Bergquist Peter - Orlando Di Lasso Studies

Orlando di Lasso Studies
Orlando di Lasso was the most famous and most popular composer of the
second half of the 1500s. This book of essays written by leading scholars
from Europe and the United States is the rst full-length survey in English of
a broad spectrum of Lassos music. The essays discuss his large and varied
output with regard to structure, expressive qualities, liturgical aspects, and
its use as a model by other composers, focusing in turn on his Magnicat
settings, masses, motets, hymns and madrigals. His relationship to
contemporaries and younger composers is the main subject of three essays
and is touched on throughout the book, together with the circulation of his
music in print and in manuscript. His attitude toward modal theory is
explored in one essay, another considers the relationship of verbal and
musical stress in Lassos music and what this implies both for scholars and
for performers.
Peter Bergquist is Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Oregon.
He has edited works by Orlando di Lasso for Brenreiter Verlag and A-R
Editions.
Orlando di Lasso at the age of thirty-nine, from Moduli quinis vocibus
(Paris: Adrian Le Roy and Robert Ballard, RISM 1571a), quinta vox
partbook, reproduced by courtesy of the Musikabteilung, Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, Munich.
Orlando di Lasso Studies
edited by peter bergquist
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, So Paulo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521593878
Cambridge University Press 1999
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1999
This digitally printed first paperback version 2006
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Orlando di Lasso Studies / edited by Peter Bergquist.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
Contents: Aspects of form in Orlando di Lassos Magnificat
settings / James Erb Orlando di Lasso and Andrea Gabrieli / Marie
Louise Gllner Post-Tridentine liturgical change and functional
music / Daniel Zager The salon as marketplace in the 1550s /
Donna G. Cardamone Lassos Standomi un giorno and the canzone
in the mid-sixteenth century / Mary S. Lewis Lassos Fertur in
conviviis / Bernhold Schmid Orlando di Lasso and Rome / Noel
ORegan Orlando di Lasso as a model for composition as seen in
the three-voice motets of Jean de Castro / Ignace Bossuyt The
madrigal book of Jean Turnhout (1589) and its relationship to Lasso
/ James Haar Modal ordering within Orlando di Lassos
publications / Peter Bergquist Correct and incorrect accentuation
in Lassos music / Horst Leuchtmann.
ISBN 0 521 59387 5 (hardback)
1. Lasso, Orlando di, 15321594 Criticism and interpretation.
I. Bergquist, Peter.
ML410.L3075 1999
782.0092dc21 98-11734 CIP MN
ISBN-13 978-0-521-59387-8 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-59387-5 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-02813-4 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-02813-2 paperback
Contents
Preface [vii]
List of abbreviations [xi]
21 Aspects of form in Orlando di Lassos Magnicat settings [1]
james erb, university of richmond
22 Orlando di Lasso and Andrea Gabrieli: two motets and their
masses in a Munich choir book from 156465 [20]
marie louise gllner, university of california, los angeles
23 Post-Tridentine liturgical change and functional music: Lassos
cycle of polyphonic Latin hymns [41]
daniel zager, university of north carolina at chapel hill
24 The salon as marketplace in the 1550s: patrons and collectors of
Lassos secular music [64]
donna g. cardamone, university of minnesota
25 Lassos Standomi un giorno and the canzone in the mid-sixteenth
century [91]
mary s. lewis, university of pittsburgh
26 Lassos Fertur in conviviis: on the history of its text and transmission [116]
bernhold schmid, bayerische akademie der wissenschaften,
musikhistorische kommission
27 Orlando di Lasso and Rome: personal contacts and musical inuences [132]
noel oregan, university of edinburgh
28 Orlando di Lasso as a model for composition as seen in the three-voice
motets of Jean de Castro [158]
ignace bossuyt, katholieke universiteit leuven
29 The madrigal book of Jean Turnhout (1589) and its relationship
to Lasso [183]
james haar, university of north carolina at chapel hill
10 Modal ordering within Orlando di Lassos publications [203]
peter bergquist, university of oregon
v
11 Correct and incorrect accentuation in Lassos music: on the implied
dependence on the text in classical vocal polyphony [227]
horst leuchtmann, bayerische akademie der wissenschaften,
musikhistorische kommission
General index [247]
Index of Lasso compositions and printed sources [251]
contents
vi
Preface
Orlando di Lasso (1530/21594) was the most famous, popular, and acclaimed
composer of his day. Born in Mons in what is now Belgium, as a subject of the
Empire, he spent his formative years in Italy, serving as choirmaster at St. John
Lateran in Rome when he was barely twenty years old. He soon returned north,
however, and settled in Antwerp for a few years until he was hired in 1556 by Duke
Albrecht V of Bavaria in Munich, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life.
His birth in a French-speaking area and his Italian sojourn together with his long
residence in Germany (he probably also visited England briey in the mid-1550s)
made him the most cosmopolitan musician of his day. Early on he was recognized
as a leading composer throughout Europe, and publications of his music far
exceeded those of any contemporary, or for that matter any other musician for at
least a century afterwards. He was especially noted for his ability to convey in
music the content of the text he was setting; an early commentator praised his
ability to place the object almost alive before the eyes. Only during the last ten
years or so of his life did his popularity wane, though he composed prolically
almost without interruption through his last years, and his music remained a
model and a pervasive inuence in Germany well into the seventeenth century.
Lassos music continues to be highly esteemed today, but he tends to stand in
the shadow of his contemporary Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who is more
often taken as the representative gure of the later sixteenth century, especially in
settings of Latin texts. Many reasons might be adduced for this preference. One is
Lassos close attention to the text: when the music is so intimately associated with
words, understanding of the text is essential for the listener or student in order for
the music to make its full eect, and how many of us today are uent in Latin? Or
in archaic French, German, or Italian, the other languages that Lasso set? Another
obstacle to a proper estimate of Lassos achievement has been the sheer bulk of his
production and diculty of access to it. The rst collected edition of his music,
SW, was begun in 1894 and ceased publication in 1927 after publishing less than
half of Lassos output. SWNR continued this edition after World War II, and only
after its completion was all of Lassos music nally available in print, though in
editions of widely varying quality. Considering that in the same space of time one
complete edition of Palestrina and most of a second have appeared, it is not entirely
surprising that Palestrina has been more thoroughly studied and understood.
vii
Lasso has increasingly been receiving his due, however. Through much of
the twentieth century the main Lasso scholarship was published in German or
French. Studies by Adolf Sandberger and Charles van den Borren remain
important; Wolfgang Boettichers lists of Lasso sources with a survey of all the
music and Horst Leuchtmanns magisterial biography are essential for any serious
study of Lasso.
1
Wide-ranging studies like these have not appeared in English. Brief
surveys by Jerome Roche and James Haar are valuable, but the only full-length
book about Lassos music in English known to me is David Crooks study of the
imitation Magnicats.
2
James Erbs annotated bibliography of writings about Lasso
is an invaluable guide to publications prior to 1990.
3
Papers and essays in English
on Lasso have appeared in recent festschrifts and in proceedings of the Antwerp
and Munich conferences on Lasso in 1982 and 1994; these publications are
frequently cited in the present volume, which is the rst compilation of such
studies entirely in English. I hope that it will be a useful contribution to the more
comprehensive study of Lassos music that is urgently needed.
Orlando di Lasso Studies begins with three essays on Lassos liturgical music
for the Munich court, music that was little known until its publication in SWNR,
where it occupies twenty-two of the twenty-six volumes. James Erb, who edited
Lassos Magnicats for SWNR, examines the formal aspects, both small and large
scale, of this large body of music. Marie Louise Gllner compares mass settings by
Lasso and Andrea Gabrieli found in a Munich manuscript, both based on motets
by Lasso. Daniel Zager considers Lassos cycle of polyphonic hymn settings in
relation to the liturgical revisions promulgated by the Council of Trent that were
gradually being established in Bavaria during Lassos lifetime.
Lassos settings of vernacular texts include some of his best-known and most
preface
viii
1
Adolf Sandberger, Beitrge zur Geschichte der bayerischen Hofkapelle unter
Orlando di Lasso, only vols. 1 and 3 published (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hrtel,
18945); Charles van den Borren, Orlande de Lassus (Paris: Librairie Felix Alcan,
1920); Boetticher, Lasso; Leuchtmann, Leben and Briefe.
2
Jerome Roche, Lassus, Oxford Studies of Composers 19 (London: Oxford
University Press, 1982); New Grove, s.v. Lassus by James Haar, revised and
published separately in The New Grove High Renaissance Masters (New York:
Norton, 1984); David Crook, Orlando di Lassos Imitation Magnicats for
Counter-Reformation Munich (Princeton University Press, 1994). Crooks study is
a revision of his Princeton dissertation; other dissertations on Lasso have not
achieved publication in book form. One regrets the non-existence of Sherlock
Holmess monograph upon the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus, said by experts
to be the last word on the subject (Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the
Bruce-Partington Plans, His Last Bow, concluding paragraph); this is at least an
item to consider in the Lasso Rezeptionsgeschichte.
3
James Erb, Orlando di Lasso: A Guide to Research (New York: Garland, 1990).
popular music. His settings of Italian texts are the most numerous and perhaps the
most signicant in this category. Donna Cardamone in another of her incisive
examinations of Lassos early years in Italy throws new light on the dissemination
and publication there of Lassos madrigals, villanesche, and moresche. Mary Lewis
provides close scrutiny of Lassos setting of a six-movement canzone and shows
how the musics structure and expressivity work together to build a musical unity
parallel to that of Petrarchs poem. Lassos motets include settings of a considerable
number of secular Latin texts in addition to the predominant religious subjects.
Though classed as motets, some of these pieces are more closely related to the
chanson or madrigal, especially those with comic texts or the drinking songs.
Bernhold Schmid closely examines the history of one of the latter and the
checkered career of its text in publications during Lassos lifetime.
Lassos widespread fame and inuence are frequently touched on in the
essays already mentioned, and they are the main subject of three other essays. Noel
ORegan provides a complement to Donna Cardamones essay in considering the
impact of Lassos sacred music in Rome, both during the time he worked there and
in later years. Ignace Bossuyt and James Haar observe Lassos inuence in the land
of his birth. Bossuyt shows how Lassos motets were models for Jean de Castro,
especially Castros three-voice motets, while Haar considers the 1589 madrigal
book of Jean Turnhout in relation to Lassos Libro quarto of 1567.
The two nal papers in the collection view Lassos music from a broader
perspective. My own study considers Lassos practice of representing the eight
modes in numerical order in publications throughout his life and the extent to
which these publications may represent his own intentions as distinct from those
of his publishers. Horst Leuchtmann examines the relationship of verbal and
musical stresses in Lassos music and draws conclusions for performance and
scholarship alike.
The frontispiece and the jacket illustration are reproduced by permission of the
Musikabteilung, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich. The frontispiece reproduces
one of the best available portraits of Lasso. It rst appeared in Mellange dOrlande
de Lassus, the collected edition of Lassos chansons published in Paris by Adrian Le
Roy and Robert Ballard in 1570 (RISM 1570d) and was included in their Lasso
prints for the next ten years.
4
It depicts Lasso at the age of thirty-nine years, which
means that the engraving dates from 1569, since Lasso through most of his life
believed that he had been born in 1530.
5
The jacket picture shows the beginning of
preface
ix
4
Leuchtmann, Leben, pp. 2534. The date 1560 in the lower-right corner of the
decorative frame is unrelated to the portrait itself.
5
Ibid., p. 45.
Lassos Magnicat Ultimi miei sospiri, as copied 1579 in Mus. Ms. 11 of the
Munich collection. The reproduction in Mary Lewiss paper of the text of Petrarchs
Standomi un giorno as edited by Gianfranco Contini and translated by James
Wyatt Cook is by permission of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance
Studies, State University of New York.
This collection of studies had its inception in a conference on Orlando di
Lasso held at the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, 2325 October 1994. Five
of the participants in that conference are represented in this volume (Cardamone,
Erb, Gllner, Haar, and Bergquist), though not with the papers that were delivered
on that occasion. The conference was possible in large part because of the initiative
and support of Anne Dhu McLucas, Dean of the School of Music, University of
Oregon. After the conference she took the rst steps in exploring the publication of
augmented conference proceedings, the result of which was ultimately the present
collection of studies. I am more grateful than I can hope to say for her
contributions to making this volume possible and for her continuing interest and
active support as the project evolved. I am also grateful to my colleagues and
friends Marian Smith, University of Oregon, James Erb, University of Richmond,
and David Crook, University of Wisconsin, for help with various stages of the
project, and to my wife, Dorothy Bergquist, who has always been a careful reader
and astute critic of just about everything I have ever written. Above all, my deepest
thanks go to my colleagues who so willingly contributed to this volume.
peter bergquist
university of oregon
preface
x
Abbreviations
Boetticher, Lasso Wolfgang Boetticher, Orlando di Lasso und seine Zeit. I.
Monographie. Kassel: Brenreiter, 1958.
CM Orlando di Lasso, The Complete Motets. Ed. Peter
Bergquist with David Crook and James Erb. Madison:
A-R Editions, 1995 .
KBM 5/1 Martin Bente et al., Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Katalog
der Musikhandschriften: I Chorbcher und
Handschriften in chorbuchartiger Notierung. Kataloge
Bayerischer Musiksammlungen, Band 5/1. Munich: G.
Henle, 1989.
Leuchtmann, Leben Horst Leuchtmann, Orlando di Lasso: I. Sein Leben.
Wiesbaden: Breitkopf und Hrtel, 1976.
Leuchtmann, Briefe Horst Leuchtmann, Orlando di Lasso: II. Seine Briefe.
Wiesbaden: Breitkopf und Hrtel, 1977.
MOM Orlando di Lasso, Magnum Opus Musicum. Munich: N.
Henrici, 1604 (RISM 1604a)
New Grove The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Ed.
Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 1980.
Orlandus Lassus and his Orlandus Lassus and his Time. Colloquium Proceedings
Time Antwerp 2426 August 1994. Ed. Ignace Bossuyt, Eugen
Schreurs, and Annelies Wouters. Yearbook of the Alamire
Foundation, 1. Peer: Alamire, 1995.
RISM Rpertoire international des sources musicales.
Einzeldrucke vor 1800. Series A/I. Kassel: Brenreiter,
1971 ; Recueils imprims XVI
e
XVII
e
sicles, Series B/I.
Munich: Henle, 1960. Citations from Series A/I use the
form 1555a rather than L 755 when possible.
SW Orlando di Lasso, Smtliche Werke. Ed. Franz Xaver
Haberl and Adolf Sandberger, 21 vols. Leipzig: Breitkopf
und Hrtel, 18941927. Reprint, 1973.
SW2 Orlando di Lasso, Smtliche Werke: Zweite, nach den
xi
Quellen revidierte Auage. Ed. Horst Leuchtmann.
Wiesbaden: Breitkopf und Hrtel, 1968 .
SWNR Orlando di Lasso, Smtliche Werke, neue Reihe. Ed.
Siegfried Hermelink et al. Kassel: Brenreiter, 195696.
abbrevi ati ons
xii
1 Aspects of form in Orlando di Lassos
Magnicat settings
james erb
The fundamental, text-generated contour of polyphonic Magnicat
settings in the late sixteenth century, familiar to most students of that eras
music, has recently been outlined in the rst chapter of David Crooks
exemplary new study of Lassos Magnicats.
1
However, since virtually all
vocal music ultimately takes its form from its text, and since form is the
topic of this essay, it may be useful to review that contour before going into
the specics of form itself.
The Magnicat is the closing element at Vespers, belonging to the
species of ritual lyrics of scriptural origin known in the Roman rite as can-
ticles.These lyrical texts, which resemble psalms in their devotional, often
ecstatic, tone, also resemble psalms in having individual verses of bipartite
structure that is, each verse has two parts, generally of parallel or apposi-
tive content. Though these two parts are often of unequal length, it is custo-
mary for the sake of brevity to refer to them as halves. The text of the
Magnicat comes from Luke 1: 4655. To these ten verses of Scripture are
added, in liturgical use, the two verses of the standardized Lesser Doxology
(Gloria Patri et Filio . . . et in saecula saeculorum. Amen), so that the text
of the sixteenth-century Magnicat has, in all, twelve verses.
At Vespers on any given day an antiphon proper to the day is sung
beforethechantingof theMagnicat, andagainafter it. Theantiphons text,
appointed to a particular day, is sung to its own tune in one of the eight
modes of plainchant. The repertory of plainchant psalmody provides a set
of eight standardized Magnicat tones, and the twelve verses of the
Magnicat arechantedtowhicheverof thesemelodicformulascorresponds
tothemodeof theMagnicat-antiphonproper toVespers onthat day.
1
1
David Crook, Orlando di Lassos Imitation Magnicats for Counter-Reformation
Munich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 314.
Magnicat tones consist of a single, modally characteristic pitch,
called the reciting tone, to which most of the text in a given verse is
chanted. It is notated in indeterminate length so that it can be used to sing
any number of syllables. This reciting tone has an identifying tessitura
characteristic of the mode with which it is associated (i.e., tone 1 with mode
1, tone 2 with mode 2 and so on). The characteristic reciting tone is pre-
ceded by an equally characteristic opening melodic ourish. A medial
ourish occurs between the rst appearance of the reciting tone and its
continuation in the second half of the verse; and a terminating ourish
closes the verse. For example, two successive verses chanted to tone 8, with
its reciting tone on c, preceded, interrupted and followed by the initial,
medial and terminal ourishes, would be written as in Example 1.1.
The intimate connection between the mode of the antiphon and the
Magnicat tone directly aects polyphonic settings based on them. In
Lassos time it was already a long-standing custom that such settings would
use one of the eight Magnicat tones as a cantus rmus. The dimensions
and structure of Magnicat tones determine the form and, less directly, the
dimensions of polyphonic Magnicat settings.
Relatively few polyphonic Magnicats of the period are composed as
a single long motet set in polyphony throughout. More often we nd alter-
natimMagnicats, i.e., those with the verses sung to chant and polyphony
in regular alternation. Lasso left no settings of the odd-numbered verses; in
all but four of his Magnicats he set only the even-numbered verses in
polyphony, leaving the odd-numbered verses to be performed in chant or
on the organ.
2
In doing so he followed the prevalent custom of Magnicat
composition of his time. Settings of only the six even-numbered verses
james erb
2
2
The four exceptions: Nos. 35, 64, and 65 (a8), and 102 (a10). All employ cantus-
rmus technique. Reference to specic Lasso Magnicats, here and
subsequently, is to the complete edition in SWNR, vols. 1317.
Example 1.1: Magnicat, tone 8, verses 9 and 10
V

