Year 1757 (MDCCLVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Wednesday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar.

Andrea Teodoro Zani (11 November 1696 – 28 September 1757) was an Italian violinist and composer.

Zani was born at Casalmaggiore in the Province of Cremona. He received his first instruction in playing the violin from his father, an amateur violinist. Subsequently, he received instruction in composition from Giacomo Civeri, a local musician, and studied violin in Guastalla with the court violinist Carlo Ricci. Antonio Caldara, who was working as Capellmeister at the court of Archduke Ferdinand Charles in Mantua, not far from Casalmaggiore, heard Zani play and invited him to accompany him to Vienna. Between 1727 and 1729 Zani arrived in Vienna and was active there as a violinist in the service of the Habsburgs. Following the death of his sponsor Caldara in 1736, he returned to Casalmaggiore where he remained for the rest of his life, except for occasional concert appearances. He died in his home town as the result of an accident, when the carriage in which he was travelling to Mantua overturned.

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry has led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". Although he lived in London his entire life except for three years spent in Felpham he produced a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "Human existence itself".

Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of both the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic", for its large appearance in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England – indeed, to all forms of organised religion – Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions, as well as by such thinkers as Jakob Böhme and Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Rossetti characterised Blake as a "glorious luminary," and as "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors".

Louis-Claude Daquin (or d'Acquin), (July 4, 1694 – June 15, 1772) was a French composer of Jewish birth writing in the Baroque and Galant styles. He was a virtuoso organist and harpsichordist.

Louis-Claude Daquin was born in Paris, to a family originating from Italy (where their name was D'Aquino). One of his great-uncles was a professor of Hebrew at the Collège de France. Daquin was a musical child prodigy. He performed for the court of King Louis XIV at the age of six. He was for a while a pupil of Louis Marchand. At the age of 12, he became organist at the Sainte-Chapelle, and in the following year took a similar post at the church of the Petit St. Antoine.

Claude Daquin never lacked for work as an organist. In 1727 he was appointed organist at the church of St. Paul in Paris, ahead of Jean-Philippe Rameau who was also a candidate. Five years later he succeeded his teacher Louis Marchand as organist at the Église des Cordeliers. In 1739 he became organist to the king. In 1755 he was made titular organist at the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, succeeding Antoine Calvière.

Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni (January 28, 1757 – August 6, 1821) was an Italian violinist, composer and conductor. Bruni was born and died in Cuneo, Italy. During most of his life he resided, played and composed in Paris.

c.1791 (at the height of the French 'terror'). He is the author of 'Un Inventaire sous la terreur' which lists musical instruments recovered from noble households. This inventory was published: J. Gallay, ed. (Paris: Georges Chamerot, 1890). According to the scholarly work 'The Hurdy-Gurdy in Eighteenth-Century France' by Robert E. Green ( Indianna University Press, 1995) where the Bruni text is footnoted, the author says of Bruni inventory " from 111 noble households ( it ) lists six which possessed vielles (hurdy-gurdies)." p.17. More light is (perhaps) shed in the fictional novel The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason where this affair is again referred to thus: "A Temporary Commission of Arts was set up and ... Bruni ... was named Director of the Inventory. For fourteen months he collected the instruments of the condemmed. In all, over three hundred were gathered, and each carries its own tragic tale." He goes on to say that 64 were pianofortes.