Events
- February 5 – Claudio Monteverdi's last opera L'incoronazione di Poppea is performed theatrically for the first time in more than 250 years, in Paris.[1]
- March 9 – The second performance of Francesco Balilla Pratella's Musica Futurista in Rome becomes the first of several pieces this year of classical music with an unruly audience response.[2][3]
- March 31 – Skandalkonzert: A concert at the Musikverein in Vienna with Arnold Schoenberg conducting music by himself and his pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern, particularly Berg's Altenberg Lieder, provokes fisticuffs and is abandoned.[4]
- April 1 – Manuel de Falla's opera La vida breve is given its world première in Nice.
- May 29 – The ballet The Rite of Spring, with music by Igor Stravinsky conducted by Pierre Monteux and choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky is premièred by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, its modernism provoking one of the most famous classical music riots in history.[5] The audience includes Gabriele D'Annunzio, Coco Chanel, Marcel Duchamp, Harry Graf Kessler and Maurice Ravel. Police are called during the interval.
- September 5 – Sergei Prokofiev's performance of the first version of his Piano Concerto No. 2 at Pavlovsk, Saint Petersburg, is met with hisses and catcalls.[6]
- September 10 – Jean Sibelius's tone poem Luonnotar is premiered at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester Cathedral, England, with soprano Aino Ackté and orchestra conducted by Herbert Brewer.[7]
- October – Edison Diamond Disc Record introduced.
- The term "Jazz" first appears in print (in the San Francisco Bulletin).
- Louis Armstrong begins playing the cornet, in the band of the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs.
- Lili Boulanger becomes the first woman to win the Musical Composition section of the Prix de Rome, with her cantata Faust et Hélène.
- The Aeolian Company introduces the Duo-Art piano technology.
- Edward Bairstow becomes organist of York Minster.