9.Su -
10.Sic -
sce -
ut
pit
lo -
Israel
cutus est
pu -
ad

e -
pa -
rum
tres
su -
no-
um,
stros,
recordatus
Abraham et
misericor -
semini ejus

di -
in
ae
sae -
su -
cu -
ae.
la.
Initial
flourish
Reciting
tone
Medial
flourish
Reciting
tone
Terminal
flourish
greatly outnumber those of only the odd-numbered verses in sixteenth-
century Magnicat settings.
3
A reason for this preference for the even-
numbered verses might be that setting the even-numbered verses has two
advantages: rst, in intoning the rst verse, the cantor and his small choir of
chant singers can give the pitch at the start and reinforce the relationship to
the mode of the preceding antiphon; and second, a setting that concludes in
polyphony makes a more impressive close than a quieter (and possibly anti-
climactic) close in plainchant. The distinction between this primarily
esthetic consideration, in contrast to the routinely utilitarian purpose that
the Magnicat served as accompaniment to a ritual act, is central to this
study.
Whatever the disposition of the verses set in polyphony, the
Magnicat tone determined to a signicant degree their tonal dimensions
(cleng and tessitura, the appropriate tonal frame and modal nal); more
to the point of the present study, the text provides the backbone of the
structure upon which the monophonic verses were sung, and upon which
polyphonic settings were traditionally made. The tones determine the
dimensions and structure of the polyphony, so to speak, as the dimensions
and structure of a boats keel determine the structure of the boat.
4
Table 1.1
represents this outline, which constitutes the norm for almost all Lassos
Magnicat settings.
In the ninety-seven alternatim Magnicats credibly ascribed to
Lasso, two choirs of unequal size normally performed in alternation: the
schola cantorum, a group of four or ve singers trained in plainsong,
chanted the Magnicat-antiphon and sang the odd-numbered verses of the
Magnicat (unless these were played on the organ see below); the choir,
made up of some twelve to twenty-four trained specialists, sang the six
even-numbered polyphonic verses.
5
Original sources for Lassos alternatimMagnicats contain only the
six polyphonic, even-numbered verses ascribed to him. The scribes and
aspects of form i n lasso
s magni fi cat setti ngs

3
3
See Winfried Kirsch, Die Quellen der mehrstimmigen Magnicat- und Te Deum
Vertonungen bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1966),
p. 44.
4
The history of polyphonic Magnicat settings from their beginnings in the
fteenth century is summarized in MGG, 8, cols. 14845, and in New Grove, s.v.
Magnicat.
5
Cf. SWNR, vol. 13, pp. xixii.
printers who produced these sources (dating c. 1565c. 1630) clearly took it
for granted that the users would know what to do about the odd-numbered
verses, and most of these users would have been professional church musi-
cians familiar with the appropriate service books and liturgical practices.
These practices (e.g., the degree of solemnity and, consequently, the
number of participants at any given Vespers) varied from one parish to
another even within one diocese. In addition to singing the odd-numbered
verses in plainchant they certainly also included playing them on the organ,
as surviving sixteenth-century manuscript collections of organ verses for
the Magnicat attest. Conversely, the scarcity of polyphonic settings of
Magnicat antiphon texts even by Lasso suggests that these were rarely if
ever sung in the place of plainchant antiphons, and that, since a schola can-
torumwas available for that purpose, they also chanted the antiphons. Even
when, as was quite common, local dialects of chant diered from the one
james erb
4
Table 1.1 Overall form in Lassos Magnificats
Verses given here in normal type are sung in plainsong (Schola cantorum)
Verses given here in italics are sung in polyphony (Choir)*
(A) ANTIPHON (Schola cantorum)
(B) MAGNIFICAT Schola cantorum (chant) alternating with Choir (polyphony)
Verse 1: Magnificat / anima mea Dominum (12)
Verse 2: Et exultavit spiritus meus / in Deo salutari meo (19)
Verse 3: Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae / ecce enim ex hoc beatam me
dicent omnes generationes (35)
Verse 4: Quia fecit mihi magna qui potens est: / et sanctum nomen ejus (19)
Verse 5: Et misericordia ejus a progenie in progenies / timentibus eum (25)
Verse 6: Fecit potentiam in brachio suo: / dispersit superbos mente cordis sui (24)
Verse 7: Deposuit potentes de sede, / et exaltavit humiles (18)
Verse 8: Esurientes implevit bonis: / et divites dimisit inanes (20)
Verse 9: Suscepit Israel puerum suum, / recordatus misericordiae suae (23)
Verse 10: Sicut locutus est ad patres nostros, / Abraham et semini ejus in saecula (24)
Verse 11: Gloria Patri, et Filio, / et Spiritui Sancto. (16)
Verse 12: Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, / et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
(25)
(C) ANTIPHON (reprise Schola cantorum only)
Note:
*The diagonal line in each verse shows the location of the caesura; the number in
parentheses at the end of each verse gives its length in syllables.
Lasso used as cantus rmus for his settings,
6
or even when the polyphonic
part of the Magnicat was based on music from outside the plainchant rep-
ertory that is, constituted an imitationor parodyMagnicat profes-
sional church musicians would have used their own sources to sing (or
play) the odd-numbered verses to the appropriate Magnicat tone.
Overall form
The term overall form, as used here, refers to relationships among
the twelve verses of Lassos alternatimMagnicats. These relationships are
many-sided, but one can discern recurrent patterns. The rst has to do with
length. In Lassos huge output of Magnicats the length of individual works
varies considerably, and of course one wonders why. In his notes to
Breitkopf s Palestrina edition, Franz Xaver Haberl notes that at solemn
Vespers while Palestrina was choirmaster at St. Peters in Rome, each partic-
ipant was individually censed during the singing of the Magnicat, and
since at solemn Vespers in so important a church there were many partici-
pants, the Magnicat needed to be a quarter of an hour long. The censing
requirement, he says, explains the grandiose dimensions of Palestrinas
third and fourth sets of Magnicats (20075 measures for the six poly-
phonic verses alone).
7
Investigation into relationships between Bavarian
liturgies and musical style in Lassos liturgical music, called for years ago by
James Haar and now under way,
8
may lead to reasonable explanations of the
great range in the dimensions of Lassos Magnicats: from barely more than
40 measures to well over 200.
Such external factors as Haberl mentions were surely fundamental to
the musical form of much liturgical music of Lassos time; but other factors
less objective and more esthetic in nature appear to have been equally

5
6
See SWNR, vol. 13, p. xv, n. 9.
7
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Werke: Erste kritisch durchgesehene
Gesamtausgabe, 33 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hrtel, 18621907), vol. 17, p. i.
Reference is to Nos. 1732 in that edition (pp. 79237).
8
New Grove, vol. 10, s.v. Lassus [Lasso]. Franco-Flemish Family of Composers,
pp. 480502, esp. p. 487b. David Crooks chapter on vespers polyphony for the
Bavarian court and the local usages in the time of the Council of Trent,
Imitation Magnicats, pp. 3364, makes a substantial contribution in this
direction.
important. This study proposes that demonstrable features of structure in
Lassos Magnicat settings show that, while composing music to existing
formulas and patterns for the Bavarian court chapel, he also followed prin-
ciples that were purely musical.
The article on musical form in the old Harvard Dictionary of Music
makes a useful distinction between the form of a piece of music on the one
side and, on the other side, the form in it (i.e., the shape of the events that
take place within the xed elements of that outline).
9
Table 1.1 above dia-
grams the form of a Lasso Magnicat, its six plainsong verses alternating
with Lassos six polyphonic verses. The overall form in such a piece is
evident in the manner in which Lasso arranged relationships between the
six polyphonic verses so as to create, in the succession from one to the next,
unied and yet remarkably varied designs of musically satisfying propor-
tions. No one can claim that Lasso was unique in this respect, but I hope to
provide a glimpse of his manipulation of formal units, both within the
overall frame and within the frame of individual verses, so that we can then
compare his practices to those of his contemporaries and deepen our per-
spective on the nature of form in all the music of his time.
The basic traits of overall form in Lassos Magnicats are consistency
of style and length between the several verses, regular reduction of the
number of voices in certain verses, and a tendency to treat the thematic
material more freely in the inner verses than in opening and closing verses.
These three traits, though strongly inuenced by ritually conditioned
externals like providing music for a procession or for the censing of partici-
pants, are primarily esthetic (as distinct from utilitarian) in nature.
Like Magnicats by Morales, Gombert, Clemens, Sen, and
Palestrina, Lassos settings display among their constituent verses a consis-
tency both of dimension and of style. Requirements of a particular Vespers
may have determined whether the Magnicat as a whole was to be long or
short; but a composers care for its proportions within that desired length
will have been a matter of musical judgment alone, aected only tangen-
tially by external considerations. It is true, of course, that in the six even-
numbered verses which normally make up a Lasso Magnicat the lengths of
james erb
6
9
Willi Apel, ed., Harvard Dictionary of Music. Second Edition, Revised and
Enlarged (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
1969), pp. 3268.
texts do not cover a wide range: the nal verse is longest with twenty-ve
syllables, and the two shortest each have nineteen syllables (see Table 1.1).
Lassos settings of these verses might therefore be expected to have similar
dimensions, and generally they do. Even so, the rst and last verses tend to
be a little longer than the others, the last verse so regularly that its greater
length constitutes a norm. Its longer text doubtless contributes to this
status, but in most Lasso Magnicats the nature and structure of the nal
verse reects as much a need to create an impressive close as to accommo-
date the longest text. Lasso always uses all the voices in the opening and nal
verses (and nearly always in verse 4). In a few earlier Magnicats he even
increases the number of voices in the last verse, a fact that strengthens the
impression of a conscious eort to compose an eective close.
The second trait of style in overall form is that Lasso, like other com-
posers of his time, reduces the number of voices in certain verses of the
Magnicat (as also in his masses and larger motets); for instance, in a ve-
voice Magnicat he will set one or more of the three inner verses (6, 8, or 10)
for only three voices. These verses were perhaps meant for soloists, but in
the Munich manuscript sources for Lassos masses and Magnicats the
application of divisi notation to individual voice-parts at cadential points
suggests that this may not always have been the practice.
Such reductions of the number of voices rarely occur more than twice
in any one Magnicat. Reduction of voices in verse 4 occurs only in
Magnicats 62, 80 and 94. Item 3 in Table 1.3 below represents one of them,
showing how Magnicat 80 repeats a pattern of upper-voice trios in each of
the four inner verses. These trios in verses 4, 6, 8 and 10 of Magnicat 80
may obliquely refer to angelic choirs of treble voices, evoked by its model,
Cipriano de Rores setting of Petrarchs Vergine bella (Canzone 366, rst
stanza). The two other works named display comparably symmetrical pat-
terns, but oer no such reasons for Lassos having made them: Magnicat
62 (SWNR, vol. 15, pp. 12637) is congured SSATTBBBBTTT
AAASSSSSATTB, and Magnicat 94 (SWNR, vol. 17, pp. 1430)
SAATBBTBSAASATBSAATBBSSAATTBB. It will be noted that the
thinning of texture in verse 4 is peculiar to these three works, in which the
overall formal plan evidently took precedence over Lassos otherwise con-
sistent practice of setting verse 4 for the full complement. A reduced combi-
nation involving the same voices may occur more than once in a Magnicat

7
(see Table 1.3, No. 3, verses 4, 6, 8, 10), but never in two successive verses. Its
purpose is clearly not only to illustrate the text on occasion, but equally to
oer variety of sonic texture.
The third trait of overall form is that borrowed monophonic or poly-
phonic themes regularly receive freer treatment in certain verses. This trait
is linked to the reduction of the number of voices, because wherever such
thinning-out occurs, free use of the model unavoidably and thus character-
istically occurs along with it. The expression free use of the model here
distinguishes between strict and unembellished quotation from whatever
piece supplied the thematic material, be it a plainsong Magnicat tone
serving as the cantus rmus, or a polyphonic model. For instance, in verse 2
of Magnicat 16, tone 8 is clearly quoted in the tenor;
10
but if one compares
it to the standard chant formula, a modest degree of variation on it is appar-
ent.
In four-, ve- or six-voice Magnicats derived from comparable
polyphonic models, verses scored for fewer voices than the model typically
treat the borrowed material, as noted above, with greater freedom. In both
cantus-rmus and parody Magnicats free treatment of the model also
occurs in verses employing all the voices; but among all the Magnicats this
free treatment is more consistently characteristic of verses 6, 8 or 10 than it
is of verses scored for the full complement.
11
Winfried Kirsch and Gustave Reese, writing of sixteenth-century
Magnicats as a whole, attach text-illustrative signicance to the frequent
thinning of texture in verse 8 in polyphonic Magnicats (Esurientes
implevit bonis), suggesting that it symbolized the hungry ones referred
to in the rst half of the verse.
12
Lasso often used such obvious opportu-
nities for text-illustration as well, of course; but even so, the Magnicat
verse in which he most often reduces the number of voices is not verse 8, but
verse 10 (Sicut locutus est), where opportunity for text-illustration
through a palpable change in texture is less obvious. This fact suggests that
james erb
8
10
SWNR, vol. 13, pp. 2279.
11
Analysis of four parody masses selected from the whole chronological range of
Lassos mass output yielded a correlation between reduction of voice-parts and
free treatment of the model comparable to that observed in the Magnicats.
12
Winfried Kirsch, Quellen, pp. 4950; Gustave Reese, The Polyphonic Magnicat
of the Renaissance as a Design in Tonal Centers, Journal of the American
Musicological Society, 13 (1960), p. 77.
Lasso may have desired the change in texture near the end of the piece
merely to enhance the eect of the upcoming nal verse, and that a juxtapo-
sition of textures may have mattered as much to him as would the occasion
to practice the text-illustration for which he was repeatedly praised in his
own time.
Table 1.2 represents the typical pattern of the relationships between
the number of voices in a given verse and the degree of assimilation or free
treatment of the borrowed material. No single Lasso Magnicat conforms
to this scheme in all particulars, of course; but traces of it do appear in all of
them regardless of chronology and style, and regardless of whether the
model is monophonic or polyphonic. Nor does it appear in either of the two
Lasso Magnicats that seem to be freely composed on invented themes.
13
For the sake of illustration, Table 1.3 shows, in ve representative
Magnicats, the range and degree of conformity to the prototype described
above.
A survey of all 101 authentic Lasso Magnicats shows the proportion

9
13
Of the authentic Lasso Magnicats, this applies only to Nos. 72 and 94 (SWNR,
vol. 16, pp. 1424, and SWNR, vol. 17, pp. 1430, respectively). Magnicat 67
(SWNR, vol. 15, pp. 20111) seems also to be freely composed, but is not
considered here because it is spurious (see ibid., pp. xixii).
Table 1.2 Pattern of altered scoring and treatment of themes in
Lassos Magnificats
Alteration of number of voice-parts: Treatment of themes:*

Absent or rare Vs 2 Vs 4 Vs 12 Usually strict
| | | |
| | |
Frequent Vs 6 Vs 8 Vs 10 Usually free
Note:
* Strict treatment of borrowed themes here indicates that in which the borrowed
material is quoted without substantial change (e.g., an unembellished cantus
firmus in long notes in the tenor, or a nearly direct quotation from a polyphonic
model); free treatment designates degrees of metamorphosis in which the
borrowed material is only perceptible or is only present as a structural principle
(e.g., as an altered harmonic progression or as a mutant succession of intervals
drawn from the model).
james erb
10
Table 1.3* Overall form in five Lasso Magnificats
(1) SWNR, vol. 13, pp. 10621: Magnificat 7 (c. 1565), a6, cantus-firmus setting of
tone 7
Verse: 2 4 6 8 10 12
Length in breves C: 27 24 27 25 23 32
Treatment of model: x x (x) (x) x x
Voices employed all all all SSAT ATTB all
(2) SWNR, vol. 14, pp. 12632: Magnificat 37, tone 1 (14 October 1583), a4,
parody on Si par souhait (model: Lasso, a4)
Verse: 2 4 6 8 10 12
Treatment of model: x x (x) (x) x x
Voices employed all all TB all SA all
(3) SWNR, vol. 16, pp. 10819: Magnificat 80, tone 1 (158590), a5, parody on
Vergine bella (model: Rore, a5)
Verse: 2 4 6 8 10 12
Treatment of model: x (x) (x) (x) (x) x
Voices employed all SSA SST SSA SST all
(4) SWNR, vol. 14, pp. 4960: Magnificat 30 (c. 1565), a4, cantus-firmus setting of
tone 6
Verse: 2 4 6 8 10 12
Treatment of model: x x x x x
Voices employed all all SA all ATB SSATB[!]
(5) SWNR, vol. 15, pp. 21227: Magnificat 68, tone 6 (c. 1585), a6, cantus-firmus
setting on Dies est laetitiae (model: anonymous cantio)
Verse: 2 4 6 8 10 12
Treatment of model: x x (x) x x x
Voices employed all all SS all SAT all
Note:
* The sign x (underlined) stands here for strict quotation of a complete
psalmodic cantus firmus, or, in the parodies, for nearly direct quotation of at least
half a verse from a polyphonic model; x (not underlined) stands for incomplete
reference to a cantus firmus, or for substantially altered quotation of polyphony;
(x) in parentheses stands for indirect, barely perceptible, reference to borrowed
material, be it monophonic (from a plainsong cantus firmus or a single
identifiable melodic strand from a polyphonic model); a dash stands for absence
of reference to the model, thus for free composition on invented themes. Upper-
case letters indicate voice parts: S: Superius; A: Altus; T: Tenor; B: Bassus.
of more thinly scored verses to be lowest in those pieces set for four voices,
probably because four-voice settings, being usually shorter, create less need
for variety of sonic texture. The Magnicats for ve, six and eight voices,
with richer texture and concomitant greater length, oer a potentially
greater variety of sound, while at the same time their greater length creates a
need for that variety. Other usages suggest that structural considerations
motivated the reduction of voice-parts. As already noted, Lasso rarely uses
the same combination twice in one work; and furthermore he generally
reduces the number of voices by two: in the six-voice Magnicats some
combination of four voices is most common, in the ve-voice works it is the
trio, and in those for four voices the duo all presumably in order to make
more clearly audible the dierence in the sonic texture.
The manifold ways in which Lasso uses the overall form in the
Magnicat that is, the relationships between its six polyphonic verses
within the traditional layout of it show a care for balanced proportions for
their own sake, and for achieving variety and eect in the overall acoustical
pattern by reducing or occasionally increasing the density of the
scoring. This, along with the absence of any tendency to compose to a
formula or stereotype, is the outstanding trait of overall form in Lassos
Magnicats.
It is appropriate that witty and often profound application of text-
illustration is often adduced to explain the popularity of Lassos music in
his time; but there are other qualities, too. His workmanlike attention to
proportion and balance in the overall form of his Magnicats will also have
been a factor. His care for structural clarity within the prescribed outline
indeed has much in common with that of his contemporaries; but this body
of works all on the same text, in numbers left us by no other composer,
aords an overview of Lassos assiduous care for musical form and thereby
provides a standard of usage and of quality to which other compositions
even those of a dierent species might protably be compared. In that
respect the corpus is unique.
Verse form
The term verse form,as used here, refers to relationships among the
component parts in the six polyphonic verses of Lassos alternatim

