Orlando Di Lasso

Lassus, Orlande de

 or Orlando di Lasso or Roland de Lassus

(born 1530/32, Mons, Spanish Hainaut—died June 14, 1594, Munich) Flemish composer. He began as a choirboy (with such a beautiful voice that he is said to have been kidnapped to sing elsewhere), and his first known position was in service to the Gonzaga family in Italy (1544). After 1556 he was based in Munich as kapellmeister to the duke of Bavaria, but he pursued an international career, traveling in Italy, Germany, Flanders, and France. He wrote more than 1,200 works, in every contemporary style and genre, sacred (including some 60 masses and 500 motets) and secular (including hundreds of madrigals and chansons), his attention to the correspondence of music and words being especially remarkable. Because of his range of styles (he always kept up with fashion) and because his works were printed widely during and after his lifetime, he influenced many composers and is regarded as one of the greatest masters of his century.

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Lasso, Orlando Di 

(or Roland de Lassus). Born circa 1532 in Mons; died June 14, 1594, in Munich. Franco-Flemish composer.

Lasso was the foremost representative of the Netherlands school and one of the greatest masters of polyphony. As a child he was a choirboy in Mons. He entered the service of Duke Ferdinand of Gonzaga in 1544 and traveled with him to Sicily, Italy, France, and England. He moved to Munich in 1556; he sang in the ducal chapel, which he directed from 1563 until his death in 1594.

Lasso was famous throughout Europe. A Renaissance man, he combined various national music cultures in his music and created model works of choral polyphony in diverse genres of secular and sacred music. His music expresses a range of emotions from deep sorrow to humor, and his lyrics vary from philosophical meditations to a rather vulgar everyday-life setting; Lasso set stormy dramatic passions and subtle spiritual feelings to music. Most of the more than 2,000 songs he wrote were based on folk melodies.

Lasso’s greatest sacred works are his motets (more than 1,200; The Great Music Creation, a collection of 516 motets, was published posthumously in Monaco in 1604), Penitential Psalms (1565), and Masses (57; mostly a capella). The choral and orchestral sound of his polyphonic works is colorful and full of splendor, succulence, and dramatic force.

Lasso used verses by classical and contemporary poets as well as his own words as lyrics for his secular works—Italian madrigals, French part-songs, and German polyphonic lieder (his song “Echo” is known throughout the world and is performed by Soviet choirs). The colloquialisms, humor, and imagery of his works are characteristic of the Netherlands “genre” style. Lasso founded a school of composition; G. Gabrieli was his greatest student.

REFERENCES

Bulychev, V. (M. V. Ivanov-Boretskii). Orlando Lasso: Biograficheskii ocherk. Moscow, 1908.
Boetticher, W. Orlando di Lasso und seine Zeit. Kassel-Basel, 1958.

B. V. LEVIK