Year 1869 (MDCCCLXIX) is a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Wednesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar.

Hector Berlioz (pronounced: [ɛktɔʁ bɛʁˈljoːz]; 11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts (Requiem). Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a conductor, he performed several concerts with more than 1,000 musicians. He also composed around 50 songs. His influence was critical for the further development of Romanticism, especially in composers like Richard Wagner, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and many others.

Hector Berlioz was born in France at La Côte-Saint-André in the département of Isère, near Grenoble. His father, a respected provincial physician and scholar, was responsible for much of the young Berlioz's education. His father, Louis-Joseph Berlioz, was an atheist, with a liberal outlook; his mother, Marie-Antoinette, was an orthodox Roman Catholic. He had five siblings in all, three of whom did not survive to adulthood. The other two, Nanci and Adèle, remained close to Berlioz throughout his life.

Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos (born Rafael Frühbeck Frühbeck, 15 September 1933, Burgos) is a Spanish conductor and composer.

Frühbeck studied violin, piano, and composition at the conservatories of Bilbao and Madrid. He graduated summa cum laude from the Hochschule für Musik in Munich in conducting and won the Richard Strauss Prize.

Frühbeck has served as music director of the Rundfunkorchester Berlin, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, artistic director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor of the Bilbao Orchestra and the Vienna Symphony, as well as being principal guest conductor for numerous orchestras in Europe, the United States, and Japan. He made his American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra. From 1980 to 1983 he was principal conductor of Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo, of which he is now an honorary conductor.

From 2001 to 2007, Frühbeck was principal conductor of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra. He became music director of the Dresden Philharmonic in 2004. In January 2011, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra announced the appointment of Frühbeck as the Creative Director of its Masterworks Series of concerts, starting with the 2011-2012 season. In February 2011, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra announced the appointment of Frühbeck as its next principal conductor, as of the 2012-2013 season, with an initial contract of 3 years through 2015.

Herbert Blomstedt (born July 11, 1927) is a Swedish conductor.

Herbert Blomstedt was born in Springfield, Massachusetts and two years after his birth, his Swedish parents moved the family back to their country of origin. He studied at the Stockholm Royal College of Music and the University of Uppsala, followed by studies of contemporary music at Darmstadt in 1949, Baroque music with Paul Sacher at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, and further conducting studies with Igor Markevitch, Jean Morel at the Juilliard School, and Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood's Berkshire Music Center.

He won the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize in 1953 and the Salzburg Conducting Competition in 1955.

Blomstedt is most noted for his performances of German and Austrian composers, such as Beethoven, Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert, Anton Bruckner and Richard Strauss, and also as a champion of Scandinavian composers, such as Edvard Grieg, Franz Berwald, Jean Sibelius and Carl Nielsen.

A devout Seventh-day Adventist, Blomstedt does not rehearse on Friday nights or Saturdays, the Sabbath in Seventh-day Adventism. He does, however, conduct concerts, since he considers actual performances to be an expression of his religious devotion rather than work.

Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein (Russian: Анто́н Григо́рьевич Рубинште́йн, tr. Anton Grigor'evič Rubinštejn) (November 28 [O.S. November 16] 1829 – November 20 [O.S. November 8] 1894) was a Russian pianist, composer and conductor who became a pivotal figure in Russian culture when he founded the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. This, together with the Moscow Conservatory founded by his brother Nikolai, were the first music schools of their type in Russia. This proved no less controversial than other aspects of Rubinstein's career, as Russian culture was deeply divided and the nation itself was going through an identity crisis that would last for the rest of the 19th century. Rubinstein drew a tremendous amount of criticism about the conservatory from nationalistically minded individuals such as critic Vladimir Stassov and members of the group of composers known collectively as The Five.