1888 in music

See also: 1887 in music, other events of 1888, 1889 in music and the list of 'years in music'.

Events

• wax phonograph cylinders mass marketed

Published popular music

• "Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill"     anon poss Thomas F. Carey
• "Over The Waves" ("Sobre las Olas")     w.m. Juventino Rosas
• "Where Did You Get That Hat?"     w.m. Joseph J. Sullivan
• "The Whistling Coon"     w.m. Sam Devere

Classical music

• Violin Sonata in D Minor (Johannes Brahms)
• Scarf Dance, Callirhoe (ballet) (Cecile Chaminade)
• Petite Suite for piano duet; Arabesques 1 and 2 for piano (Claud Debussy)
• Symphony in D Minor (Cesar Franck)
• Lyric Pieces for Piano, Book IV (Edvard Grieg)
• Hiawatha (tone poem) (Frederick Delius)
• Symphony No. 1, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (song cycle) (Gustav Mahler)
• Russian Easter Overture (Rimsky-Korsakov)
• Three Gymnopédies for piano (Erik Satie)
• Don Juan, Violin Sonata (Richard Strauss)
• Sleeping Beauty (ballet), Symphony No. 5 (Tchaikovsky)
• Goethe-Lieder, Möricke-Lieder (Hugo Wolf)
• Trois Gymnopédies Erik Satie

Opera

• Die Drei Pintos – Carl Maria Weber, completed by Gustav Mahler

Musical theater

• The Yeomen of the Guard by W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan – London production
• The Yeomen of the Guard – Broadway production

Births

• February 27 – Lotte Lehmann, singer (d. 1976)
• May 10 – Max Steiner, composer (d. 1971)
• May 11 – Irving Berlin, composer (d. 1989)
• May 27 – Louis Durey, composer, member of Les Six (d. 1979)
• June 3 – Tom Brown, jazz musician (d. 1958)
• June 6 – Pete Wendling, American composer, pianist, and piano roll recording artist
• June 16 – Bobby Clark, US comedian and singer
• August 16 – Armand J. Piron, jazz musician (d. 1943)
• September 12 – Maurice Chevalier, French singer and actor

Deaths

• January 14 – Stephen Heller, pianist and composer
• December 26 – Alfred Vance, English music hall singer and comedian