11
Magnicats. This form is based on the matrix for the individual verses rep-
resented in Table 1.1. The matrix derives from the species of composition
(canticle), and this species in turn originates in a quasi-psalmodic text. It is
also governed by the characteristic bipartite form of psalmodic plainchant
verses, represented in Table 1.1 by the divisions shown in each verse. Some
of the identiable traits that emerge are standard for their time, others
more nearly Lassos own.
The central trait is the form AB, a pattern imposed on the composer
of Magnicat verses by the tradition of cantus-rmus composition in litur-
gical music. Cantus-rmus technique was already old-fashioned by the
time Lassos earliest Magnicats appeared around 1565; and though his
reputation as a composer of this vespers canticle owes much to his having
been the rst to apply parody technique to it repeatedly, nearly two thirds of
his settings are composed on traditional psalmodic plainsong cantus
rmus.
14
In the corpus of Lassos Magnicat settings its inuence is perva-
sive. The last chord in each verse, for instance, generally has as its root the
nal of the Magnicat tone, even when that pitch (as is often the case in
plainchant Magnicat tones) diers from the nal of the corresponding
mode; and while the cantus rmus on occasion may be freely or obliquely
stated in superius or altus, or even occasionally in bassus, it generally inhab-
its the tenor, dutifully performing its traditional function as holder of
thematic material received from the cantus rmus.
The tessitura thus given by the plainchant-derived cantus rmus
aects the general pitch-orientation of the tenor part, which in turn aects
the tessituras of the other parts. In a Lasso Magnicat of tone 4, for example,
the tenors tessitura is low because the ambitus of the melodic formula of
tone 4 is low in plainchant (ec), and the tenor voice-part has a clef appro-
priate to that tessitura, c4. For comparable reasons, the tenor in one of his
cantus-rmus settings of tone 7 is high because the tessitura of tone 7 is
high (ad); and the tenor part of a Lasso cantus-rmus Magnicat of tone
7 has the high ambitus and the clef appropriate to it, c3. In any Lasso
james erb
12
14
Pietro Pontio, writing in 1588 after the majority of Lassos parody Magnicats
had been composed, still prescribes cantus-rmus technique as the norm for
composing Magnicats and other canticles. See his Ragionamento di Musica
(Parma, 1588), facs. ed., with note by Suzanne Clercx, in Documenta
musicologica 16 (Kassel and New York: Brenreiter, 1958).
Magnicat, the ambitus derived from the tessitura of the tenor aects the
range and cleng of the voices composed to accompany the tenor, with the
result that the ambitus of all the voice-parts in a Lasso Magnicat of tone 4
(for example) is comparatively low, and (for example) in one of tone 7 it is
high.
15
The medial cadence that marks the mid-verse caesura in any Lasso
Magnicat also makes itself felt in various ways, depending on the degree of
freedom he takes with the materials in a given verse.
In thus displaying these traits of cantus-rmus technique, individual
verses in Lassos cantus-rmus Magnicats reect the bipartite structure of
the Magnicat tones of plainchant. The ever-returning chant in the odd-
numbered verses and the more or less constant presence of the same chant
formula in Lassos polyphonic verses, through points of imitation based on
its initial melodic ourish, through the characteristic tessitura and cleng
generated by its reciting tone, and through references to its terminal
ourishes at the ends of the verses, generate a contour and modality of the
Magnicat tone that permeates the whole composition.
More than a third of Lassos Magnicats, however, are based not on
the psalmodic Magnicat tones, but on a wide variety of nonpsalmodic
models from the polyphonic repertoires of chanson, madrigal, and motet,
and even on a few nondescript compositions of other kinds. None of these
displays anything resembling psalmodic verse structure. In spite of this
radical dierence in the structure of the forms upon which Lasso draws, the
forms of these nonpsalmodic models have no eect on the form of the verse
in a Lasso Magnicat. Instead, many of a given models constituent ele-
ments melodic fragments, chord progressions, rhythmic patterns, succes-
sions of intervals, combinations of textures receive totally new
treatments, revealing new relationships and aspects, often only remotely
related to their original context. In this rich variety of recomposition
(which also involves imitation of the style of the model), the form of the
verse remains as rmly bipartite as in the cantus-rmus Magnicats based
on the plainchant Magnicat tones.

13
15
These descriptions are simplied for the sake of brevity. Within the parody or
imitation Magnicats the verse form remains constant, but the patterns of
tonal relationships vary considerably from those described here, especially in
settings of tone 7. See the exhaustive study of tonality in Lassos Magnicat
settings in Crook, Imitation Magnicats, pp. 85146.
The consistency of contour in the verses, which holds Lasso to the
bipartite structure of psalmody, regardless of the origin of their themes and
their original treatment, is the most signicant aspect of form in his
Magnicat settings. Whatever the models structure, Lasso reconforms it in
a given Magnicat verse to the AB mold of plainchant psalmody. As noted
earlier, the traditional structures and requirements of texts set for liturgical
use were in the latter half of the sixteenth century a compelling priority.
Lassos concern with building a musical form around the skeleton of an
authorized text may even help us understand why sixteenth-century musi-
cians (doubtless most of the time meeting the requirements of their
patrons) seem to have found no incongruity in setting venerated sacred
texts to musical material derived from pieces that originally had profane or
indecent texts. The transformation thus eected in Lassos parodies, at
least may have done more than erase the incongruity. It may even have
been thought to have sanctied what had been profane.
16
The division between sections A and B of each verse is invariably
marked by a primary medial cadence that corresponds to the caesura in the
text (see above, Table 1.1) and to the medial ourish in psalmodic plain-
chant. Primary medial cadences in Lassos Magnicat verses reveal them-
selves at those points where the text of the rst half of the verse ends and that
of the second half begins. Full stops at medial cadences, with simultaneous
fermatas or following in all voice-parts (such as regularly occur in English
Magnicats from the Eton Choirbook to Byrd),
17
do appear in some early
Lasso Magnicats as archaic rarities or as a recurrent feature in the seven
short, idiosyncratic quasi-falsobordone Magnicats a5 of the 1580s.
18
Much
more normal, however, is the practice typical in Lassos motets, where the
text in the several voices overlaps between the end of one segment and the
beginning of the next, as one may see in Magnicat 16, verse 4, mm. 1619,
and Magnicat 58, verse 2, mm. 913.
19
Other internal cadences that do not
james erb
14
16
Crook, Imitation Magnicats, pp. 2079.
17
The Eton Choirbook Magnicats are in Musica Britannica, 12 (London: Stainer
& Bell, 1961), those by Tallis in Tudor Church Music 6 (London: Oxford
University Press, 1928), pp. 6472 and 7384; and those by Byrd in Tudor
Church Music 9 (1928), pp. 90106, 11118 and 190212.
18
Munich, Bavarian State Library, Mus. ms. 2748, originally copied contiguously
on fols. 5296 (SWNR, vols. 14 and 15, as Nos. 47 and 516).
19
See SWNR, vol. 13, pp. 2302 and SWNR, vol. 15, pp. 5861, respectively.
conform to this simple standard, like the ve that occur in Magnicat 38,
verse 6, mm. 812,
20
can be regarded as secondary.
In polyphonic Magnicat verses with bipartite structures thus
descended from both a bipartite text and a tradition of bipartite mono-
phonic chant formulas, text underlay plays a decisive role in clarifying
form. In the huge posthumous Magnicat collection Iubilus B. Virginis . . .
Centum Magnicat (RISM 1619a), editor Rudolf di Lasso, Orlandos son,
several times obscured the primary medial cadence in individual
Magnicat verses through what appear to be arbitrary changes of text
underlay. An example of this problem occurs in Magnicat 16,
21
where the
primary medial cadence of verse 4 clearly comes on the C major chord at the
beginning of m. 17: the functioning bass moves VI at mm. 16, third note, to
17, rst semibreve (tenor g, then bassus c), and the same measures have
clausulae in the upper three voices, creating the audible cadence that begins
m. 17. The unmistakably cadential avor of these measures is supported by
the text underlay in the earlier sources for Magnicat 16, preparation of at
least four of which Lasso directly or indirectly supervised.
22
In both the
posthumous edition and the early sources the rst words of section B (et
sanctum nomen ejus) enter in tenor at m. 16, note 3, one minim before the
last syllable of section A (est) in the altus (m. 17, note 1). The posthumous
edition, however, gives the text et sanctum nomen ejus to superius 2
already at the second note of m. 15, note 2 (g), anticipating by six minims
the entrance of the next text segment and obscuring the originally distinct
medial cadence. In vocal polyphony of the time discrete textual segments
routinely overlap in this manner at cadences, sometimes even by several
measures; but here is an instance in which a posthumous editor inexpli-
cably ignores a structural caesura that is characteristic of the genre and that
clearly is present in authoritative earlier sources, a cadence that the text in
the other voices clearly conrms. This seemingly trivial editorial blunder
indicates carelessness toward customs carefully observed by earlier scribes
and printers, customs that in this instance directly aect form and struc-
ture.
The two sections of Lassos Magnicat verses, eectively separated by

15
20
See SWNR, vol. 14, pp. 1356.
21
SWNR, vol. 13, pp. 23032.
22
See SWNR, vol. 13, p. lxix, s.v. 16. Magnicat Octavi Toni, Quinque Vocum . . .,
regarding sources A, B, E, and M22.
the medial cadence, can usually also be distinguished from each other by
use of contrasted themes, textures or techniques, and by contrasting com-
binations of these. The degree of the contrast will vary from one verse to the
next, and it is more distinct in Magnicats we can consider late than in those
we know to be early. Seldom do sections A and B have the same length in any
verse (compare, for instance, Magnicats 38 and 16, cited below), but the
degree of that inequality, like the degree of contrast, varies greatly from
verse to verse, and also between early Magnicats and late. In early
Magnicats both parts of the verse tend to have about the same length; in
later ones, oftener than not, the second section of the verse is longer, and
more likely contains written-out structural repetition such as one nds at
the ends of chansons and madrigals, in which the bass repeats while the
upper voices exchange parts the second time. For example, Fecit poten-
tiam,verse 6 of Magnicat 38, a parody on Claudins Il est jour,
23
presents
two very unequal sections separated by a clearly dened, early medial
cadence (m. 3, second semibreve). Striking contrasts between the textures
and themes in sections A (mm. 13) and B (mm. 315) and the use of varied
multiple subordinate sections in section B are features typical of Lasso
Magnicats written after 1575. Despite exact parity between the two halves
of the text (nineteen syllables each), the proportion between sections A and
B is conspicuously unequal, 1 : 4. Lassos manipulation of the subdivisions
determines the musical proportions of the verse. Section A has no subordi-
nate sections, while section B has ve, each marked o by subordinate
cadences of varying nality and clarity: mm. 6 and 8, second minim; m. 9,
third minim; and mm. 11 and 13, rst minim. The bassus from mm. 7,
fourth minim to 11, second minim, is repeated immediately in mm. 11 to
15; and the upper voice-parts of the corresponding portions of mm. 7 to 11
are interchanged in mm. 11 to 15. Tenor sings what had been altus, altus
what had been superius, and superius what had been tenor, with the result
that mm. 11 to 15 constitute a lightly varied reprise of mm. 7 to 11. The
rhythmic augmentation on the word mente in m. 13 provides the only
salient element of variation.
Lassos early Magnicats (Nos. 132) usually display a consistency of
texture throughout the verse that distinguishes them from later works rep-
james erb
16
23
SWNR, vol. 14, pp. 13340.
resented by the example just cited from Magnicat 38. This consistency in
the earlier Magnicats arises from their more melismatic, contrapuntal
style, with its slower harmonic and syllabic rhythm. An example from such
an early work, Magnicat 16 (c. 1565), has already been examined; another,
showing a dierent manipulation of verse form, comes from the middle-
period Magnicat 58 (c. 15751585).
24
Each exhibits conservative style,
which diers from that represented by Magnicat 38.
The consistently smooth rhythmic and contrapuntal texture in verse
4 of Magnicat 16 and in verse 2 of Magnicat 58 contrasts noticeably with
the agitation and dierentiation between the two segments of Magnicat
38, verse 4. So also does the more nearly equal balance between the two sec-
tions in the verses cited from Magnicats 16 and 58. In the verse from
Magnicat 16, section A takes up mm. 1 to 17, rst minim, and section B,
with a short overlap of texts, takes up mm. 16 to 32, a proportion of nearly
1 : 1. In the above example cited from Magnicat 58, section Atakes up mm.
1 to 10 and section Btakes up mm. 9 to 25, a proportion of approximately 2 :
3. At this point we may recall that in the verse from Magnicat 38 the
dimensions of section A to section B stand in a proportion of 1 : 4.
The medial cadences in both the two earlier examples are indistinct,
the subordinate sections longer, fewer and less strongly dierentiated than
those in the later one. Like the diagrams of representative overall forms
shown in Tables 1.1 and 1.3, these three examples display the range of
Lassos use of conventional bipartite structures, i.e., of the forms in the
music he composed upon the frame of the authorized traditional text forms
of the Magnicat. The relation these forms have to style, and style to chro-
nology in general, may be summed up in two sentences:
(1) Long Magnicats in smooth imitative-melismatic style usually
can be shown to originate from sources prepared earlier than the sources
for short Magnicats in a syllabic, rhythmically agitated style.
(2) Magnicats consisting of verses in which the two sections are
similar in length and texture usually can be traced to early sources; those in
which the two sections dier from each other in length and texture usually
come from later sources.
For the sake of balance, I should add to this observation another: that

17
24
SWNR, vol. 15, pp. 5873.
since Magnicat 58 is based on Verdelots morose Ultimi miei sospiri
(1541), a relatively early model, one might expect it to have a more conser-
vative style, even if composed in the 1590s, because, however radically
Lassos parodies may manipulate and disperse the material received from
their models, they characteristically assume their styles.
25
In addition to
this consideration, the source for Magnicat 58 is also one of the earliest we
have for those Lasso settings that do not belong to the rst thirty-two
Magnicats in the complete edition, all of which date from the 1560s.
26
The
tendency for parodies to mimic the style of their models undermines the
credibility of stylistic analysis as a criterion of chronology, at least so far as
Lassos Magnicats are concerned. Magnicat 90, a cantus-rmus setting
upon the plainchant hymn Pange lingua,is notably more conservative in
style than most of the others in its earliest source, where it is dated 5 January
1584; but because of Lassos habit of adapting his parody settings to the style
of the models, its style is alone insucient reason to assume it was com-
posed earlier than that year.
27
Form in Lassos Magnicat settings exists parallel to the given liturgical
context and its requirements of length and style. His musical forms, to be
sure, can be properly understood only with reference to that liturgical
context, but his use of overall form (the relationship among the verses) and
his use of the verse form (the relationship between the component parts of
each verse) show the operation of his musical judgment in regions where
liturgical usage seems to have only tangential inuence, if any at all.
Much of what has been said here about form in and of Lassos
Magnicats can most probably be said about other Lasso works, too. In his
masses, for instance, there are comparable interrelationships between the
length of the text and the lengths of his settings Kyrie and Credo (to name
the shortest and longest texts). Without going into detail, I can report that
an investigation of these relationships revealed a care for purely musical
james erb
18
25
Crook, Imitation Magnicats, pp. 2069.
26
See SWNR, vols. 1314 (Magnicats 132) and SWNR, vols. 1415 (Magnicats
3370). On the dating of Magnicat 58, see SWNR, vol. 15, p. xxvii, s.v.
Lesarten / Titel, explicitly establishing the earliest date for Magnicat 58 at
September 1579.
27
See SWNR, vol. 16, pp. 24158, and ibid., pp. x and xxxi.
proportions that is only tangentially related to the number of syllables in
the text, and that parallels the care for musical proportion for its own sake
that appears to be inherent in Lassos Magnicat settings.
Still, formal traits in a uniquely large number of settings of the one
text, such as are described here, are hardly likely to be peculiar to this species
of Lasso works, nor even to Lasso. Rather, we might begin inquiring about
the degree to which the traits mentioned above correspond to those found
in comparable works of other composers. That Lasso was both extremely
productive and very highly regarded is obvious from the number of his sur-
viving compositions and the number of contemporary printed and manu-
script sources for them that are so widely distributed in Europe. But in what
ways is he unique? We may only have begun to surmise whether the
Magnicats of Morales, Gombert, Clemens, Sen, and Palestrina to name
Lassos closest competitors in quantity of settings of this very widely com-
posed canticle contain traits parallel to those mentioned above; and if so,
why; and if not, why not.

