1872 in music

Events

• June 5 – closure of the Teatro Re following its final performance, Rossini's The Barber of Seville
• June 24 – Karl Müller-Hartung founds an "Orchesterschule" at Weimar.
• Friedrich Nietzsche takes up musical composition again after a long break.
• Tomás Bretón and Ruperto Chapí receive the first prize of the Madrid Conservatory.
• Anton Rubinstein begins a tour of the United States at the behest of Steinway and Sons.
• Richard Wagner completes the full draft of Götterdämmerung.

  Published popular music

• "Moonlight on the Potomac" by John Philip Sousa
• "Waste Not, Want Not " by Harry Linn & Rollin Howard
• "Only a Dream" by George Cooper & William Vincent Wallace

  Classical music

• Georges Bizet – L'Arlésienne Suite No. 1 from the incidental music to Alphonse Daudet's play of the same name
• Anton Bruckner – Symphony No. 3
• Franz Paul Lachner -Octet for winds, Op. 156
• Camille Saint-Saëns - Cello Concerto No. 1
• August Winding - Three Fantasy Pieces, for clarinet or violin and piano, Op. 19
• Franz Liszt - Sunt lacrymae rerum

  Opera

• Georges Bizet – Djamileh
• Gialdino Gialdini – La secchia rapita premiered at the Teatro Goldoni, Florence
• Alexandre Charles Lecocq – Les cent vierges
• Miguel Marqués – Justos por pecadores
• Karel Miry
• *De dichter en zijn droombeeld
• *De twee zusters
• Modest Mussorgsky – Boris Gudonov, Revised Version
• Jacques Offenbach – Fantasio
• Camille Saint-Saëns – La princesse jaune, Op. 30

  Musical theater

• La fille de Madame Angot, Brussels production
• La Vie parisienne, London production

  Publications

• Richard Wagner – Über die Benennung "Musikdrama"

  Births

• January 6 – Alexander Scriabin, composer
• January 11 – Paul Graener, conductor and composer
• January 16 – Henri Büsser, conductor and composer
• January 23 – Adelina de Lara, pianist and composer
• March 6 – Ben Harney, ragtime pianist and songwriter
• March 7 – Vasily Andreyevich Zolotaryov, composer
• March 8 – Paul Juon, Russian-Swiss violinist and composer
• March 10 – Felix Borowski, composer and music teacher
• March 19 – Sergei Diaghilev, choreographer
• March 20 – Bernhard Sekles, composer and music teacher
• March 30 – Sergey Nikiforovich Vasilenko, composer
• April 1 – Tadeusz Joteyko, composer
• April 29 – Eyvind Alnæs, composer
• May 1 – Hugo Alfvén, composer
• July 7 – Juan Lamonte de Grignon, pianist, conductor and composer
• July 8 – Harry Von Tilzer, songwriter
• July 18 – Julius Fučík, composer
• July 20 – Déodat de Séverac, composer
• August 10 – Bill Johnson, dixieland jazz double-bassist
• August 15
• *Harold Fraser-Simson, composer and songwriter
• *Rubin Goldmark, composer
• October 12 – Ralph Vaughan Williams, composer
• November 29 – Anna von Mildenburg, Austrian soprano
• December 17 – Walter Loving, military bandleader
• December 20 – Lorenzo Perosi, Italian composer

  Deaths

• January 20 – Raffaele Sacco, lyricist
• February 16 – Henry Fothergill Chorley, music critic
• March 22 – Karolina Bock, singer, dancer and actress
• March 23? - Hugo Ulrich, composer, teacher and arranger
• April 3 – Henriette Widerberg, operatic soprano
• April 12 – Nikolaos Mantzaros, composer
• May 5 – Johann Kulik, luthier
• May 9 – Viktorin Hallmayer, conductor and composer
• May 15 – Thomas Hastings, composer of hymns
• July 26 – Michele Carafa, opera composer
• August 4 – Wilhelm Friedrich Wieprecht, conductor and composer
• August 11 – Lowell Mason, organist and composer
• September 16 – Gall Morel, choirmaster
• November 21 – Myllarguten, folk musician
• November 29 – Giovanni Tadolini, composer