco, March 9 at La Scala, Milan
• Richard Wagner – Rienzi, October 20 at Hofoper, Dresden

  Musical theatre

• March 10 – Einen Jux will er sich machen by Johann Nestroy, with music by Adolf Müller, opens at the Theater an der Wien.

  Births

• February 24 – Arrigo Boito, Italian poet and composer
• March 10 – Mykola Lysenko, Ukrainian composer
• March 22 – Carl Rosa, musical impresario
• April 14 – Sven August Körling, composer of art songs
• May 3 – Sophus Hagen, composer
• May 12 – Jules Massenet, opera composer
• May 13 – Arthur Sullivan, composer
• May 14 – Alphons Czibulka, pianist, conductor and composer
• June 12 – Rikard Nordraak, Norwegian composer
• June 19 – Karl Zeller, Austrian composer
• July 4 – Gyula Erkel, Hungarian composer, son of Ferenc Erkel
• July 29 – Charles Collette, actor and composer
• September 12 – Marianne Brandt, operatic contralto
• September 24 – Emma Livry, ballerina
• October 13 – Antonio Pasculli, oboist and composer
• October 26 – Hugo Alpen, composer
• November 8 – Eugen Gura, operatic baritone
• November 24 – Peter Jerndorff, Danish opera singer and stage actor
• date unknown – Pallavi Seshayyar, composer of Carnatic music

  Deaths

• March 6 – Constanze Mozart, widow of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• March 7 – Christian Theodor Weinlig, composer and conductor
• March 15 – Luigi Cherubini, composer
• April 6 – Johann Anton André, composer and music publisher
• May 5 – Jean Elleviou, operatic tenor
• June 4 – Georg Friedrich Treitschke, librettist
• June 20 – Michael Umlauf, violinist and composer
• July 23 – Timothy Swan, hat-maker and composer
• August 25 – Jérôme-Joseph de Momigny, composer and music theorist
• September 15 – Pierre Baillot, violinist and composer
• October 8 – Christoph Ernst Friedrich Weyse, composer
• November 3 – Franz Clement, violinist, pianist, composer, conductor and friend of Beethoven
• November 17 – Luigi Capotorti, Italian composer
• December 18 – Giuseppe Nicolini, composer
• December 25 – Bedřich Diviš Weber, composer and founding principal of the Prague Conservatory