Year 1589 (MDLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Wednesday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar.

Emilio de' Cavalieri (ca. 1550–March 11, 1602) was an Italian composer, producer, organist, diplomat, choreographer and dancer at the end of the Renaissance era. His work, along with that of other composers active in Rome, Florence and Venice, was critical in defining the beginning of the musical Baroque era. A member of the Roman School of composers, he was an influential early composer of monody, and wrote what is usually considered to be the first oratorio.

Cavalieri was born in Rome of an aristocratic and musical family. He was the son of Tommaso de' Cavalieri (ca. 1509–1587), the close friend of Michelangelo. He probably received his early training there, and was working as an organist and music director in the period from 1578 to 1584. He spent much of his time in Rome as an organiser of Lenten oratorios. While in Rome he became associated with Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici.

Thoinot Arbeau is the anagrammatic pen name of French cleric Jehan Tabourot (March 17, 1519 - July 23, 1595). Tabourot is most famous for his Orchésographie, a study of late sixteenth-century French Renaissance social dance. He was born in Dijon and died in Langres.

Orchésographie provides information on social ballroom behaviour and on the interaction of musicians and dancers. It is available online in facsimile and in plain text. There is an English translation by Mary Stewart Evans, edited by Julia Sutton, in print with Dover Publications. It contains numerous woodcuts of dancers and musicians and includes many dance tabulations in which extensive instructions for the steps are lined up next to the musical notes, a significant innovation in dance notation at that time.

Arbeau's "Orchésographie" was used as the basis for Igor Stravinsky's final ballet, Agon, and Peter Warlock's Capriol Suite.