19
2 Orlando di Lasso and Andrea Gabrieli: two
motets and their masses in a Munich choir book
from 156465
marie louise gllner
In the year 1563 Orlando di Lasso succeeded Ludwig Daser as
Kapellmeister at the court of Albrecht V in Munich. From the evidence pre-
sented in a small group of choir books written around this time and now
held in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, the composition of
parody masses by members of the chapel itself had taken on increased
importance for the group of composers who worked with the new director.
Whereas most manuscripts from the early 1560s still contained masses
written either by Daser himself (e.g. Mus. Ms. 18) or by other well-known
contemporaries, such as Clemens non Papa or Cipriano de Rore or even
Palestrina (e.g. Mus. Mss. 40, 45 and 46), four choir books, all written
around 1565, are devoted principally to parody masses by Lasso and the
new circle of composers around him (Mus. Mss. 17, 51, 54, and 2746). These
include minor gures, such as Johannes Lockenburg, Gottfried Palmarts
and Johannes Flori, as well as the better-known Ivo de Vento and Anton
Gosswin, but two names stand out in particular, namely Lasso himself and
Andrea Gabrieli, the latter represented by no fewer than four masses.
1
Within this group of choir books, Mus. Ms. 17 stands out both by
virtue of its external features and the uniformity of its contents. It seems to
have held a special place of honor. Decorated with exceptionally ornate ini-
tials, it is among the rst, if not the rst, to have been copied entirely by
Franz Flori, who was to become Lassos main scribe. It contains ve parody
masses, composed by Lasso, Andrea Gabrieli, Ivo de Vento, and Johannes
Flori, all based on motets, in contrast to the other manuscripts mentioned
above, which reect the still dominant preference for secular models. The
20
1
Two in Mus. Ms. 17, one each in Mus. Mss. 54 and 2746. For descriptions of
these manuscripts and their contents see KBM 5/1.
order of the contents appears to have been carefully thought out, beginning
with the mass by Lasso as Kapellmeister and followed by two masses by
Gabrieli, the distinguished visitor from Venice. Although one of these two is
based on a motet by Gabrieli himself, all of the other models are by Lasso.
Also unusual is the exact dating of two of the masses, those by Lasso (Anno
1565 / Complevit 13. Januarii= date of composition; and nis anno 1565
die 24. februarii = completion of manuscript copy) and by Floris son
(Anno 1564). With the single exception of the last, all of the masses and
most of their models are composed for six voices, including the rather
unusual combination of two deep bass voices. This apparently reects the
presence at that time of two outstanding bass singers in the chapel, Franz
Flori himself and Franz Pressauer, both of whom were paid salaries almost
commensurate with that of the Kapellmeister himself.
2
Gabrieli further
adds a seventh voice for the Agnus Dei in both of his masses.
The manuscript thus seems to reect a special purpose in its creation,
the desire to celebrate an exceptional situation of which Gabrieli is the
focus. Since only a total of seven masses by Gabrieli, who is known mainly
for his madrigals and instrumental works, have been preserved,
3
this
emphasis provides signicant support for the thesis that a stay at the
Bavarian court may account for at least the latter part of the lost years in
his biography between 1557 and 1566, the year he was appointed organist at
St. Marks in Venice.
4
In this connection several additional facts should be mentioned. The
collection in which Gabrielis motet was printed, Sacrae cantiones . . . liber
primus, for ve voices, published in Venice in 1565, is dedicated to Duke
Albrecht: Illustrissimo et excellentissimo Principi D. Alberto Palatino
Rheni Comiti, et Utriusque Bavariae Duci . . . Andreas Gabrieli humillimus
servus. And a copy of this print is included in the volume from the Ducal
orlando di lasso and andrea gabri eli
21
2
See Boetticher, Lasso, pp. 1612.
3
The parody masses, including the two from Mus. Ms. 17, are printed in
Gabrielis only mass publication, Primus liber missarum (Venice: Gardano,
1572).
4
The editors of Gabrielis collected works, David Bryant and Martin Morell,
suggest several possibilities for Gabrielis whereabouts during this time,
including Munich and Milan. See A Documentary Biography, Edizione
Nazionale delle opere di Andrea Gabrieli [1533]1585, vol. I: Introduzione
Storico-Critica (Milan: G. Ricordi, 1988), pp. 745.
Library which is still preserved with its original binding in the Bavarian
State Library under the call number 4 Mus. Pr. 135.
5
Within this collection
of fourteen sets of partbooks, dating mainly from the years 15656, it is the
only item not devoted to works by Lasso again a sign of special recogni-
tion. Since all of these distinctions are concentrated around the same two
years, 15656, it would seem likely that Andrea Gabrielis association with
the Munich court was a direct one during this time, subsequently inter-
rupted by his appointment to the post at St. Marks in Venice.
The choice of models for the masses, as indicated above, was some-
what unusual for the time. It seems to have indicated a conscious desire to
explore the possibilities of composing a mass on a motet rather than on
chansons or madrigals and to use six voices, utilizing the two prominent
bass voices of the chapel, rather than the usual four or ve voices of the
secular models.
6
As Lewis Lockwood has shown, the newer imitative
motives of the motet had a direct eect on the composition of masses based
on them,
7
necessitating the development of new techniques. This may well
have accounted for the still noticeable preference for the simpler four-voice
chansons as models in the 1560s. The clear melodic contours of the latter,
corresponding to the lines of poetry, were generally easier to adapt to the
new surroundings than the often irregularly formed and frequently over-
lapping motives of the motet. The new technique, however, based on brief
melodic motives in all voices rather than on single melodic lines, had its
advantages. It allowed for far greater exibility and thus for greater variety
mari e loui se gllner
22
5
Although the present ex libris dates from 1629 and the rule of Kurfrst
Maximilian I (see Fr. Dressler, Die Exlibris der Bayerischen Hof- und
Staatsbibliothek [Wiesbaden: O. Harassowitz, 1972], number B3), it is too large
for the partbooks and was pasted over the earlier version from 1618 (the rst ex
libris used at the Bavarian court). The volumes were assembled in 1566 or very
shortly thereafter. They include four sets of Lassos chansons (15646), four of
his madrigals (155566), the Sacrae Lectiones of 1565 and four books of Lasso
motets (15656), these last preceded by the 1565 print of Gabrielis motets for
ve voices.
6
For a detailed listing of Lassos parody masses with their models and dates see
Runa Orlich, Die Parodiemessen von Orlando di Lasso. Studien zur Musik, Bd. 4
(Munich: W. Fink, 1985), pp. 1213 and 1656.
7
Lewis Lockwood, A View of the Early Sixteenth-Century Parody Mass, Queens
College 25th Anniversary Festschrift (Flushing, NY: Queens College Press, 1964),
pp. 5377.
in its application, as evidenced in the many dierent kinds of imitation, or
parody, masses from the second half of the sixteenth century.
8
This variety can also be observed among the masses contained in
Mus. Ms. 17. The approach to composition was, for example, fairly straight-
forward in the case of the masses by Gabrieli and Ivo de Vento based on six-
voice settings of hymn texts by Lasso.
9
The multiple partes of these models
(four in each case) provided a clear choice of motives, i.e., the beginnings of
each pars, for the dierent sections of the mass. None the less, two very
dierent approaches to their composition could be identied: a systematic
use of these motives by Gabrieli to achieve balance and symmetry, as against
the selection of individual motives, often from within the sections, of a par-
ticularly striking nature (e.g. the long upward runs of the two bass voices)
by Ivo de Vento.
The two masses by Lasso and Gabrieli on shorter motets of their own
composition present quite dierent problems, out of which again two very
dierent works emerge, each with a highly individual approach to the
concept of parody. Both Lassos six-voice motet Locutus sum in lingua
mea and the mass based upon it were published only subsequent to the
completion of the choir book containing the mass, again an indication of
the diculty of dating works from their appearance in printed form.
10
Like
the two hymn texts and their masses in Ms. 17, both are set for cantus, altus 1
and 2, tenor, and bassus 1 and 2 emphasizing, that is, the lower register.
They are composed in the phrygian mode, and the motet is based on two
23
8
For a discussion of the terms used in the titles of these masses see Lockwood,
On Parody as Term and Concept in Sixteenth-Century Music, Aspects of
Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Birthday Oering to Gustave Reese (New
York: Norton, 1966), pp. 56075.
9
Jesu nostra redemptio and Vexilla regis prodeunt. See Marie Louise Gllner,
Lassos Motetten nach Hymnentexten und ihre Parodiemessen von Ivo de Vento
und Andrea Gabrieli, Orlando di Lasso in der Musikgeschichte. Bericht ber das
Symposion der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Mnchen, 4.6. Juli 1994
(Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1996),
pp. 87100.
10
The motet in Gerlachs Selectissimae Cantiones in 1568 (RISM 1568a) and the
mass only much later as a separate publication by Le Roy and Ballard in 1587
(RISM 1587b). The motet can be found in modern transcription edited by Peter
Bergquist in CM, vol. 6, pp. 4755, the mass by Siegfried Hermelink in SWNR,
vol. 7, pp. 89134.
psalm verses,
11
features which have, as we will see, an important inuence
on the music and its adaptation to the mass.
Two features of the motet stand out immediately: the long passages of
imitation between the two bass voices, which exchange motives throughout
most of the work, and the frequent alternation between dierent groups of
voices, either four plus four or three plus three (see, for example, the begin-
ning of the second part, mm. 5066, in which the combination of voices
changes continually). There is, in other words, a strong tendency towards
antiphonal singing, a practice which is, of course, typical of the psalms. The
phrygian mode, in its turn, exerts a powerful inuence on the melodic con-
tours and their motives. The motet begins with the motive shown in
Example 2.1, each of the six voices entering in turn with either the original
form or its inversion, both of which emphasize the half-tone step character-
istic of the mode. This, however, with its leap of the fth, eb, resembles very
closely the beginnings of a variety of other works from the sixteenth
century in the phrygian mode, the most famous being Luthers chorale,
Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu Dir.
12
In the motet the mode is further evident
24
11
The text is taken from Psalm 39 [38]: 34: Then spake I with my tongue: Lord,
make me to know mine end and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may
know how frail I am; and (Part II) Psalm 86 [85]: 17: Show me a token for
good; that they which hate me may see it and be ashamed: because Thou, Lord,
hast helped me and comforted me. (Translations from the King James Bible.)
12
One of Luthers earliest chorales, derived from Psalm 130, it was published in
the Geystliche gesangk Bchleyn (Wittenberg, 1524). The same initial formula
can be found in many secular songs of the time as well, e.g. Paul Hofhaimers,
Meins traurens ist or the anonymous Dich als mich selbst, published in Arnt
von Aichs Liederbuch of 1512 (both edited in H. J. Moser, Paul Hofhaimer
[Stuttgart and Berlin: Cotta, 1929/R1965], Part 2, pp. 72 and 160) and later set
by Ludwig Sen (ed. A. Geering in Das Erbe deutscher Musik, 10 [Wolfenbttel
and Berlin: Georg Kallmeyer Verlag, 1938], no. 13).
Example 2.1: Lasso, Locutus sum in lingua mea, mm. 15, cantus and
altus 1
Cantus
Altus
&
V
2
4
2
4
w
Lo -
W
Lo -
w
w
cu -
w
w #
cu - tus
w

tus sum in
w

sum in

w
lingua me -
w

lin - gua
a,
w
me -
in the recurring cadences centered around ag(
)a. These exhibit a great

many variants throughout the work, but their resemblance to the main
psalm tone for the fourth mode with its reciting tone on a is scarcely coinci-
dental (see Ex. 2.2).
In composing this motet, then, Lasso relied rather heavily on charac-
teristics which would have been familiar to him from other practices, both
sacred and secular, and which in this case are almost more important than
any relationship to the specic text itself. The latter, to be sure, is also
evident at various points, for example the strong cadence of all six voices
together on nem meum, and the subsequent rapid entrances on et
numerum(mm. 214). The highly expressive setting of the nal phrase of
text, et consolatus es me, is stressed through frequent repetition, culmi-
nating on the highest tone of the cantus and introduced in imitation by the
two bass voices (see Ex. 2.3).
The characteristics peculiar to the motet also form the basis of its
adaptation to the text of the mass, a subtle relationship which would
scarcely be possible in setting a model by a dierent composer and which
often dees the more obvious rules of the parody mass. Although, for
example, four of the ve main movements do begin as expected with the
leap of a fth that derives from the main motive of the motet, the fairly
25
Example 2.2: (a) Psalm tone 4; (b) Lasso, Locutus sum in lingua mea,
mm. 1014, cantus
V

6 .
6

. 6

.
Cantus
& 2
4
10
w
in lin -
gua me -
#

a, in
w

lingua me -
#
#

w
a:
Motive A
(a)
(b)
Example 2.3: Lasso, Locutus sum in lingua mea, mm. 7580,
bassus 1 and 2
Bassus 1
Bassus 2
?
?
C
C
w

75
w

et con -
w

so - la - tus

et
w
w
es me,

conso - la -

w
tus es
w
me,
Motive B
inconspicuous motive at the beginning of its second part (Ex. 2.4) is used
only twice. Instead of the latter, two other motives from the interior of the
motet (motives A and B; see Exx. 2.2 and 2.3), both emphasizing the half-
step of the phrygian mode, play an unusually prominent role even at the
beginnings of sections. A contrasting motive, the quarter-note run from c
to g and its inversion in imitation in the two bass voices, can be found fre-
quently within the movements (see Ex. 2.5).
The mass, then, may be outlined as follows (unless otherwise indi-
cated the sections employ all six voices and are in common time):
Kyrie I Part I of the motet (a longer quotation: mm. 114 of the mass =
mm. 114 of the motet)
Christe new plus end of Part I of the motet (a longer quotation: mm.
3346 of the mass = mm. 3346 of the motet with mm. 37/339/3 of the
latter rewritten)
Kyrie II motives A and B combined (mm. 71/4end of the mass = mm.
92/4end of the motet)
Et in terra pax Part II of the motet (a longer quotation: mm. 114 of the
mass = mm. 5063 of the motet, with many adaptations to t the new text)
Domine Deus a2; Part II (variant) plus motive B
Qui tollis motive A; begins in 3/2 meter
Quoniam tu solus motive A
Patrem omnipotentem Part I, dierent order in entry of voices
Crucixus a4; Part II
Et in spiritum motive A
26
Example 2.4: Lasso, Locutus sum in lingua mea, mm. 524, cantus
Cantus
&
C
5Z
w
Fac

.

me- cum si -

w
gnum
Secunda pars
Example 2.5: Lasso, Locutus sum in lingua mea, mm. 349, bassus 1 and 2
Bassus 1
Bassus 2
?
?
C
C
ut
w
(est:)
35

w
sci -

ut sci -

am quid de - sit
w

am quid

mi - hi, ut

de - sit mi - hi,

w
sci -

ut sci -
w
am
w
w
am
Sanctus Part I: Cantus and Tenor in cantus rmus style; dierent
counterpoint in other voices
Hosanna in excelsis motive A
Benedictus a3; variant of motive B (= end of Part I)
Agnus Dei Part I (similar to Kyrie I)
In this mass Lasso couples Kyrie and Gloria in his presentation of the
main material, bringing longer quotes of the two parts of the motet at the
beginnings of these two movements rather than in the dierent sections of
the Kyrie. The end of the Christe is notable for its almost exact quotation of
the closing measures of the motet, a curiosity observed in Ivo de Ventos
mass on Jesu nostra redemptio as well.
13
Three of the inner sections are
written for fewer voices, but none of them, not even the Hosanna, is written
entirely in triple time, although this meter is used very briey at the begin-
ning of the Qui tollisand at two points within the Credo (Et iterum ven-
turus est cum gloria judicare and Et unam sanctam catholicam). There
does exist, then, a certain system in the presentation of the main motives at
the beginning, in the dierentiation between main and subsidiary sections
and in the correspondence between the beginnings of Kyrie and Agnus Dei
to each other and to the model. The main unifying elements within the
movements, however, are the ubiquitous variation of the psalm-tone
cadence (motive A) in the top voice and the ending motive B in the bass
voices on the one hand and the alternation among groups of voices and imi-
tation between the two bass voices on the other. These can be quoted
directly from the model, as at the beginning of the Kyrie, or simply employ
the same technique, as in the passage from the Gloria shown in Example
2.6.
14
As we have seen, all of these elements were prominent in the motet as
well. Lasso was thus certainly justied in emphasizing these aspects of the
model rather than following the more usual practice of singling out partic-
27
13
See Gllner, Lassos Motetten nach Hymnentexten, pp. 978 (Ivo de Vento) and
Robert Wilder, The Masses of Orlando di Lasso with Emphasis on his Parody
Technique, Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1952 (Rochester, NY: University of
Rochester Press, 1958), microche, p. 188 (Lasso).
14
For a longer passage in which the three higher voices alternate with the three
lower see mm. 5878 of the Credo, at the words descendit de caelis et
incarnatus est, culminating in all six voices on et homo factus est.
ular motives for frequent repetition. Only the Kyrie and the beginning of
the Gloria present longer quotations of all of the voices from the model.
One nal curiosity, certainly intended to call the listeners attention to the
model, is the sudden reduction of all six voices to strict homophony on the
words qui locutus estin the Credo (mm. 1367).
Gabrielis motet Pater peccavi,in contrast to Lassos Locutus sum,
was written for ve voices only, with two in a high register (cantus and
quintus), to which a second bassus was added for the mass.
15
Using a well-
known responsory based on the story of the prodigal son,
16
it is anchored
solidly in the lydian mode, a choice which again had clear consequences for
the music of both motet and mass. Employed almost as a transposition of
Glareans more modern ionian mode, it enabled Gabrieli, the organist, to
emphasize entirely dierent aspects of the music from those observed
above in the Lasso works. Gabrielis motet and mass thus aord a clear con-
trast to the latter, reected, for example, in the frequent emphasis on the
vertical element as opposed to the horizontal. This is particularly evident in
28
15
The motet was published in the above-mentioned collection of 1565, the mass
in 1572 (see note 3 above). To date neither the motet nor the mass has appeared
in modern edition, including the published volumes of the collected works
currently in progress (see note 4 above). Measure numbers in the examples
given here refer to sections of the Gloria and Credo.
16
Responsory for the rst Saturday after the second Sunday in Quadragesima,
from Luke 15: 1719, but in reverse order: Father, I have sinned against heaven
and before thee. And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one
of the hired servants; and Part II, beginning with verse 17: How many hired
servants of my fathers have bread enough...and I perish with hunger! I will arise
and go to my father and will say unto him: make me as one of thy hired
servants. This text, including the repetition of the nal line and its music as
dictated by the responsory, was also set by Lasso in the early 1560s for the same
combination of voices. See SW, vol. 7, pp. 2431, and CM, vol. 17.
Example 2.6: Lasso, Missa super Locutus sum, Gloria, mm. 2935, bassus
1 and 2
Bassus 1
Bassus 2
?
?
.

Do - mine
.
Do - mi-
30
.

De - us,
.

ne De -
.

Rex
w
.

us, Rex
w

coe- le - stis,

w
coe- le -

De- us
w

stis, De -
w
w
Pa -

w
us
35
w

ter
w
w
Pa - ter
the many skips of fourths, fths, and octaves in the bass voice, in the use of
motives built around the triad fac, and in the straightforward rhythmic
dependence on the semibreve, features which are emphasized even more in
the mass (see Exx. 2.7 and 2.8).
In contrast to Gabrielis rather conventional adaptation of Lassos
hymn-motet Vexilla registo the mass in Ms. 17,
17
his treatment of his own
motet as model is in many respects unorthodox, frequently emphasizing
the features just mentioned rather than concentrating on the repetition of
prominent motives with one signicant exception, as we will see. The
added bass voice, in particular, often serves as a harmonic foundation, and
even passages in imitation tend to reinforce the main triad on fac. The
passage from the motet shown in Example 2.7 is adapted to various parts of
the mass (see Exx. 2.10b, 2.10f, 2.11, and 2.12 below). In addition to the
regular rhythmic emphasis on the semibreve, various passages of the Gloria
and Credo proceed in almost recitation-like fashion, as shown in Example
2.8, where the ve upper voices all come together on the word simul.The
motet itself contains three main points from which motives would most
likely be taken: the beginning of each of the two parts and that of the
responsorys repetendum, Fac me sicut, the last two very similar to each
other (see Ex. 2.9). These are in fact presented as the main motives of the
three parts of the Kyrie, but only Kyrie II brings a longer quotation in all
voices, from the beginning of Part II of the model. And subsequent move-
ments are very free in their presentation of these motives. This is due at least
29
17
See Gllner, Lassos Motetten nach Hymnentexten, pp. 925.
Example 2.7: Gabrieli, Pater peccavi, mm. 8691
Cantus
Quintus
Altus
Tenor
Bassus
&
&
V
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
C
C
C
C
C
Sur -
re -
W
o.

