Events

• Innocentio Alberti takes up a position as cornettist at the Este court in Ferrara, following the dissolution of the Accademia degli Elevati in Padua.

Publications

• Ippolito Chamaterò – First book of madrigals for five voices (Venice: Antonio Gardano)
• Jacob Clemens non Papa – Tenth book of masses: Missa Quam pulchra es for four voices (Leuven: Pierre Phalèse), published posthumously
• Claude Goudimel – Fourth book of psalms for four and five voices (Paris: Le Roy & Ballard)
• Orlande de Lassus
  • Fourth book of chansons for five and six voices (Louvain: Pierre Phalèse)
  • First book of madrigals for four voices (Rome: Valerio Dorico)
• Giovanni Paolo Paladino — First book of lute tablature, containing arrangements of pieces by various composers (Lyon: Simon Gorlier)
• Francesco Portinaro – Fourth book of madrigals for five voices (Venice: Antonio Gardano)
• Christoph Praetorius – De obitu reverendi viri Domini Philippi Melanthonis for four voices (Wittenberg: Georg Rhau), a funeral motet for Philip Melanchthon

Sacred music

Secular music

Births

• January 29 – Scipione Dentice, keyboard composer (died 1633)
• August 10 – Hieronymus Praetorius, north German composer and organist (died 1629)
• date unknown
  • William Brade, German composer of dance forms of the period (died 1630)
  • Antonio Coma, Italian composer (died 1629)
  • Peter Philips (c.1560/1561), eminent English composer, organist, and Catholic priest (died 1628), the most published English composer in his time.
• probable
  • Giovanni Croce, Venetian composer (died 1609)
  • Lodovico Grossi da Viadana, Italian composer (died 1627)

Deaths

• date unknown – Louis Bourgeois, composer of Calvinist hymn-tunes (born c.1510)
• probable
  • Marco Antonio Cavazzoni, organist and composer (born c.1490)
  • Nicolas Gombert, composer (born c.1495)