1826 in music

Events

• Chopin begins to study with Józef Elsner at the Warsaw Conservatory

  Published popular music

• "The Old Oaken Bucket" w. Samuel Woodworth m. George F. Kiallmark. Words written in 1817.

  Classical music

• Ludwig van Beethoven
• *String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat major, Op. 130
• *String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131
• Muzio Clementi – Complete Gradus ad Parnassum appears for the first time, simultaneously in Paris, Leipzig and London on October 31.
• Johannes Frederik Frøhlich – Concertino for violin and orchestra in D major
• Franz Liszt – Initial version of the Étude en douze exercices
• Felix Mendelssohn – Overture "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in E major for orchestra, Op. 21
• Niccolò Paganini – Violin Concerto No. 2
• Franz Schubert
• *Symphony No. 9 in C major "Great"
• *String Quartet No. 15 in G major
• *Piano Sonata No. 18 in G major "Fantasie"

  Opera

• John Barnett – Before Breakfast
• Vincenzo Bellini – Bianca e Fernando
• Gaetano Donizetti – Alahor in Granata
• Joseph Augustine Wade – The Two Houses of Granada
• Carl Maria von Weber – Oberon, King of the Fairies.

  Births

• February 1 – Marie Carandini, opera singer
• February 16 – Franz von Holstein, composer
• March 6 – Marietta Alboni, operatic contralto
• March 14 – William Fisk Sherwin, composer
• March 23 – Léon Minkus, composer
• April 7 – Johann Hermann Berens, composer
• April 28 – Alexander Stadtfeld, composer
• June 1
• *Carl Bechstein, piano-maker
• *Hermann Zopff, composer
• July 4 – Stephen Foster, songwriter
• July 8 – Friedrich Chrysander, music historian
• July 22 – Julius Stockhausen, singer and music teacher
• August 13 – William Thomas Best, organist
• August 28 – Walter Cecil Macfarren, pianist and composer
• October 13 – Johanna Jachmann-Wagner, operatic mezzo-soprano
• October 14 – Georges Mathias, composer and pianist
• October 16 – Piotr Studzinski, composer
• * Mathilda Ebeling, Swedish soprano
• October 22 – Guglielmo Quarenghi, cellist and composer
• December 21 – Ernst Pauer, composer
• December 24 – Ignacy Krzyżanowski, Polish composer
• date unknown – Edward Mack, songwriter

  Deaths

• January 17 – Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga, composer
• February 11 – Charles Benjamin Incledon, singer
• March 14 – Julie Alix de la Fay, ballerina
• April 3 – Reginald Heber, hymn-writing bishop
• April 13 – Franz Danzi, cellist, conductor and composer
• May 6 – Sophie Hagman, ballerina
• May 24 – Frederic Ernest Fesca, violinist and composer
• May 27 – Carl David Stegmann, singer, harpsichordist, conductor and composer
• June 5 – Carl Maria von Weber, composer
• July 7 – Friedrich Ludwig Dulon, flautist and composer
• July 11 – Carl Bernhard Wessely, composer
• August 30 – Theodor Zwetler, composer
• September 28 – Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel, inventor of the first working metronome
• October 9 – Michael Kelly, actor, singer and composer
• November 17 – Caroline Frederikke Müller, operatic mezzo-soprano
• December 3 – Elizabeth Sandunova soprano
• December 10 – Benedikt Emanuel Schack, singer and composer