1590 in music

Events

• October 16 – Carlo Gesualdo, Italian composer of madrigals, murders his wife and her lover in flagrante delicto.
• Approximate peak year of the late Italian madrigal style, as represented by Gesualdo, Luzzaschi, Monteverdi, Marenzio, Monte and others.
• The serpent is invented by Canon Edmé Guillaume in Auxerre, France – it was a common instrument in Western European churches for the next several hundred years.
• Baldassare Donato becomes maestro di cappella at St. Mark's in Venice, taking over on the death of Gioseffo Zarlino.
• Claudio Monteverdi, Italian composer, is engaged as string player at court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga at Mantua.
• Emilio de' Cavalieri, Italian composer, produces Tasso's Aminto, likely with his own music, for the Medici, at Carnival in Florence.
• Giovanni Gabrieli arranges the posthumous publication of works by his uncle Andrea Gabrieli, in Venice.

Publications

• Giovanni Croce – Mascarate piacevoli et ridicolose per il carnevale
• Giovanni Gabrieli publishes works in the cori spezzati style, in Venice.
• Orlande de Lassus, Franco-Flemish composer, publishes Neue teutsche, unnd etliche frantzösische Gesäng, a collection of secular songs for six voices, in Munich
• Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina publishes his fifth book of masses, in Rome.
• Orazio Vecchi publishes a book of motets for 10 voices, in Venice.
• Thomas Watson – The first sett, Of Italian Madrigalls Englished, published in London.

Classical music

• Hans Leo Hassler – Canzonette (published in Nuremberg)
• Claudio Monteverdi – Il secondo libro de madrigali a cinque voci di Claudio Monteverde Cremonese discepolo del Sig.r Ingegneri – (second book of madrigals a5) (published in Venice).

Births

• July 3 – Lucrezia Orsina Vizzana, singer, organist and composer (d. 1662)
• probable
  • Manuel Machado, composer (d. 1646)
  • Johann Schop, violinist and composer (d. 1667)
  • Loreto Vittori, Italian composer (d. 1670)
  • Caterina Assandra, Italian composer (died c. 1618)

Deaths

• January 20 - Giambattista Benedetti, Italian scientist and music theorist (born 1530)
• February 4 – Gioseffo Zarlino, Italian music theorist and composer, maestro di cappella at St. Mark's in Venice (born 1517)
• September 20
  • Lodovico Agostini, Italian composer (born 1534)
  • Ascanio Trombetti, Italian composer (born 1544)
• probable – Maddalena Casulana, Italian lutenist, singer and composer (born c 1544)