1774 in music

Events

• Antonio Salieri is appointed court composer to the Emperor Joseph II.
• Domenico Cimarosa is invited to Rome for the opera season.
• Charles Burney writes A Plan for a Music School.
• Pascal Taskin becomes keeper of the King's instruments.
• Georg Joseph Vogler becomes a pupil of Giovanni Battista Martini at Bologna.

Opera

• Pasquale Anfossi – La finta giardiniera; Olimpiade
• Christoph Willibald Gluck – Iphigenie en Aulide

Classical music

• Joseph Haydn – Great Organ Mass
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Symphony No. 29 in A
• Carl Stamitz – Concerto for Viola no 1 in D major

Births

• January 24 – Karl Moser, composer
• February 16 – Pierre Rode, violinist, composer, (d. 1830)
• March 5 – Christoph Ernst Friedrich Weyse, composer
• April 17 – Václav Jan Křtitel Tomášek, organist and composer
• October 7 – Ferdinando Orlandi, composer
• November 14 – Gaspare Spontini, composer
• November 18 – William Horsley, composer
• December 20 – Guillaume-Perre-Antoine Gatayes, composer

Deaths

• January 20 – Florian Leopold Gassmann, composer, 44
• January 30 – Frantisek Tuma, composer, 69
• July 7 – Giuseppi Maria Carretti, composer
• August 25 – Niccolò Jommelli, composer, 59
• December 2 – Johann Friedrich Agricola, composer, 54
• date unknown
  • František Tůma, organist and composer
  • Vodicka Vaclav