.
J
w
.

.
J
Sur -
.

.
J
o. Sur -
W
o.
.

.
J
Sur -
w

gam,
w
.

gam, sur -
.

w

Sur -
W

sur -
.
J

w
w
w
gam,
.
j
w
90
w

gam, sur -

.
J
.

.
J
gam, sur -
.

.
J
sur -
W
gam,

.
J
w
w
.

gam, sur -
.

w
w

gam,
.
j
sur -
w

gam, et
.

gam, et
w

gam, et

w
et i -
w
w
gam,
in part to the intimate relationship of the initial motive of the motet to its
text: the word Pater,set apart as the agonized cry for help from the sinner
to the Father. Although all of the main movements except the Agnus Dei
contain some reference to this beginning, it is frequently limited to the
downward leap of a fourth or third as in the Gloria, the Sanctus and the
Benedictus. Only the Kyrie and Credo, beginning signicantly on the words
Kyrie and Patrem, make more extensive use of the initial phrase of the
model. The remaining two motives are so similar to each other that it
becomes dicult to distinguish between them.
Gabrieli nds an intriguing solution to these problems. As the mass
progresses, he makes increasing use of an unassuming subsidiary motive
found near the beginning of the motet: the falling fourth, which is pre-
sented there as the two successive components of the descending octave
ff, divided between the two inner voices, altus and tenor (marked in Ex.
2.9a by an asterisk, mm. 3).
Although it would scarcely attract any attention at all in this form, the
falling fourth becomes a central unifying factor within the mass. It is not
only the frequent occurrence of this motive which is so striking, however,
but the way in which it is used. Presented almost exclusively in longer notes
(semibreves or breves), its prominence increases throughout the course of
the mass (see Ex. 2.10af ). Since the Kyrie opens with a relatively brief (ve
30
Example 2.8: Gabrieli, Missa super Pater peccavi, Credo, Et iterum
venturus est, mm. 2934
Cantus
Quintus
Altus
Tenor
Bassus 1
Bassus 2
&
&
V
V
?
?
b
b
b
b
b
b

w
pro - ce - dit
.
ce - dit qui cum

.
ce - dit qui cum
.

ce - dit quicum
.
qui cum

patre et fi - li -



.
qui cum patre et
.

qui cum patre et

o, qui cum patre et

o, qui cum patre et
w

o
w

o

w
fi- li- o

w
fi- li- o

w
fi- li- o

w
fi- li- o
.
si - mul
.
si - mul a - do -
.

si - mul a - do -
.

si - mul a - do -
.

si - mul a - do -
.

si - mul a - do -

w
a - do - ra -
w n
w
ra - tur
w
w
ra - tur
w
w
ra - tur
w

ra - tur et

ra - tur et
w
w
tur et
31
Cantus
Bassus
&
?
b
b
w
Fac

me si - cut

Fac
w
w
u - num,
35

me si - cut
w

&
?
b
b
.

u -
w

num, fac
w
fac
w
me si - cut

me si - cut
w
w
u - num
w
w
u - num
[Repetendum]
Example 2.9: Gabrieli, Pater peccavi: (a) mm. 110; (b) mm. 329, cantus
and bassus only; (c) mm. 5365
Cantus
Quintus
Altus
Tenor
Bassus
&
&
V
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
C
C
C
C
C
w
Pa -
W
Pa -
w
w
ter,
w
Pa -
W
ter,
W
Pa -
w
Pa -
w
w
ter,
*
w
Pa -
w

ter,
W
Pa -
w

ter, pec -
w
w
Pa - ter,
. w
ter, pec -
W
ter,
5
. w

ca - vi,
w

pec - ca -
w
w
ca - vi,
&
&
V
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
w
Pa -
w

vi,
W
Pa -
*
W
Pa -
w

ter, pec -
w
Pa -
w

ter,
. w
ter, pec -
W
Pa -
w b

ca - vi, Pa -
w

ter, pec -
w
w
ca - vi

w
ter, pec - ca -

ter, pec - ca -
w
w
ca - vi,
w

Pa - ter, pec -
W

vi, Pa - ter, pec -
10

w
vi,
W
w
w
ca - vi,
w
in
w

ca - vi in
Prima pars (a)
(b)
32
Example 2.9: (cont.)
Cantus
Quintus
Altus
Tenor
Bassus
&
&
V
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
C
C
C
C
C
w

Quan - ti mer -

ce - na - ri -
w

Quan - ti mer -
55
w
Quan -

i in do - mo

ce - na - ri -
w

ti mer - ce -

w
pa - tris me -

i in do - mo
&
&
V
V
?
b
b
b
b
b

na - ri - i in
w

i, quan - ti

w
pa -
w
Quan -

do - mo pa -

mer - ce - na - ri -

w
tris me -
w

ti mer - ce -
w
Quan -
-

tris me -
-

i in do - mo
-
w

i, Quan - ti
-

na - ri - i in
60
w

ti mer - ce -
w
w
i,
.

pa - tris


do - mo
Secunda pars
&
&
V
V
?
b
b
b
b
b

na - ri - i in

quan -

w
me - i,
.

w
i

w
pa - tris me -

do - mo pa - tris

ti mer - ce -
w

quan - ti
w
w
in do -
w

i, quan -
w

me - i, quan -

w
na - ri - i,

w
w
mo pa -

ti mer - ce -

ti mer - ce -

i in do - mo
w
w
tris me -

na - ri - i in
65

w
na - ri - i,
w

quan - ti
.

pa - tris
w

i,

do - mo pa - tris
Lasso Studies (Gllner) Ex. 2.9c, p. 2
(c)
measures) quotation from the model, only the altus preserves the original
presentation of the motive. In contrast to the motet, however, all of the
voices subsequently pick it up in close succession, including the quintus,
which at that point is the top voice (see Ex. 2.10a). In the Gloria it enters in
long notes as a kind of cantus rmus in three of the voices (Ex. 2.10b; entry
33
Example 2.10: Gabrieli, Missa super Pater peccavi: (a) Kyrie I, mm. 114;
(b) Gloria, Qui tollis, mm. 112; (c) Credo, Patrem omnipotentem, mm.
15; (d) Credo, Et incarnatus est, mm. 17; (e) Credo, Crucixus, mm.
17; (f ) Agnus Dei, mm. 110
Cantus
Quintus
Altus
Tenor
Bassus 1
Bassus 2
&
&
V
V
?
?
b
b
b
b
b
b
C
C
C
C
C
C
w
Ky -
.
w
Ky - ri -

w
ri - e,
w
Ky -
W
e,
. w
Ky - ri -
w
Ky -

w
ri - e
*w
Ky -
w

e,
.
w
Ky - ri -

w
ri - e

e - lei- son, Ky -
. w
ri - e -
W
e,
5
. w

e - lei -
w

ri - e - lei -
w
w
lei - son

Ky -
w

son,
w
w
son, Ky -

Ky -

w
ri - e
.
w
Ky - ri -

Ky -
-

w
ri - e -
-
w
ri - e
.

e - lei -
w

e,
w
Ky - ri -
&
&
V
V
?
?
b
b
b
b
b
b

ri - e e -
w
w
lei - son,

w
e - lei- son,
w

son Ky -
*
w
Ky -
.

e e -
w
w
lei - son,
*
w
Ky -
.

Ky -

ri -
. w
ri - e -
W
10
*
w
w
Ky - rie
.
w
ri - e

ri - e

w

e e -
W
lei -
.

w
lei -

w
e- lei -
w
w
lei - son,
w
e -
w
w
lei - son,
w w
son, Ky -
w

son,
w

son,

w
lei - son,
w

Ky - ri -
.

ri - e
*
w
w
Ky - ri -
w
Ky -
w

w
e - lei -
w

e - lei -

w
e - lei -
.

ri - e
. w
Ky - ri -
*w

Ky - ri - e
.

w

son,
w

son,
(a)
in cantus at m. 17), appearing again as the motive for the phrase, qui sedes
ad dexteram patris. It then becomes the central motive of the Credo, where
it provides the continuation to the beginning motive on Patrem for the
word omnipotentem(Ex. 2.10c). In the further course of the movement it
then serves as the primary motive for two of the inner sections,Et incarna-
tus estand Crucixus(Exx. 2.10d and 2.10e), and reaches its nal culmi-
nation in the grand longabrevisbrevismaxima of the top voice at the
beginning of the seven-voice Agnus Dei (Ex. 2.10f ). This constitutes a
34
Cantus
Quintus
Altus
Tenor
Bassus 1
Bassus 2
&
&
V
V
?
?
b
b
b
b
b
b
C
C
C
C
C
C
w
.

Qui tol -
w
Qui

lis pec -
*
w
Qui
.

tol -

ca -
w w
tol -
w
Qui
w
ta mun -
w w
lis pec -

.

lis pec - ca -
.

tol -

di, pec -
. w
ca - ta

w
ta

lis pec- ca -

ca- ta mun -
W
mun -
.
w

mun -

w
ta mun -
&
&
V
V
?
?
b
b
b
b
b
b
-
-
-
-
W
di

.

di, qui tol -
w

di, qui
W
di,
*
W
Qui
w
Qui

lis pec -

tol -

qui
w w
tol -
.

tol -

w
ca - ta mun -

lis pec - ca - ta
.

tol -
w w
lis pec -
.

lis pec -
10
w

di
.

mun - di,

lis pec -
.
w
ca - ta
.

ca - ta
w

pec - ca - ta

ca - ta
W
mun -

mun -
w

mi - se -

mi -
.

w
mun -

w
mun - di,
W
di

w

(b)
35
Cantus
Quintus
Altus
Tenor
Bassus 1
Bassus 2
&
&
V
V
?
?
b
b
b
b
b
b
w
Pa -
W
Pa -
w
Pa -
w

trem o -
W
Pa -
W
trem
W
Pa -
w
w
trem

w
mni - po - ten -
w

trem o - mni -
*
w

o - mni - po -
w

trem
w
pa -
w

tem,
w

po - ten -
w
w
ten - tem,
W
Pa -
w
trem
w
pa -
w
tem,
w
pa -
W
pa -
w
trem
Cantus
Quintus
Altus
Tenor
Bassus 1
Bassus 2
&
&
V
V
?
?
b
b
b
b
b
b
C
C
C
C
C
C
W
Et
W
Et
W
Et
W
Et
W
Et
W
Et
w w
in - car -
w w
in - car -
w w
in - car -
w
w
in - car -
. w

in - car -
w w
in - car -
w w
na - tus
w
w
na - tus
w w
na - tus
w

na - tus
w w
na - tus
w
w
na - tus
w w
est de
w
w
est de
w
w
est de
w
w
est de
w

est de spi -
w w
est de
5
w
spi - ri - tu
w

spi - ri - tu

spi - ri - tu san -
.
w

spi - ri -

ri -
.
w

spi - ri -
W
san -
W
san -

w
w
w
tu san -
w
w
tu san -
w w
tu san -
cto
cto
w
cto
w
cto
w
cto
W
cto
Cantus
Quintus
Altus
&
&
V
b
b
b
W
Cru -
w
w
ci - fi -
w
Cru -
w

xus e -
w
w
ci -

ti - am pro
5
w
w
fi - xus
W
Cru -
.

b
no -
w
w
ci - fi -
w

e - ti -
w
w
xus e -

w
bis
(c)
(d)
(e)
36
Cantus
Quintus
Altus 1
Altus 2
Tenor
Bassus 1
Bassus 2
&
&
V
V
V
?
?
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
*
W
A -
.

A -
.

A -

w
gnus De -

w
gnus
.

A -
W
gnus
.

i, A -
.

w
De -

w
gnus De -
W
De -

w
gnus
w

i, A - gnus

i, A - gnus De -
5
W
i
w
w
De -
w
w
De - i,
&
&
V
V
V
?
?
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
W
W
i,
.

A -
w

i, A -
*
W
A -
.

A -
W
W

gnus De - i,

gnus
W
.

A -

w
gnus
W

.

De -
W
gnus

w
gnus De -
.

w
De -
-
-
-
w
i, A - gnus
W
De -

i, A- gnus De -
w

i, A - gnus
10

A -
.

A -
w
w
De - i,
W
i,
w

.

w
De -
(f )
steady build-up towards a climax which is entirely foreign to the nature of
the mass itself and to Renaissance sacred polyphony in general. It may well,
however, reect a practice grounded in the improvised preludes and tocca-
tas of the organist.
If we call the descending fourth motive A, then, the mass may be out-
lined as follows:
Kyrie I Part I (mm. 15)
Christe repetendum, Fac me sicut (C and B = variant of mm. 32 of the
motet)
Kyrie II Part II (longer quotation: mm. 18 in all voices, 113 in C and B
= motet mm. 5360 and 5365)
Et in terra pax Part I, very brief
Qui tollis motive A in long notes in quintus and bassus 1, later in cantus;
motive B (from vocari lius tuus, mm. 20 of the motet).
Patrem omnipotentem Pater plus motive A
Et incarnatus est motive A in three top voices
Crucixus a3 motive A
Et resurrexit a3 repetendum
Et iterum venturus est Part I, very brief
Sanctus Pater (note the similarity between the two-syllable words
Pater and Sanctus)
Benedictus a4 use of initial leap of fourth, otherwise new
Osanna 3/2 new
Agnus Dei a7 motive A as cantus rmus with new counterpoint;
miserere uses beginning of repetendum
Although the beginning of Part II occurs only once in the entire mass,
its twin, the beginning of the repetendum of the motet, Fac me sicut
unum, is used frequently within the various movements and becomes an
important unifying element. It is particularly prominent within the Credo,
where it forms the entire substance of the section Et resurrexit (see Ex.
2.11). This section of the Credo is set rather surprisingly for the three lower
voices in contrast to the three higher ones which have just preceded in the
Crucixus.Note the use of the motive on the concluding phrase,sedet ad
dexteram patris,as well as at the beginning.
Two other interior motives are taken over into the mass with some
frequency, namely those on the words vocari lius and surgam in the
37
Example 2.11: Gabrieli, Missa super Pater peccavi, Credo, Et resurrexit:
(a) mm. 112; (b) mm. 3752
Tenor
Bassus 1
Bassus 2
V
?
?
b
b
b
w
w
Et re -

w
sur - re -
w

xit ter -
w
Et

ti - a
.
w
re - sur -

di - e,
w
w
re - xit
.

w
ter -

ter -
W
Et
V
?
?
b
b
b

ti - a di -

ti - a di -
w
w
re -

w
e,

w
sur - re -
w

e, ter -

xit ter -
10

ti - a
w
w
et re -

ti - a di -
w

di -

w
sur - re -

w
e,
w

e,

xit ter -
w
et
V
?
?
b
b
b
37

se -
w
w
pa - tris

w
det ad dex -

se -
-

w
tris,

te- ram pa - - - - - - - - -
w
det ad dex -

se -

te - ram pa - - - - - -
w
det ad dex -
.

w
te - ram pa -
V
?
?
b
b
b
42
-

.

-

w
tris,
w

tris se -
-
w
det ad dex -
-

w
te - ram pa -

tris, se - det ad

se -
tris,
w

dex - te - ram
w
det ad dex -
V
?
?
b
b
b
47

pa - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

w
te - ram pa - - - - - - - - - - - - -

se -

w
det ad dex -

w
te - ram pa -
tris.
tris.
tris.
(a)
(b)
motet, both based on the triad fac and both used in imitation. The former
(motive B) is found not only at the beginning of the second section of the
Gloria (see Ex. 2.10b) but also at the ends of the Kyrie and Benedictus, and
the latter (see Ex. 2.8) lends itself to one of the few instances of word paint-
ing in the mass, i.e. the contrast between vivosand mortuos(Ex. 2.12).
The two masses by Lasso and Gabrieli thus serve to introduce us to
quite dierent approaches to the adaptation of a relatively brief model to
the long movements of the Mass Ordinary. Apparently written in a serious
eort to challenge the imagination and talents of their composers in using
the often irregularly spaced motives of motets rather than the clear phrases
of secular chansons as their models, these works demonstrate both the sub-
tleties and the variety of the techniques of imitation and parody.
Signicantly, neither mass makes much use of direct parody,
18
i.e. the
literal quotation of longer passages from the model, beyond the presenta-
tion of material in the Kyrie and Gloria. In both cases the reliance is instead
mainly on motives which can be easily recognized by the listener and which
can occur in myriad transformations, lending both unity and variety to the
mass as it progresses. The older practice of composing masses around
melodic motives derived from a specic mode is also still strongly reected
39
18
See Wilder, The Masses, pp. 187.
Example 2.12: Gabrieli, Missa super Pater peccavi, Credo, Et iterum
venturus est, mm. 1216
Cantus
Quintus
Altus
Tenor
Bassus 1
Bassus 2
&
&
V
V
?
?
b
b
b
b
b
b
[-ca-]

re vi -
1Z
.

.
J
vi -
[-ca-]
w
w
re
w
w
ca - re
[-ca-]
w
w
re

.
J
w
w
w
vos,
.

.
J

vi -

.
j
vi -
w
.

vi -
W
.

.
j

vi -

w
vos
.

