January 17 - Italian viol player and composer Peter Lupo joins the musicians' guild in London.
Palestrina succeeds Orlande de Lassus as maestro di cappella of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome.
Composer Thomas Whythorne returns to England from travels in Italy and the rest of Europe. The book he writes about his travels is now lost.
Lorenzo de' Medici orders a violin from Andrea Amati of Cremona.
Hermann Finck - Collection of wedding songs
Jhan Gero – Two books of motets
Orlande de Lassus – First book of madrigals (a5, published in Antwerp)
Palestrina – First book of secular madrigals
Nicola Vicentino – L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica ("Ancient Music Adapted to Modern Practice"), a treatise aimed at revising the chromatic and enharmonic genera of the ancient Greeks.
February 25 – Alonso Lobo, Spanish composer (died 1617)
June 11 – Lodovico Zacconi, composer and music theorist (died 1627)
probable - Paolo Quagliati, composer of the Roman school (died 1628)
date unknown - Mads Hak, Danish composer
probable – Jacob Clemens non Papa, Flemish composer (born c. 1510)
1555 in music Wikipedia (Text) CC BY-SA
