The year 1674 in music involved some significant events.

• April – Thomas Shadwell produces a revision of the Dryden/Davenant version of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Furnished with music by John Bannister, Giovanni Battista Draghi, Pelham Humfrey, Pietro Reggio, and Matthew Locke, it became a great popular success.
• September 29 – Nicholas Staggins is appointed Master of the Kings Music
• Johann Aegidius Bach is appointed organist at the Kaufmannskirche in Erfurt
• John Blow is appointed Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal
• Johannes Voorhout paints the only known portrait of Dieterich Buxtehude.
• Giovanni Paolo Colonna becomes chapelmaster at Bologna.
• Ariane, ou Le Mariage de Bacchus, by Robert Cambert, is one of the first French operas to be sung in Britain.

• Heinrich Biber
  • Missa Christi resurgentis à 20
  • Mystery (Rosary) Sonatas
• Dieterich Buxtehude
  • Fried- und Freudenreiche Hinfarth, published in Lübeck (consisting of Mit Fried und Freud, composed 1671, and Klag-Lied)
  • Klag-Lied: Muß der Tod denn auch entbinden, chorale settings
  • Drei schöne Dinge sind, BuxWV 19
• Cristofaro Caresana
  • La caccia del toro
  • La Veglia
• Marc-Antoine Charpentier
  • Laudate Dominum, H.159
  • Domine Dominus noster, H.163
  • Pour Ste. Anne, H.315
• Francesco Corbetta – La Guitarre Royalle
• Carolus Hacquart – Cantiones sacrae, Op.1
• Bishop Thomas Ken – "Morning Hymn" (based upon Psalm 108.2)
• Maria Francesca Nascimbeni – Mottetto Sitientes venite
• Pavel Josef Vejvanovský – Sonata Natalis (composed for the Christmas season)
• Gaspar Sanz – Instrucción de Música

• Jean-Baptiste Lully – Alceste

• January 9 – Reinhard Keiser, opera composer (died 1739)
• July 11 or July 16^[1] – Isaac Watts, the "father of English hymnody" (died 1748)
• September 29 – Jacques-Martin Hotteterre, composer (died 1763)
• November 23 – Pierre Dumage, organist and composer (died 1751)
• date unknown – Ambrose Philips, poet and lyricist (died 1749)
• probable – Jeremiah Clarke, composer (suicide 1707)

• January 12 – Giacomo Carissimi, composer (born 1605)
• February 22 – John Wilson, theatre composer (born 1595)
• February 24 – Matthias Weckmann, composer (born c.1616)
• July 14 – Pelham Humfrey, English composer and singer (born 1647)
• October 15 – Robert Herrick, poet and lyricist (born 1591)
• October 27 – Hallgrímur Pétursson, hymnist (born 1614)
• November 8 – John Milton, poet and lyricist (born 1608)
• date unknown
  • Francisco Lopez Capillas, composer and chapelmaster of Mexico Cathedral (born 1608)