.
J

vi -
w
w
vos
.
J

w
vos
-
-
-
w

vos

w
vos et mor -
w
w b
et mor -

w
vos et mor -

w b
et mor -
w

w
tu - os

w
tu - os

w
tu - os

w
tu - os
in both cases. These works, nally, illuminate two very dierent musical
talents of the late sixteenth century: the perfection of the long lines of imi-
tative polyphony on the one hand and the beginnings of a more vertically
oriented, rhythmically direct style on the other. Although the latter reects
instrumental inuence, it is here still found within the connes of the main
sacred genre of the Renaissance, the polyphonic mass.
40
3 Post-Tridentine liturgical change and functional
music: Lassos cycle of polyphonic Latin hymns
daniel zager
The study of Orlando di Lassos polyphonic Latin hymn cycle found
one of its earliest stimuli in the work of Julius Joseph Maier (182189), the
rst Conservator der Musikalischen Abteilung der Kgl. Hof- und
Staatsbibliothek,now the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. His 1879 catalogue,
Die musikalischen Handschriften der K. Hof- und Staatsbibliothek in
Mnchen, identied three manuscript sources of Lassos hymn cycle, all of
which are still preserved in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek as Mus. Mss. 55,
75, and 520.
1
In his landmark study of 1958, Wolfgang Boetticher provided
a brief overview of the hymn cycle, focusing on questions of dating and
authenticity in the oldest manuscript source, Mus. Ms. 55, as well as on its
relationship to the two later Munich sources identied by Maier.
2
He also
pointed out a fourth source among manuscripts in Augsburg.
3
In her 1980
41
1
Julius Joseph Maier, Die musikalischen Handschriften der K. Hof- und
Staatsbibliothek in Mnchen, Erster Theil: Die Handschriften bis zum Ende des
XVII. Jahrhunderts, Catalogus Codicum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Regiae
Monacensis, Tomi VIII, Pars 1 (Munich: In Commission der Palmschen
Hofbuchhandlung, 1879), pp. 6871, 768. The successor to this catalogue is
KBM5/1; see pp. 1915, 2223, and 2628 for physical descriptions and
inventories of the manuscripts preserving Lassos hymn cycle.
2
Boetticher, Lasso, pp. 64450. Mus. Ms. 55 was copied 15801 for the Munich
Hofkapelle; Mus. Ms. 75 was copied c. 1600 for the Jesuit church of St. Michael
in Munich; Mus. Ms. 520, the latest source of Lassos hymn cycle, was copied in
1622 for the Augustiner Chorherrenstift in Polling.
3
Boetticher, Lasso, pp. 8823. For an inventory of Augsburg, Staats- und
Stadtbibliothek, Ms. 25 (Schletterer Catalogue, 24), see Clytus Gottwald, Die
Musikhandschriften der Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg,
Handschriftenkataloge der Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg, Bd. 1
(Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1974), pp. 13852. This Augsburg source,
copied for the Benedictine monastery of Sts. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg, is
dated 1585, though the title page preceding the hymns (fols. 237324) and each
edition of the hymn cycle, Marie Louise Gllner brought to the fore a fth
manuscript source whose provenance may be traced to Munichs
Frauenkirche.
4
Subsequent to Boettichers and particularly Gllners investigation of
these sources, and her preparation of a critical edition, a nexus of contex-
tual questions remains to be explored. Why did Lasso compose a hymn
cycle in 15801? What was the functional context for the creation and use of
this repertory? Was there a specic liturgical stimulus? To pose such ques-
tions is to assert that beyond source studies, and beyond investigations of
musical style and structure, there remain important lines of inquiry
regarding the relationship between liturgical rite and musical repertory,
and, more broadly, the symbolic role of liturgy within a particular religious
culture.
Lassos hymn cycle for the Munich Hofkapelle provides an opportu-
nity to explore such relationships among liturgy, music, and post-
Tridentine Catholic culture. There is clearly a direct causal relationship
between liturgical change at the Munich court chapel and the concomitant
need for this new musical repertory. This study will contrast the vespers
hymns required by the Tridentine Breviarium Romanumand Lassos hymn
cycle as a response to this liturgical book, with those required by an earlier
Freising diocesan breviary and the hymn settings by Ludwig Sen
(c. 14861542/3), one of Lassos predecessors at the Hofkapelle.
Although the connection of this repertory to a specic liturgical
stimulus is in itself a useful link, further consideration invites an inquiry
into the broader context. Why was Wilhelm V interested in liturgical change
at the Bavarian court? While it is not inaccurate to suggest that the liturgical
dictates of the Council of Trent no doubt played a role, Wilhelms motiva-
dani el zager
42
of the individual hymns are dated 1584 by the scribe, Johannes Treer. For a
further consideration of this Augsburg source of Lassos hymns, see Daniel
Zager, Liturgical Rite and Musical Repertory: The Polyphonic Latin Hymn
Cycle of Lasso in Munich and Augsburg, Orlandus Lassus and his Time, pp.
21531.
4
SWNR, vol. 18. For an inventory of Munich, Metropolitan-Kapitelarchiv, Artes
238, see Helmut Hell et al., Die Musikhandschriften aus dem Dom zu Unserer
Lieben Frau in Mnchen: Thematischer Katalog, Kataloge Bayerischer
Musiksammlungen, Bd. 8 (Munich: G. Henle, 1987), pp. 4952. Gllner has
dated this source at c. 16051610.
tion to initiate liturgical changes at the ducal court may well go beyond
simple obedience to papal decrees regarding the adoption of newly revised
Tridentine liturgical books. To propose that the acceptance of such liturgi-
cal change was, in part, a conscious identication with and emulation of
Rome and the papal court is to position Wilhelm (and, one could argue, his
father and predecessor, Albrecht V) squarely within post-Tridentine
Roman Catholic culture, and to recognize liturgy as a cultural marker
bearing signicant associative meaning, possessed of the capacity to link
one entity (in this case, the Bavarian ducal court) to another (the papal
court and Rome).
Finally, in this exploration of liturgy and music, chronological con-
siderations related to the composition and copying of Lassos hymn cycle
are instructive. Such a chronological examination allows us to view both
composer and scribe in the process of creating a functional, day-to-day rep-
ertory, the sequence of their work dened in large part by the liturgical year.
Some of the most inuential liturgical reforms identied with the Council
of Trent came to fruition in the years immediately following the close of its
deliberations. Though the Council endorsed the importance of revised
liturgical books, the actual work of reform was delegated to committees of
bishops and cardinals working after the close of the Council in 1563. In
1568, during the papacy of Pius V (156672), a revised breviary appeared:
Breviarium Romanum, ex decreto Sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini restitutum,
Pii V Pont. Max, jussu editum.
5
In the papal Bull Quod a nobis of 9 July
1568, Pius V pronounced the abolition of all previous breviaries in use for
less than two hundred years and stated that nothing was to be added to or
subtracted from this new breviary:
lasso
s cycle of polyphoni c lati n hymns

43
5
For a detailed history of this breviary reform, see Pierre Batiol, History of the
Roman Breviary, trans. Atwell M.Y. Baylay (London: Longmans, Green, 1912),
pp. 191207; for a concise history, see Jules Baudot, The Breviary: Its History and
Contents, trans. Benedictines of Stanbrook (London: Sands, 1929), pp. 4854.
See Hanns Bohatta, Bibliographie der Breviere, 15011850, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart:
Anton Hiersemann, 1963), pp. 31, for a listing of the numerous editions of this
breviary. Details concerning the wide dissemination of the 1568 breviary are
found in Suitbert Bumer, Geschichte des Breviers (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder,
1895), pp. 45767.
We order that this Breviary of Ours be observed . . . in all churches,
monasteries, orders and even exempt places in the whole world, in which
the Oce must be said or has customarily been said . . . and that all those
who are bound by law or custom to say or sing the Canonical Hours
according to this custom and rite of the Roman Church are absolutely
bound to say and sing hereafter . . . according to the order and plan of this
Roman Breviary. . . .
6
That the acceptance of such a new breviary would have far-reaching
consequences for musicians may be seen by comparing the liturgical
requirements and musical repertories in use at a particular establishment.
The content of liturgical books compiled before and after Trent, and the
musical repertories composed in response to such liturgical rites, consti-
tute a matrix of comparative information shedding light on questions of
liturgical function in sixteenth-century Latin sacred music. In this investi-
gation, the vespers hymns specied by the 1568 Breviarium Romanumwill
be compared with those required by the 1516 Breviarium Frisingense, six-
teenth-century Munich being part of the Freising diocese.
7
Tables 3.1 and 3.2 enumerate highly ranked Vespers feasts occasions
typically calling for polyphonic performance of hymns and their asso-
ciated hymn texts, in both the 1568 Breviarium Romanum and the 1516
Breviarium Frisingense.
8
The similarities and dierences are readily appar-
ent in both the temporal and sanctoral cycles. The temporal cycles in these
two breviaries share common hymn texts for Passion Sunday and for Easter.
Further, the hymns for Advent (Conditor alme siderum) and weekdays of
Lent (Audi benigne conditor) in the Breviarium Romanum also nd a
dani el zager
44
6
Quoted in Pierre Salmon, The Breviary through the Centuries, trans. Sister David
Mary (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1962), p. 20.
7
For the boundaries of the various German dioceses in the sixteenth century, see
Max Spindler, Bayerischer Geschichtsatlas (Munich: Bayerischer Schulbuch-
Verlag, 1969), pp. 267, or Karl Hausberger and Benno Hubensteiner, Bayerische
Kirchengeschichte (Munich: Sddeutscher Verlag, 1985).
8
The fundamental work concerning polyphonic vespers hymns is by Tom R.
Ward; see his The Polyphonic Oce Hymn from the Late Fourteenth Century
until the Early Sixteenth Century, Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh (1969);
The Polyphonic Oce Hymn and the Liturgy of Fifteenth-Century Italy,
Musica Disciplina, 26 (1972), pp. 16188; and The Polyphonic Oce Hymn,
14001520: A Descriptive Catalogue, Renaissance Manuscript Studies 3 (Rome:
American Institute of Musicology, 1980).
place in the 1516 Freising diocesan breviary, though in this earlier source
additional hymns are appointed for these seasons as well. Other than these
similarities, however, there are signicant dierences, both in the feasts
requiring vespers hymns (in the Freising rite the feasts of Holy Innocents,
Transguration, Pentecost, Trinity, and Corpus Christi do not specify a
lasso

45
Table 3.1 Vespers hymns specified by 1568 Breviarium Romanum;
hymn settings provided by Lasso in Mus. Ms. 55
Feast Hymn Mus. Ms. 55
Advent Conditor alme siderum x
Christmas Christe redemptor omnium/Ex Patre x
Holy Innocents Salvete flores martyrum x
Epiphany Hostis Herodes impie x
Lent (Weekdays) Audi benigne conditor x
Lent (Sundays) Ad preces nostras x
Passion Sunday Vexilla regis prodeunt x
Easter Ad cenam agni providi x
Ascension Jesu nostra redemptio x
Pentecost Veni creator spiritus x
Trinity O lux beata Trinitas (also Saturdays per annum) x
Corpus Christi Pange lingua gloriosi x
Sundays per annum Lucis creator optime x
Transfiguration Quicumque Christum quaeritis x
St. Peters Chair Quodcumque vinclis
St. John Baptist Ut queant laxis x
STs. Peter and Paul Aurea luce et decore x
St. Mary Magdalene Lauda mater ecclesia x
St. Peters Chains Petrus beatus catenarum x
St. Michael Tibi Christe splendor Patris x
Marian feasts Ave maris stella x
All Saints Christe redemptor omnium/Conserva x
[Conversion of St. Paul] [Doctor egregie] x
(Not included in 1568 Breviarium Romanum.)
Common of Apostles Exultet caelum laudibus x
Common of Apostles in Tristes erant apostoli x
Paschal Time
Common of One Martyr Deus tuorum militum x
Common of Many Martyrs Sanctorum meritis x
Common of Martyrs in Rex gloriose martyrum x
Paschal Time
Common of Confessors Iste confessor x
Common of Virgins Jesu corona virginum x
Dedication of a Church Urbs beata Jerusalem x
vespers hymn) and in the hymns appointed for particular feasts (cf. the
dierent hymns appointed for Christmas, Epiphany [in the Freising brevi-
ary Hostis Herodes impieis specied for Compline rather than Vespers],
and Ascension). In the sanctoral cycle the Marian hymn Ave maris stellais
the only text shared by the two breviaries in the Proper of Saints; in the
Common of Saints, on the other hand, all of the hymn texts of the Freising
breviary are also present in the Breviarium Romanum.
Apart from this last correspondence, however, it is clear that the feasts
requiring vespers hymns, and the hymn texts appointed for those feasts,
dier signicantly in these two breviaries. In fact, the diering proles of
dani el zager
46
Table 3.2 Vespers hymns specified by 1516 Breviarium Frisingense;
hymn settings provided by Senfl in Mus. Ms. 52
Feast Hymn Mus. Ms. 52
Advent Veni redemptor gentium x
Advent Verbum supernum prodiens
Advent Conditor alme siderum
Christmas A solis ortus cardine x
Epiphany Gratuletur omnis caro x
Lent Ex more docti mystico
Lent Audi benigne conditor
Lent Clarum decus
Passion Sunday Vexilla regis
Easter Ad cenam agni providi
Ascension Festum nunc celebre x
St. Andrew Exorta a Bethsaida
St. Catherine Ave Catherina
St. Nicholas Plaudat letitia
Conception of Mary Gaude visceribus x
a
Conversion of St. Paul Doctor egregie
Purification of Mary Quod chorus vatum x
Marian feasts Ave maris stella
Common of Apostles Exultet caelum laudibus
Common of Many Martyrs Rex gloriose martyrum
Common of One Martyr Deus tuorum militum
Common of Confessors Iste confessor
Common of Virgins Jesu corona virginum
Note:
a
Designated for Assumption.
feasts and hymns relate to larger liturgical traditions (of German and
Italian provenance) for the polyphonic hymn, the feasts and hymns in the
Freising diocesan breviary being part of a German tradition, those in the
Breviarium Romanum being part of an Italian tradition.
9
Thus, in a case
where the Breviarium Romanum replaced an existing diocesan breviary,
certain extant polyphonic repertories, such as vespers hymns, might well
have been rendered largely obsolete.
WhenLassobecame a singer at the Munichcourt chapel of Albrecht V
in 1556, he would have encountered an extensive collection of polyphonic
music for Vespers, including hymns for some of the major temporal and
sanctoral feasts: the Liber vesperarum festorum solennium (Munich,
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Mus. Ms. 52).
10
Although most of the compo-
sitions in this source lack attributions, Martin Bente identied concor-
dances attributedtoLudwigSeninHeidelbergandStuttgart manuscripts,
concludingthat all of thecompositions inMus. Ms. 52couldbeattributedto
Sen, who was employed at the Munich court chapel from 1523 until his
deathin1542or 1543.
11
By usingliturgical evidence, DavidCrookhas dem-
onstrated that Mus. Ms. 52 was copied in Munich after Sens arrival in
1522 or 1523,the clear implication being that this repertory was prepared
for use in connection with Freising liturgical books such as the 1516
Breviarium Frisingense or the 1520 Scamnalia secundum ritum et ordinem
ecclesie et diocesis frisingensis.
12
Table 3.2 shows that seven of Sens hymn
settings inMus. Ms. 52wouldhavebeenuseful inconnectionwithVespers as
denedbythe1516Freisingbreviary; onlyoneof thesesevenhymns Urbs
beata Jerusalem(Dedication of a Church) was to nd a place in the 1568
BreviariumRomanum. In all, ve of Sens fteen settings could have been
lasso

