1852 in music

List of years in music (table)
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Events

• May 15 – Teatro Comunale Alighieri, the opera house in Ravenna, is inaugurated with a production of Meyerbeer's Robert le diable followed by Giovanni Pacini's Medea.
• Michael William Balfe sets off for Danzig to visit his daughter.
• Charles Gounod improvises a melody over the C major Prelude from Book 1 of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier. It is published the next year as 'Méditation sur le Premier Prélude de Piano de S. Bach' later to be known as Ave Maria.
• Franz Liszt conducts a performance of the 1838 opera Benvenuto Cellini by Hector Berlioz at Weimar. This revives the French composer's career which had been stagnant.
• The earliest known performance of Wagner's music in the United States takes place as an arrangement of one of the finales from Tannhäuser is performed by the Germania Musical Society conducted by Carl Bergmann.

Popular music

• Stephen Foster – "Massa's in de Cold Cold Ground"
• Gustav Reichardt – Des Deutschen Vaterland (words by Ernst Moritz Arndt)
• S.M. Grannis – "Do They Miss Me At Home?" (lyrics by Carolina A.Mason)

Classical music

• Joachim Raff – Two Lieder with words by Gotthold Logau
• Johannes Brahms – Piano Sonata No. 2 (Brahms)

Opera

• Fredrik Pacius – Kung Karls jakt

Births

• January 29 – Sir Frederic Hymen Cowen, pianist, conductor and composer (d. 1935)
• March 6 – Josef Bayer, composer and music director (d. 1913)
• April 5 – Franz Eckert, bandmaster and composer (d. 1916)
• April 14 – Henrique Oswald, composer (d. 1931)
• May 23 – Mathilda Grabow, opera singer (d. 1940)
• June 23 – Raoul Pugno, organist, pianist and composer (d. 1914)
• June 28 – Hans Huber, composer (d. 1921)
• July 3 – Rafael Joseffy, pianist and composer (d. 1915)
• July 6 – Otto Neitzel, composer and pianist (d. 1920)
• September 30 – Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, composer (d. 1924)
• November 21 – Francisco Tárrega, guitarist and composer (d. 1909)

Deaths

• February 25 – Thomas Moore, poet and songwriter (b. 1779)
• March 5 – Sophie Gay, librettist (b. 1776)
• March 7 – Jacopo Ferretti, librettist (b. 1784)
• March 15 – Antoine de Lhoyer, guitarist and composer (b. 1768)
• June 6 – Tommaso Marchesi, composer (b. 1773)
• July 17 – Salvadore Cammarano, librettist (b. 1801)
• September 20 – Anton Weidinger, trumpet virtuoso (b. 1767)
• October 6 – Stephen Codman, composer (b. 1796)
• November 12 – Georg Hellmesberger, Jr., violinist and composer (b. 1830)
• date unknown – Ulrika Åberg, ballerina (b. 1771)