Orlando di Lasso

From Wind Repertory Project
Orlando di Lasso

Biography

Orlando di Lasso (also Roland de Lassus, Orlande de Lassus, Orlandus Lassus, Orlande de Lattre or Roland de Lattre (1532 (or 1530, Mons in the County of Hainaut, Habsburg Netherlands (modern-day Belgium) – 14 June 1594, Munich, Ger.) was a composer of the late Renaissance.

Information about di Lasso's early years is scanty, although some uncorroborated stories have survived, the most famous of which is that he was kidnapped three times because of the singular beauty of his singing voice. At the age of twelve, he left the Low Countries with Ferrante Gonzaga and went to Mantua, Sicily, and later Milan (from 1547 to 1549). While in Milan, he made the acquaintance of the madrigalist Spirito l'Hoste da Reggio, a formative influence on his early musical style.

He then worked as a singer and a composer for Costantino Castrioto in Naples in the early 1550s, and his first works are presumed to date from this time. Next he moved to Rome, where he worked for Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who maintained a household there, and in 1553, he became maestro di cappella of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, the ecumenical mother church of Rome and a spectacularly prestigious post indeed for a man only twenty-one years old.

No solid evidence survives for his whereabouts in 1554, but there are contemporary claims that he traveled in France and England. In 1555 he returned to the Low Countries and had his early works published in Antwerp (1555–1556). In 1556 he joined the court of Albrecht V, Duke of Bavaria, who was consciously attempting to create a musical establishment on a par with the major courts in Italy. Lasso was one of several Netherlanders to work there, and by far the most famous. By 1563 Lasso had been appointed maestro di cappella, succeeding Ludwig Daser in the post. Lasso remained in the service of Albrecht V and his heir, Wilhelm V, for the rest of his life.

By the 1560s Lasso had become quite famous, and composers began to go to Munich to study with him. Andrea Gabrieli went there in 1562, and possibly remained in the chapel for a year. Giovanni Gabrieli also possibly studied with him in the 1570s. His renown had spread outside strictly musical circles, for in 1570 Emperor Maximilian II conferred nobility upon him, a rare circumstance for a composer. Pope Gregory XIII knighted him and in 1571, and again in 1573, the king of France, Charles IX, invited him to visit.

In the late 1570s and 1580s Lasso made several visits to Italy, where he encountered the most modern styles and trends. In Ferrara, the center of avant-garde activity, he doubtless heard the madrigals being composed for the d'Este court. However, his own style remained conservative and became simpler and more refined as he aged. His final work was often considered one of his best pieces: an exquisite set of 21 madrigali spirituali known as the Lagrime di San Pietro (Tears of St. Peter), which he dedicated to Pope Clement VIII, and which was published posthumously in 1595.

Di Lasso was chief representative of the mature polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school, and considered to be one of the three most famous and influential musicians in Europe at the end of the 16th century (the other two being Palestrina and Victoria). One of the most prolific, versatile, and universal composers of the late Renaissance, Lasso wrote over 2,000 works in all Latin, French, Italian and German vocal genres known in his time. These include 530 motets, 175 Italian madrigals and villanellas, 150 French chansons, and 90 German lieder. No strictly instrumental music by Lasso is known to survive, or ever to have existed, an interesting omission for a composer otherwise so wide ranging and prolific, during an age when instrumental music was becoming an ever-more prominent means of expression, all over Europe. The German music publisher Adam Berg dedicated 5 volumes of his Patrocinium musicum (published from 1573–1580) to Lasso's music.


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