1786 in music

List of years in music (table)
… 1776 1777 1778 1779 1780 1781 1782 1783 1784 1785 1786 1787 1788 1789 1790 1791 1792 1793 1794 1795 1796 …
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Events

• January 21 - Luigi Boccherini becomes an official composer to Prince Frederick William of Prussia.
• February 7 - Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, presents a festival at Schönbrunn Palace, at which new compositions by both Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri are performed.
• April 28 - Leopold Mozart writes to his daughter, Maria Anna Mozart, predicting failure for his son's latest opera, The Marriage of Figaro.
• October 18 - Leopold Mozart is given a blood test on the same day that his daughter-in-law Constanze Mozart gives birth to her third child, Johann Thomas Leopold; the baby dies a month later, Leopold the following year.
• November 7 – America's oldest singing society is founded as the Stoughton Musical Society.
• November 24 - Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf unsuccessfully seeks employment with the newly enthroned King Frederick William II of Prussia.
• In Britain, William Parsons succeeds John Stanley as Master of the King's Musick.
• In Benares, Jiwan Shah and Francis Fowke conduct an experiment comparing the pitch of the harpsichord with that of a traditional Indian instrument.
• Georg Joseph Vogler is appointed Kapellmeister to King Gustav III of Sweden.

Classical music

• Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Funeral music for A. Schulte
• Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf
  • Der Apotheker und der Doktor (singspiel)
  • Giobbe (oratorio)
• Leopold Kozeluch - Three Piano Sonatas, Op. 20
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  • Piano Concerto No. 23 in A
  • Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor
  • Piano Trio No 2
  • Symphony No. 38 in D "Prague"
• Joseph Haydn – Symphony No. 82 in C ("Bear")

Opera

• Gioacchino Albertini – Virginia
• Bonifazio Asioli – Le nozze in villa
• Dmitri Stepanovich Bortniansky – Le Faucon
• Nicolas Dalayrac – Nina
• François-Joseph Gossec - Rosine, ou L’épouse abandonnée
• André Grétry - Amphitryon
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  • Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario)
  • Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) (first performed in Vienna, libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte).
• Antonio Salieri
  • Les Horaces
  • Prima la musica e poi le parole
• Giuseppe Sarti – Armida e Rinaldo

Published popular music

• First edition of Elias Mann's Worcester Collection

Births

• January 3 – Johann Christian Friedrich Schneider, composer
• June 21 – Charles Edward Horn, singer and composer (died 1849)
• September 11 – Friedrich Kuhlau, composer (died 1832)
• September 27 - José Mariano Elízaga, composer (died 1842)
• November 10 - Carl Eberwein, violinist and composer (died 1868)
• November 18
  • Carl Maria von Weber, composer (or December 18)
  • Sir Henry Bishop, Professor of Music at Oxford
• December 20 – Pietro Raimondi, composer
• date unknown
  • Konstantinos Nikolopoulos, composer (died 1841)
  • Elena Pucić-Sorkočević, composer (died 1865)

Deaths

• January 4 - Moses Mendelssohn, philosopher and grandfather of composers Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Mendelssohn (born 1729)
• January 14 – Michael Arne, composer (born c.1740)
• February 16 - Johann Georg Schürer, composer (born 1720)
• March 7 – Frantisek Benda, composer (born 1709)
• March 21 - Johann Gottlieb Preller, cantor and composer (born 1727)
• April 13 - Jan Tomáš Kuzník, composer and music teacher (born 1716)
• May 19 – John Stanley, composer (born 1712)
• June 2 - Giovanni Battista Lampugnani, composer (born 1706)
• July - Sophia Baddeley, actress and singer (born 1745)
• July 29 – Franz Asplmayr, composer (born 1728)
• August 17 – King Frederick II of Prussia, amateur composer (born 1712)
• September 6 - Karl von Ordóñez, composer (born 1734)
• September 18 – Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, musical instrument maker (born 1711)
• October 6 – Antonio Sacchini, composer (born 1730)