1859 in music

List of years in music (Table)
… 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 …
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Events

• March 4 - Charter of the French Opera House, New Orleans, which opens on December 1 of the same year with a gala performance of Rossini's William Tell.
• April 4 - Bryants Minstrels debut "Dixie" at Mechanics' Hall, New York City.
• Alexander Borodin begins a period of research at Heidelberg, working on benzene derivatives.
• Alberto Mazzucato becomes musical director of La Scala opera house.

Published popular music

• "Darling little blue eyed Nell" w. B. E. Woolf m. Frederick Buckley
• In 1859, John Freeman Young published the English translation of Silent Night that is most frequently sung today.

Classical music

• Overture to King Lear by Mily Balakirev
• Piano Concerto No. 1 by Johannes Brahms
• Serenade No. 2 in A by Johannes Brahms
• Helges Treue by Felix Draeseke\
• Concerto for Solo Piano by Charles-Valentin Alkan
• Totentanz (finished); first version of Psalm 23; Psalm 137 (begun, finished 1862); Prelude after a theme from Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen for piano; and orchestral version of Deux Épisodes d'apres le Faust de Lenau by Franz Liszt

Opera

• César Cui - The Mandarin's Son
• Léo Delibes - L'Omelette à la Follembuche
• Charles Gounod - Faust first performed in Paris. Libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on a work by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
• Giuseppe Verdi - Un ballo in maschera

Musical theater

• Going It Blind - Broadway production

Births

• January 26 - W. O. Forsyth, pianist and composer (d. 1937)
• February 1 - Victor Herbert, cellist, conductor and composer (d. 1924)
• April 3 - Reginald de Koven, US composer (d. 1920)
• April 5 - Wilhelm Harteveld, composer
• April 11 - Basil Harwood, organist and composer (d. 1949)
• May 13 - August Enna, composer (d. 1939)
• June 22 - Frank Heino Damrosch, founder of Institute of Music (d. 1937)
• June 27 - Mildred J. Hill, composer of "Happy Birthday to You" (d. 1916)
• July 21 - Charles H. Taylor, lyricist (d. 1907)
• September 21 - Otto Lohse, conductor and composer (d. 1925)
• September 24 - Julius Klengel, cellist, composer (d. 1933)
• October 14 - Camille Chevillard, conductor and composer (d. 1923)
• November 15 - Joseph Vidal, composer (d. 1924)
• November 19 - Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, conductor and composer (d. 1935)
• November 30 - Sergei Lyapunov, pianist and composer (d. 1924)
• December 21 - Max Fiedler, conductor and composer (d. 1939)
• December 23 - Adrian Ross, English lyricist (d. 1933)
• December 27 - William Henry Hadow, musicologist (d. 1937)
• December 30 - Josef Bohuslav Foerster, composer (d. 1951)

Deaths

• January 13 - Francisco José Debali, composer (b. 1791)
• March 14 - Nicola Tacchinardi, cellist and operatic tenor (b. 1772)
• April 14 - Ignaz Bösendorfer, piano manufacturer (b. 1796)
• July - Lewis Henry Lavenu, conductor, composer and impresario (d. 1818)
• July 23 - Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, actress, singer and poet (b. 1786)
• July 29 - Auguste Mathieu Panseron, composer and singing teacher (b. 1796)
• October 22 - Louis Spohr, violinist, conductor and composer (b. 1784)
• November 7 - Carl Gottlieb Reißiger, Kapellmeister and composer (b. 1798)
• December 31 - Luigi Ricci, composer (b. 1805)