47
9
Ward has dened both traditions (see Ward [1969], pp. 28 for a summary) and
provided a convenient listing of each tradition (see Ward [1980], pp. 1617).
For a comparative study of sixteenth-century hymn cycles drawing on the
Italian tradition of feasts and texts, see Daniel Zager, The Polyphonic Latin
Hymns of Orlando di Lasso: A Liturgical and Repertorial Study, Ph.D. diss.,
University of Minnesota (1985), pp. 3564, 15579.
10
For an inventory of Mus. Ms. 52 see KBM 5/1, pp. 17888.
11
Martin Bente, Neue Wege der Quellenkritik und die Biographie Ludwig Sens: Ein
Beitrag zur Musikgeschichte des Reformationszeitalters (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf
und Hrtel, 1968), pp. 5762.
12
Munich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 43.
used with the Breviarium Romanum (see Table 3.3), this group obviously
comprising only a small fraction of the hymn settings required by this new
bookforVespers (seeTable3.1). Thus, whenWilhelmVcommittedhis court
chapel to the use of the 1568 BreviariumRomanum, Lasso was obligated to
prepareanewvespers hymncycletoaccordwiththeTridentinebreviary.
It would be perfectly plausible to assume that Wilhelms motive in
adopting the Breviarium Romanumfor use in his court chapel was based on
the papal decree regarding use of the revised Tridentine breviary. While this
consideration may have been a pertinent one, the reasons for undertaking a
major liturgical change one that would require newly composed poly-
phonic repertories may well run deeper than conformity with a papal
decree. Beyond acquiescence, it is possible to view this liturgical change as a
way of forging an identity with Rome and with the larger post-Tridentine
Catholic culture.
*
Discussing the years after the close of the Council of Trent in 1563,
Elizabeth G. Gleason remarks that reform under papal leadership went
beyond a Counter Reformation to positive and constructive eorts at
building a more tightly organized, better instructed, and eectively con-
dani el zager
48
Table 3.3 Hymns by Senfl in Mus. Ms. 52
Vespers hymn specified by the
Feast Hymn 1568 Breviarium Romanum
Advent Veni redemptor gentium
Christmas A solis ortus cardine
Epiphany Hostis Herodes impie x
Epiphany Gratuletur omnis caro
Sundays of Lent Christe qui lux
Ascension Festum nunc celebre
Pentecost Veni creator spiritus x
Trinity O lux beata Trinitas x
Corpus Christi Pange lingua gloriosi x
All Saints Omnes superni ordines
Marian feasts Quod chorus vatum
Marian feasts In Mariam vitae viam
Marian feasts Gaude visceribus
Marian feasts Quem terra pontus
trolled church than the old institution before 1563 had been.
13
She goes on
to identify some of the tools and tactics of the Tridentine reforms, including
in her list liturgy as an aspect of reform:
The restructuring of the churchs administration was only one achievement
of the later sixteenth-century popes. More signicant for the church on the
local level was a series of catechetical, liturgical, and disciplinary
innovations, all emanating from Rome, which would determine the
character of Catholic culture for centuries to come. . . . In 1566 the Roman
Catechism was issued, which became the principal tool of Christian
instruction for pastors and teachers of religion. Two years later the revised
Roman Breviary appeared, with mandatory daily readings for the clergy. In
1570 the Missale Romanum codied a uniform liturgy of the mass for the
entire liturgical year, for use by every church throughout the Catholic
world. . . . That almost all of these works contained the word Roman in
their titles underlined that Rome was the nerve center of the Catholic
church. . . . In a much stronger sense than before the Reformation, the
Catholic church became Roman Catholic.
14
In his study of post-Tridentine Roman sermon literature Frederick J.
McGinness puts it another way: The Council of Trent presented the
Roman clergy with a model for rebuilding Catholic life and worship. And a
rm commitment to that enterprise was the only way to reestablish a sorely
needed credibility.
15
This model for rebuilding Catholic life and worship
extended beyond Rome and its clergy to, for example, the Bavarian ducal
court, which long had been staunchly Catholic, but in the post-Tridentine
era was concerned with becoming Roman Catholic. One could argue that
Albrecht had laid the groundwork for this concept, though it was Wilhelm
who would employ liturgy as a means of fostering and making explicit a
closer and more overt connection with Rome.
Albrechts loyalty to the papacy was never in question. Writing in
1567 to Francis Borgia (151072), Peter Canisius (152197) gives pride of
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49
13
Elizabeth G. Gleason, Catholic Reformation, Counterreformation and Papal
Reform in the Sixteenth Century, Handbook of European History, 14001600:
Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation, ed. Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Heiko
A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), vol. 2, p. 333.
14
Ibid., pp. 3389.
15
Frederick J. McGinness, Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory in Counter-
Reformation Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 6.
place to Albrecht as one zealous for the Catholic faith in Germany.
16
Cardinal Commendone, writing to Canisius in 1568, refers to Albrecht and
Ferdinand II, Archduke of Tyrol, as the principal pillars of the Catholic
faith in Germany.
17
Indeed, Pastors account of Romes eorts to maintain
a strong presence in Germany refers to Albrechts consistent support.
18
Given Albrechts loyalty to Rome and the esteem in which he was held,
it is not surprising that Etienne Dupracs engraving of the Sistine Chapel
from 1578 is dedicated to Albrecht V. The engraving is titled Maiestatis
Ponticiae Dum in Capella Xisti Sacra Peraguntur Accurata Delineatio,
which Niels Krogh Rasmussen translates as: An Exact Drawing During the
Celebration of Mass in the Sistine Chapel of the Papal Majesty.
19
Rasmussen points out that Duprac, one of the great French artists and
cartographers in Rome,would have had a propensity, as a cartographer, for
producing an exact drawing . . . made during a liturgical celebration in the
Sistine Chapel.While the engraving thus shows as well as if it were photo-
graphed how the Chapel really functioned, Rasmussen concludes that
the liturgical celebration, however, is only the vehicle, which serves the real
aim of the engraver, and that is clearly and without any possibility of
contradiction the illustration of the Maiestas ponticia, the Papal
Majesty.
20
Commenting further on this engraving, McGinness writes that
the engraving portrays symbolically the spiritual and temporal power of
the Papacy and the Roman Curia as center of a city, state, and world. . . .
21
As an advocate for the papacy in Germany, Albrecht V would be not
dani el zager
50
16
Cited by Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle
Ages, ed. Ralph Francis Kerr (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1930), vol.
20, p. 42. Gleason, Catholic Reformation, p. 340, characterizes Pastors work in
this way: The still standard History of the Popes . . . immensely useful though it
remains, shows signs of its age in its value judgments and apologetic
approach. . . .
17
Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 20, p. 42.
18
Ibid. Pastor states that with respect to Germany, Bavaria was indeed at that
time the pivot of Catholic hopes. For a more recent discussion of Albrechts
political activities in support of the Roman church see Philip M. Soergel,
Wondrous in His Saints: Counter-Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993), pp. 7580.
19
Niels Krogh Rasmussen, Maiestas Ponticia: A Liturgical Reading of Etienne
Dupracs Engraving of the Capella Sixtina from 1578, Analecta Romana
Instituti Danici (Rome), 12 (1983), pp. 10948, here at 144.
20
Ibid., p. 109.
21
McGinness, Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory, p. 87.
only an altogether logical dedicatee for this engraving but also one who, as a
defender of the papacy, would be in a position to understand and cherish
the illustration of the Maiestas ponticia. In his detailed explanation of the
engraving, Rasmussen points out that among those present at this papal
celebration of the Mass are three dukes (no. 10 on Rasmussens schematic,
p. 139). While there is no evidence that Albrecht was ever present in the
Sistine Chapel at Mass,
22
it is plausible that through this dedication
Duprac signied at least a symbolic place for Duke Albrecht at the spiritual
and temporal center of the Roman Catholic world the papal court.
McGinness articulates the importance of the papal court in this way:
The relationship between heaven and the papal court was even more than a
mere image-likeness reection. At court divine power became more
concentrated, so that good works, prayers, and sacrices acquired greater
value and ecacy in Gods eyes. The setting and the liturgical rites of the
papal court thus diered both quantitatively and qualitatively from other
terrestrial courts. . . . The papal court was therefore quantitatively holier,
and as a result more meritorious than any other place on earth. . . . The
motif of the papal liturgy as a sacred event in the holy center of the orbis
terrarum characterizes many sermons given before popes in the
Renaissance. But what then was perhaps more descriptive became in the
post-Tridentine era more emphatically the model for order: as heaven and
the papal court are ordered, so should the entire world.
23
That Dupracs engraving of a liturgical celebration in the Sistine
Chapel was dedicated to Albrecht in 1578 suggests that Albrecht might well
have acquired the engraving. The signicance of this depiction is that it
makes visible the Tridentine emphasis on Rome as the center of the
Catholic Church. Thus, it would carry the connotation for someone within
the Catholic Church but outside of Rome that (in the words of McGinness)
as heaven and the papal court are ordered, so should the entire world.The
meaning conveyed by such an engraving, and, more generally, the
Tridentine emphasis on Rome, carried with it a host of implications for
Albrecht. His death a year later, on 24 October 1579, left such matters
to Wilhelm. That precisely one year after Albrechts death Lasso was
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51
22
Rasmussen, Maiestas Ponticia, p. 109, states that there is no recorded visit of
Albert to Rome. . . .
23
McGinness, Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory, pp. 901.
beginning work on a new musical repertory to match the 1568 Roman bre-
viary is, therefore, of particular signicance, constituting, as it does, some
of the earliest evidence that Wilhelm indeed intended to use liturgy as a
means of embracing Tridentine reforms, therefore linking his own court
more explicitly to the papal court in Rome.
In the course of copying Mus. Ms. 55, Franz Flori, the chief scribe of the
Hofkapelle, dated twenty-one individual settings (nineteen dierent
hymns), a practice that Clive Wearing suggested became more frequent in
the 1580s as Lassos copyists sought to link newly composed repertories
with the newly accepted Tridentine rite.
24
The hymns bearing scribal dates
are listed chronologically in Table 3.4, showing that Flori began to copy this
manuscript at least in November 1580, perhaps earlier since some of the
dani el zager
52
24
Clive Wearing, Orlandus Lassus (15321594) and the Munich Kapelle, Early
Music, 10 (1982), p. 151.
Table 3.4 Scribal dating of hymn settings in Mus. Ms. 55
Date Hymn Folio
1580 9 No Iste confessor 11
1580 in Novembri Jesu corona virginum, verse 2 13
19 Novembris Jesu corona virginum, verse 4 15v
1581 4 Januarii O lux beata Trinitas 39
1581 7 Januarii Lucis creator optime 44
1581 25 Januarii Ave maris stella 49v
[1581] 10 Martii Vexilla regis prodeunt 63
[1581] 30 Martii Ad coenam agni providi 68v
1581 Aprilis 12 Exultet caelum laudibus 136v
1581 15 Aprilis Deus tuorum militum 142
[1581] 20 Apri Deus tuorum militum 131
1581 25 Aprilis Jesu nostra redemptio 75v
1581 2 Ma Veni creator spiritus 77
1581 Junii 13 Ut queant laxis 101
1581 27 Junii Aurea luce et decore 105
1581 18 Ju Lauda mater ecclesia 111
1581 23 Au Sanctorum meritis 146
1581 25 Au Conditor alme siderum, verse 2 19
1581 25 Augusti Conditor alme siderum, verse 6 22v
1581 27 Au Salvete flores martyrum 31
[1581] 29 Au Hostis herodes impie 33
hymns are not dated.
25
These dates also provide a clue to Floris working
methods in compiling this manuscript, for the order in which he copied
these dated hymns can be related directly to the liturgical needs of the
church year.
As part of Mus. Ms. 55, Flori included a table of the sanctoral and tem-
poral feasts (together with their associated hymns) that were to be observed
at the Munich court chapel during Vespers.
26
By correlating the dates pro-
vided by Flori for these nineteen hymns with his table of feasts, it is possible
to demonstrate that almost all of the hymns dated by Flori were copied
shortly before they were needed for a particular sanctoral or temporal
feast.
27
Table 3.5 demonstrates that the sanctoral hymns were copied just
prior to the feasts for which these hymns were appointed. The temporal
hymns dated by Flori (see Table 3.6) also were copied according to the needs
of the church year. These feasts are moveable depending upon when Easter
falls, but in each case it is clear from the traditional progression of the festi-
val part of the church year (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter,
Ascension, Pentecost, Corpus Christi) that the appropriate hymns were
copied prior to the feasts for which they were appointed. Thus, based on the
scribal dating of hymns, the operative assumption here is that the manu-
script was compiled gradually during 15801 each hymn being copied
just prior to its appointed feast, then rehearsed and subsequently per-
formed on that feast.
lasso

53
25
Boetticher, Lasso, p. 645, proposed approximate dates for the undated hymns;
these hymns will be examined in detail below.
26
This table, occupying seven folios immediately following the dedication and
preceding the rst polyphonic setting, is entitled: Hymni per totum annum,
a[nno] 1581. The rst and longest part of the table is organized by month,
beginning with November and ending with October, and lists primarily
sanctoral feasts together with their appointed hymns and the folio numbers
where each polyphonic setting begins. Following this part of the table is a list of
most of the temporal feasts, moveable feasts depending on when Easter falls,
together with their hymns. The entire table has been transcribed by Gllner,
SWNR, vol. 18, pp. viiix.
27
The one exception is Sanctorum meritis, which was copied on 23 August 1581.
Yet the only feast in Floris table that calls for this hymn is the feast of Saints
Fabian (Pope) and Sebastian, Martyrs, which is observed on 20 January. While a
Roman Calendar such as that in the Liber Usualis indicates feasts of Many
Martyrs in late August and September, just after the date on which this hymn
was copied, none of these feasts is noted in Floris table.
The other thirteen hymn settings, listed in Table 3.7 by the order in
which they appear in Mus. Ms. 55, were not dated by Flori. For these hymns,
Boetticher proposed approximate dates based on the individual fascicles
in which the undated hymns were copied. Presumably, according to
dani el zager
54
Table 3.5 Scribal dating of sanctoral hymns in Mus. Ms. 55
correlated with dates of related sanctoral feasts
Scribal date Feast date Feast Hymn
9 Nov. 1580 11 Nov. Martin, Bishop and Confessor Iste confessor
19 Nov. 1580 25 Nov. Catherine, Virgin and Martyr Jesu corona virginum
25 Jan. 1581 2 Feb. Purification of the BVM Ave maris stella
12 Apr. 1581 25 Apr. St. Mark, Apostle and Evangelist Exultet caelum laudibus
a
15 Apr. 1581, 23 Apr. St. George, Martyr Deus tuorum militum
b
20 Apr. 1581
13 June 1581 24 June Nativity of St. John Baptist Ut queant laxis
27 June 1581 29 June Sts. Peter and Paul Aurea luce et decore
18 July 1581 22 July St. Mary Magdalene Lauda mater ecclesia
Notes:
a
In his table of feasts and hymns, Flori specified the hymn for Common of Apostles in
Paschal Time, Tristes erant apostoli, for the feast of St. Mark. While that hymn was not
dated by Flori, it probably was copied in April 1581 together with Exultet caelum laudibus,
the hymn for Common of Apostles.
b
Lasso provided two settings of Deus tuorum militum. The first, copied on 15 April, is for
the Common of One Martyr, while the second setting, specified by Flori for the feast of St.
George, is for the Common of One Martyr in Paschal Time.
Table 3.6 Scribal dating of temporal hymns in Mus. Ms. 55
correlated with related temporal feasts
Scribal date Hymn Feast
4 Jan. 1581 O lux beata Trinitas Saturdays from the Octave of
EpiphanyQuadragesima
7 Jan. 1581 Lucis creator optime 1st Sunday after Epiphany to 1st
Sunday of Quadragesima (and 3rd
Sun. after Pentecost to Advent)
10 Mar. 1581 Vexilla regis prodeunt Passion Sunday/Palm Sunday
30 Mar. 1581 Ad coenam agni providi Saturdays and Sundays from the
Octave of Easter to Ascension
23 Apr. 1581 Jesu nostra redemptio Ascension
2 May 1581 Veni creator spiritus Pentecost
Boetticher, an undated hymn would have been copied at approximately the
same time as dated hymns in the same fascicle.
28
Several of Boettichers pro-
posed copying dates for the undated hymns may be conrmed through
liturgical evidence the correlation of feast designation for each hymn with
the liturgical needs of the church year as specied in Floris table of feasts,
and with the date of that feast in the Roman liturgical calendar. Others of
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55
28
See Boetticher, Lasso, p. 645, for his proposed dating of the undated hymns. He
notes there that Die Zeitlage der undatierten Stze bestimmen wir annhernd
aus dem Ort, der ihnen in den einzelnen Faszikeln zugewiesen ist. Gllner,
SWNR, vol. 18, p. vii, used the same approach in establishing an overall
chronology for the hymn collection.
Table 3.7 Hymns in Mus. Ms. 55 lacking scribal dates
Folios Hymn Feast
1v6 Christe redemptor omnium/Conserva All Saints
23v29 Christe redemptor omnium/Ex Patre Christmas
50v53 Audi benigne conditor Lent (weekdays)
53v59 Ad preces nostras Lent (Sundays)
59v60 Te lucis ante terminum Compline
86v99 Pange lingua gloriosi Corpus Christi
107v110 Doctor egregie Paule
a
Conversion of St. Paul
116v118 Petrus beatus catenarum St. Peters Chains
118v122 Quicumque Christum quaeritis Transfiguration
122v126 Tibi Christe splendor patris St. Michael
127bisv130 Tristes erant apostoli Common of Apostles in
Paschal Time
132v134 Rex gloriose martyrum Common of Many Martyrs
in Paschal Time
151v155 Urbs beata Jerusalem Dedication of a Church
Note:
a
Though the setting of Doctor egregie Paule was not dated by Flori, Boetticher,
Lasso, p. 645, included it with those hymns bearing a scribal date. Since Doctor
egregie is a stanza of Aurea luce, and follows this hymn in Mus. Ms. 55,
Boetticher undoubtedly was correct in proposing a copying date of late June,
similar to the scribal date of 27 June 1581 for Aurea luce. A copying date of late
June indicates that the hymn Doctor egregie was prepared for the
Commemoration of St. Paul, Apostle, on 30 June, one day after the Feast of Sts.
Peter and Paul. Of course, the hymn Doctor egregie also would have been used
on 25 January for the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. Floris table of feasts and
hymns indicates the use of Doctor egregie for both of these feasts.
Boettichers proposed copying dates may be rened considerably by using
such liturgical evidence.
The two Lenten hymns Audi benigne conditor, for weekdays of
Lent up to Passion Sunday, and Ad preces nostras, for the rst four
Sundays of Lent are among the hymns not dated by Flori. Based on their
location in the individual fascicles, Boetticher proposed a copying date of
February 1581 for these hymns.
29
Table 3.8 shows that this dating is entirely
consistent with the liturgical needs of the church year. Flori would have
copied Audi benigne conditor and Ad preces nostras sometime during
Epiphany so that they would be ready for use at the beginning of Lent. Thus,
Boettichers proposed scribal dating of these hymns is conrmed through
the requirements of the liturgical calendar.
Boetticher proposed a copying date of late May or fall of 1581 for the
Corpus Christi hymn Pange lingua gloriosi.Corpus Christi is a moveable
feast that always falls eleven days after Pentecost.
30
Since the Pentecost
hymn Veni creator spiritus was copied by Flori on 2 May 1581, there is
every reason to believe that he would have copied the Corpus Christi hymn
shortly thereafter. Thus, early to mid-May would seem to be a more likely
scribal date than either of the dates that Boetticher proposed. That Pange
lingua gloriosiimmediately follows Veni creator spiritusin Mus. Ms. 55
only serves to strengthen this proposed scribal date.
Three of the undated hymns may be assigned more precise scribal
dani el zager
56
29
Since Audi benigne conditor and Ad preces nostras are anked by hymns
composed in January and March, the logical conclusion is that the two undated
hymns were copied sometime during mid- to late January or February.
30
On the importance of the Corpus Christi feast in Bavaria see Soergel, Wondrous
in His Saints, pp. 8090.
Table 3.8 Temporal hymns for Epiphany and Lent in Mus. Ms. 55
Scribal date Feast Hymn
4 Jan. 1581 Epiphany (weekdays) O lux beata Trinitas
7 Jan. 1581 Epiphany (Sundays) Lucis creator optime
[Lacking] Lent (weekdays) Audi benigne conditor
[Lacking] Lent (Sundays) Ad preces nostras
10 Mar. 1581 Passion/Palm Sundays Vexilla regis prodeunt
dates than those proposed by Boetticher. For two of these hymns, Petrus
beatus catenarum (St. Peters Chains) and Quicumque Christum quaer-
itis (Transguration), Boetticher indicated only summer of 1581 as a
scribal date. He proposed an even broader range for the scribal date of a
third hymn summerfall of 1581 for Tibi Christe splendor Patris (St.
Michael). During the months of July, August, and September, four feasts
have hymns assigned primarily to them;
31
they are listed in Table 3.9. Since
the rst of these hymns was dated by Flori, it is possible to narrow consider-
ably the broad range of scribal dates proposed by Boetticher for each of the
other three hymns. Based on the dates of the feasts to which these hymns are
assigned,Petrus beatus catenarumand Quicumque Christum quaeritis
would have been copied during the last few weeks of July, while Tibi
Christe splendor Patris would have been copied during August or
September. The fact that the four hymns listed in Table 3.9 are copied suc-
cessively in Mus. Ms. 55 (nos. 225) supports the hypothesis that each of the
three undated hymns was copied sometime after 18 July but before the date
of the respective feast for each hymn.
Two of the undated hymns are designated for the Common of Saints
during Paschal Time: Rex gloriose martyrum (Common of Many
Martyrs in Paschal Time), and Tristes erant apostoli (Common of
Apostles in Paschal Time). Although both hymns are used during Paschal
Time, Boetticher proposed quite dierent scribal dates for these hymns:
end of April 1581 for Rex gloriose martyrum and early fall 1581 for
Tristes erant apostoli. Based on the liturgical needs of the church year,
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57
31
All of the other sanctoral feasts during these months employ a hymn from the
Common of Saints, or, in the case of Marian feasts, use the hymn Ave maris
stella.
Table 3.9 Scribal dates of hymns assigned to feasts during July,
August, September
Scribal date Feast date Feast Hymn
18 July 1581 22 July St. Mary Magdalene Lauda mater ecclesia
[Lacking] 1 Aug. St. Peters Chains Petrus beatus catenarum
[Lacking] 6 Aug. Transfiguration Quicumque Christum quaeritis
[Lacking] 29 Sept. St. Michael Tibi Christe splendor Patris
both of these hymns were probably copied in April 1581 for use on sanctoral
feasts occurring in April and May, during Paschal Time.
32
The order of
hymns in Mus. Ms. 55 supports this conclusion, for Lassos setting of Deus
tuorum militum (Common of One Martyr in Paschal Time), entered in
Mus. Ms. 55 between Tristes erant apostoliand Rex gloriose martyrum,
is dated 20 April 1581. Thus, even by using Boettichers methodology of
assigning a scribal date based on where the hymn is copied in the manu-
script, it would be dicult to justify a fall 1581 date for Tristes erant apos-
toli, a hymn that, like other Paschal Time hymns entered near it in the
manuscript, would be used primarily during April and May.
A more precise scribal date may be proposed for one other of the
undated hymns. Christe redemptor omnium/Conserva,the hymn for All
Saints, is the rst hymn entered in the manuscript.
33
While Boetticher sug-
gested a scribal date of late 1580 for this hymn, it is possible to set the date
more precisely at mid- to late October 1580, therefore making this hymn
the rst of the entire cycle to be copied by Flori. Christe redemptor
omnium/Conserva precedes two hymns (nos. 2 and 3 in Mus. Ms. 55)
bearing scribal dates in November 1580: Iste confessor (9 November
1580) and Jesu corona virginum(19 November 1580). Given the fact that
Christe redemptor omnium/Conservais needed for the feast of All Saints
on 1 November, a scribal date of late October is very plausible.
Thus, based on the liturgical needs of the church year, approximate
scribal dates may be proposed for all but two of the undated hymns.
34
By
dani el zager
58
32
See Floris table of feasts for April and May in Gllner, SWNR, vol. 18, p. ix.
33
Gllner, SWNR, vol. 18, p. x, pointed out that the winter part of the liturgical
calendar begins with the feast of All Saints: Im Gegensatz zu allen spteren
Handschriften fngt der Hymnenzyklus in M 55 auallenderweise nicht mit
dem Kirchenjahr, sondern mit dem Fest Allerheiligen, also mit Beginn des
Winterteils der Liturgie an, einem Zeitpunkt, an dem auch Messgewnder und -
bcher gewechselt wurden. Whether Lasso intentionally began the compilation
of his hymn collection at this point in the liturgical calendar is impossible to
demonstrate. None the less, it is clear that the organization of hymns in Mus.
Ms. 55 is tied directly to the time of the church year when the compilation of
the manuscript began.
34
The exceptions are Te lucis ante terminum, for Compline, and Urbs beata
Jerusalem, for the Dedication of a Church. Since these two hymns are not
assigned to particular feasts or seasons of the church year, it is impossible to
conrm or even test Boettichers suggested scribal dates for these hymns: early
March 1581 and early September 1581, respectively.
correlating both dated and undated hymns with the liturgical requirements
of the church year as observed at the Munich court chapel (according to the
table of feasts and hymns in Mus. Ms. 55), it becomes clear how Flori com-
piled this earliest source of Lassos hymns. Flori entered hymns gradually,
probably from late October of 1580 through August of 1581, as they were
needed for particular liturgical feasts, both sanctoral and temporal. By
September of 1581 the hymn cycle was complete. Thus, when the new
church year began in Advent 1581 (late November or early December),
Lassos hymn cycle was ready for its rst complete use over the span of an
entire church year.
The dates discussed above are scribal dates and not necessarily indic-
ative of Lassos dates of composition. The only tangible chronological evi-
dence available for these hymns is the scribal dating, and one cannot
assume that the date of composition and the date of copying necessarily
approximate each other. Two questions arise concerning the compositional
chronology: (1) were the hymns available as a complete corpus before being
given to the copyist, or (2) were they composed gradually during 15801
and copied shortly thereafter in the same order in which they were com-
posed? The scribal dates and their relation to the liturgical needs of the
church year provide an important clue to the question of date of composi-
tion.
Table 3.10 summarizes the previous discussion by oering a pro-
posed chronology of Floris copying of the hymns. The chronology is deter-
mined by correlating the designation of feast in each hymn with the date of
that feast in the liturgical calendar. Gllner arrived at a substantially similar
chronology by correlating the positions in the manuscript of both dated
and undated hymns, the same method used by Boetticher. Thus, two
dierent methodologies, liturgical and bibliographical, support a consis-
tent chronology.
35
Both the dated and undated hymns are included in Table
3.10, the undated hymns being integrated with the dated hymns according
to the dates proposed in the preceding discussion.
One aspect of this chronology suggests that Lassos hymns were not
available to Flori as a complete corpus when he began copying Mus. Ms. 55.
It is clear that almost invariably Flori copied a particular hymn shortly
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59
35
Gllner, SWNR, vol. 18, p. vii.
Table 3.10 Proposed scribal chronology of hymns in Mus. Ms. 55
Scribal date
a
Feast Hymn No. in Mus. Ms. 55
[Oct. 1580] All Saints (1 Nov.) Christe redemptor omnium/Conserva 21
9 Nov. 1580 Common of Confessors (Martin, Bishop and Confessor, Iste confessor 22
11 Nov.)
19 Nov. 1580 Common of Virgins (Catherine, Virgin and Martyr, 25 Nov.) Jesu corona virginum 23
4 Jan. 1581 Saturdays per annum O lux beata Trinitas 28
7 Jan. 1581 Sundays per annum Lucis creator optime 29
25 Jan. 1581 Marian feasts (Purification of the BVM, 2 Feb.) Ave maris stella 10
[Feb. 1581] Lent (weekdays) Audi benigne conditor 11
[Feb. 1581] Lent (Sundays) Ad preces nostras 12
10 Mar. 1581 Passion Sunday Vexilla regis prodeunt 14
30 Mar. 1581 Octave of Easter Ad coenam agni providi 15
12 Apr. 1581 Common of Apostles (St. Mark, Apostle and Evangelist, 25 Apr.) Exultet caelum laudibus 29
15 Apr. 1581 Common of One Martyr (St. George, Martyr, 23 Apr.) Deus tuorum militum 30
[Apr. 1581] Common of Apostles in Paschal Time (St. Mark, Apostle and Tristes erant apostoli 26
Evangelist, 25 Apr.)
20 Apr. 1581 Common of One Martyr in Paschal Time (St. George, Martyr, Deus tuorum militum 27
23 Apr.)
[Apr. 1581] Common of Many Martyrs in Paschal Time Rex gloriose martyrum 28
25 Apr. 1581 Ascension Jesu nostra redemptio 16
2 May 1581 Pentecost Veni creator spiritus 17
[May 1581] Corpus Christi Pange lingua gloriosi 18
13 June 1581 St. John Baptist (Nativity of St. John the Baptist, 24 June) Ut queant laxis 19
27 June 1581 Sts. Peter and Paul (29 June) Aurea luce 20
[June 1581] Conversion of St. Paul (Commemoration of St. Paul, 30 June) Doctor egregie Paule 21
18 July 1581 St. Mary Magdalene (22 July) Lauda mater ecclesia 22
[July 1581] St. Peters Chains (1 Aug.) Petrus beatus catenarum 23
[July 1581] Transfiguration (6 Aug.) Quicumque Christum quaeritis 24
23 Aug. 1581 Common of Many Martyrs Sanctorum meritis 31
[Aug.Sept. 1581] St. Michael (29 Sept.) Tibi Christe splendor Patris 25
25 Aug. 1581 Advent Conditor alme siderum 24
[26 Aug. 1581] Christmas Christe redemptor omnium/Ex Patre 25
27 Aug. 1581 Holy Innocents Salvete flores martyrum 26
29 Aug. 1581 Epiphany Hostis Herodes impie 27
Note:
a
Proposed date of a hymn not dated by Flori is enclosed in brackets.
before the feast for which it was appointed. The only exceptions to this pro-
cedure are the hymns for Advent (Conditor alme siderum), Christmas
(Christe redemptor omnium/Ex Patre), Holy Innocents (Salvete ores
martyrum), and Epiphany (Hostis Herodes impie). All of these hymns
are appointed for feasts in December and early January but were copied in
late August of 1581, the last hymns to be copied by Flori. Moreover, it is clear
from the table of feasts and hymns prepared by Flori for Mus. Ms. 55 that he
was keenly aware of the liturgical needs of the church year. Why, then, were
the hymns for Advent, Christmas, Holy Innocents, and Epiphany not
among the rst to be copied, in NovemberDecember 1580, so that they
would be available for use beginning with the new church year in December
1580? The answer can only be that Lasso had not yet composed them. Had
the cycle been composed in toto before copying began, Flori undoubtedly
would have copied the hymns strictly in church year order.
This anomaly in the order of copying suggests that Flori copied the
hymns only as they were given to him by Lasso. Therefore, the scribal chro-
nology likely reects Lassos compositional chronology rather closely. With
the exception of the hymns for Advent, Christmas, Holy Innocents, and
Epiphany, it would seem that Lasso composed the settings in church year
order, returning in August 1581 to the four hymns that, for some reason
(perhaps the press of musical duties during Advent and Christmas), he had
been unable to compose in NovemberDecember 1580, previous to their
appointed time in the liturgical calendar. Thus, the evidence of scribal
dating and the overall scribal chronology of Mus. Ms. 55 suggests that the
cycle was composed gradually between October 1580 and August 1581,
largely according to the needs of the liturgical calendar.
Lassos cycle of polyphonic Latin hymns provides some of the earliest evi-
dence that, in the rst year of his reign, Duke Wilhelm V was committed to
implementing Tridentine liturgical reforms at his court. The composition
and copying of the hymn cycle, extending from October 1580 to August
1581, predates the arrival in Munich of Walram Tumler, who in October
1581 came from the Jesuits German College in Rome to assist the Munich
court in observing Roman liturgical ceremonies more closely.
36
While
dani el zager
62
36
Regarding Tumler see Thomas D. Culley, Jesuits and Music: I: A Study of the
Musicians Connected with the German College in Rome During the 17th Century
Tumlers presence in Munich has long provided evidence of Wilhelms
desire for liturgical reform, it is clear that Tumlers arrival did not constitute
the initial catalyst for such change, which, given the chronology of Lassos
work on the hymn cycle, was already underway in 1580 (only one year after
Albrechts death in October 1579). Thus, Lassos composition of a hymn
cycle is motivated specically by post-Tridentine liturgical change at the
Munich court.
37
While Wilhelms decision to embrace Tridentine liturgical
reforms may be viewed in part as obedience to a papal decree regarding use
of the 1568 Breviarium Romanum, it was, more importantly, an explicit
means of identifying the Bavarian ducal court with its ultimate model the
papal court in Rome.
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63
and of Their Activities in Northern Europe, Sources and Studies for the History of
the Jesuits 2 (Rome: Jesuit Historical Institute, 1970), pp. 8992; Leuchtmann,
Leben, pp. 18990; and Crook, Orlando di Lassos Imitation Magnicats,
pp. 3358.
37
This collection did not originate, as Boetticher, Lasso, p. 648, has suggested,
from a vague unknown, exterior cause: Mag auch ein fremder uerer Anla
den Meister gentigt haben, sein Hymnarium 1581 zu entwerfen. . . . In
attempting to establish the stimulus for Lassos hymn cycle, Boetticher, Lasso,
p. 649, omitted any reference to a direct liturgical stimulus, emphasizing instead
musical style change in accord with Tridentine aesthetic sensibilities.
4 The salon as marketplace in the 1550s: patrons
and collectors of Lassos secular music
donna g. cardamone
1
In 1555 the Flemish music printer, Tielman Susato, issued a miscel-
lany of Lassos works under two separate titles, the rst in French and the
second in Italian, resulting in an edition often referred to as the composers
Opus l. The Italian-titled issue, by far the more accurate of the two in
respect to text placement, was dedicated to Stefano Gentile, a prominent
merchant-banker in the Genoese nation of Antwerp.
2
This collective enter-
prise not only marked the debut of madrigals and villanelle in the Low
Countries, but it was the rst publication that Lasso authorized and cor-
rected in situ,
3
leaving the impression that he selected compositions from a
substantial repertory and meticulously edited them to satisfy a very partic-
ular patron and community of Italian readers whose interpretive styles he
knew well. Although Lassos dedicatory letter speaks eloquently to Gentiles
love of music, his patron had an equally strong passion for poetry as evinced
in various books dedicated to him by humanist scholars.
4
This combina-
64
1
Research support for this article was provided by the University of Minnesota,
CLA Scholar of the College Award. I am most grateful to Jane Bernstein, Jeanice
Brooks, Franca Camiz, and Mary Lewis for their advice on many points.
2
DOrlando di Lassus il primo libro dovesi contengono Madrigali, Vilanesche,
Canzoni francesi, e Motetti, a quattro voci (RISM 1555b). The French-titled issue
(RISM 1555a) includes the phrase faictz a la Nouvelle composition daucuns
dItalie.
3
Kristine K. Forney, Orlando di Lassos Opus 1: The Making and Marketing of
a Renaissance Music Book, Revue belge de musicologie, 3940 (19856), pp.
4551; Donna G. Cardamone and David L. Jackson, Multiple Formes and
Vertical Setting in Susatos First Edition of Lassuss Opus 1, Notes, 45 (1989),
pp. 234.
4
Saskia Willaert and Katrien Derden, Het mecenaat van de Genuese natie in
Antwerpen in de tweede helft van de 16de eeuw, Orlandus Lassus en Antwerpen
15541556 (Antwerp: Stad Antwerpen, 1994), pp. 524.
tion of interests suggests that Gentile vied with his compatriots for atten-
tion from the cultured elite by organizing festive social gatherings
enhanced by music and recitation of poetry. Indeed, the Venetian humanist
Gian Michele Bruto was struck by the spirit of competition among Genoese
merchants when recalling the hospitality he received in Antwerp during
1554 and 1555, the very period of time in which Lasso attracted Gentiles
patronage.
5
We know from Quickelbergs biography of Lasso that some of his
time in Antwerp was spent teaching music to the most illustrious,
learned, and noble persons by whom he came to be loved and richly
honored.
6
When interpreted in a broader context this remark means that
Lasso, an ambitious newcomer to a city known for its competitive private
spaces, won recognition in coteries of patrician dilettantes seeking
instruction in music, which they considered a worthy accomplishment. In
Antwerp it was natural that coteries devoted to the vernacular arts and pat-
terned on Italian models would formin the cosmopolitan merchant colo-
nies.
7
While these groups were generally described as accademie in
contemporary literature, only a few maintained membership lists and
formal statutes. The typical academy at mid-century in northern Europe
and Italy was an informal sodality of friends that met in a spacious home
with salons to accommodate conversations, banquets, and musical enter-
tainments. In academies focused almost exclusively on music, a maestro di
musica was appointed to teach and organize performances, while groups
with no special musical agenda hired an advisor as needed. Polished self-
presenters could advance up the social ladder as long as they met the
requirements of the privileged class that held and attended academies.
Since Lasso was amply endowed with the improvisatory wit expected in
such gatherings, one might imagine that he attracted invitations as a
the salon as marketplace i n the 1550s
65
5
Karel Bostoen, Italian Academies in Antwerp: Schiappalaria and Vander Noot
as Inventors for the Genoese Community, Italian Academies of the Sixteenth
Century (London: The Warburg Institute, 1995), p. 196.
6
Leuchtmann, Leben, pp. 298301.
7
Stefano Schiappalaria, writing in the 1570s, claimed that an Academy of the
Gioiosi was founded some years ago in Antwerp (Bostoen, Italian
Academies, p. 195). Some scholars have proposed that the Gioiosi ourished
about 15545, but its existence has never been veried.
favored guest rather than as mere entertainer or teacher. Under these
circumstances, he could mentor by example and stimulate coterie perfor-
mances as well.
8
An intriguing hint of coterie performance in Antwerp is found in
Lassos chromatic motet, Alma Nemes, which he may have composed at
Gentiles request to honor a female singer known as Nemes.
9
The nal
lines not only pay tribute to her extraordinary vocal powers, but they
allude to personal engagement with the composer himself, a capable
singer: Come, let your voice with which you make rivers stand still, sing a
melliuous new song with me (emphasis mine). Nemes was probably a
woman of high birth from Gentiles inner circle. Her pseudo-antique
name referring to Nemesis the nymph goddess of due enactment is
reminiscent of an academic tradition in which members took nicknames
that stress, by ironical paradox, some personal quality. In Lassos expres-
sive construction of Nemes, she is endowed with the positive attributes of
a divine enchantress and guratively entrusted with the responsibility of
transmitting music composed in the new manner of some Italians (see
note 2).
Bearing in mind that Lasso came to Antwerp in 1554 from Rome,
where the salon was the main marketplace for commerce in secular music, it
is understandable that he would initially display his talents in the homes of
merchants intent on increasing their status by supporting the fashionable
new music from Italy. Lassos success in attracting a Genoese benefactor
and supportive printer can be attributed in part to his ability to promote his
own interests by weaving intricate webs of relations, a strategy he had to
deploy in Roman high society where trust was rare and tful. His easy
accommodation to northern print culture stands in sharp contrast to the
conditions he faced in Rome where his music was widely transmitted in
manuscript, but published only after he left and then, it seems, without his
explicit consent. Thus my rst concern will be to reconstruct the mecha-
donna g. cardamone
66
8
In the German version of Quickelbergs biography, Lasso taught (lernt) music,
but in the Latin version the analogous word is excitavit meaning to stimulate
interest.
9
In the dedication to his Opus l, Lasso disclosed that he conceived some of the
compositions in Antwerp: I give to print, my magnicent and honored Signor,
a part of my eorts composed in Antwerp after returning from Rome... . Alma
nemes appears at the end of the book paired with Rores chromatic motet,
Calami sonum ferentes.
nisms of artistic exchange in Roman salons and to situate Lasso in relation
to the individuals that traded on his name.
10
In pursuing this line of investi-
gation, I shall bring forward the multiple roles played by Roman editori and
printers in the initial stage of collecting and marketing Lassos music.
11
I
In 1555, the same year that Lasso assembled his rst opus in Antwerp,
Valerio Dorico compiled and printed an anthology of villanelle in Rome
with Lassos name displayed prominently on the title page: Villanelle
dOrlando di Lassus e daltri eccellenti musici libro secondo(RISM 1555
30
; the
rst book is lost). Yet Dorico failed to indicate which villanelle were com-
posed by Lasso or to supply any attributions whatsoever. At rst glance this
anthology appears to be a surreptitious form of commercial exploitation in
which Dorico appropriated Lassos name in absentia and without permis-
sion. However, when it is viewed in the context of normative modes of
transmission and textual production in urban salon culture, a richly tex-
tured picture of creative exchange emerges from which Lasso stood indi-
rectly to benet.
Throughout the sixteenth century the various genres of Italian
secular music thrived in salons where creative individuals gathered to
discuss one anothers works and to circulate them in manuscript before
they were printed.
12
In this poetics of group improvisation, writers were
positioned, together with composers, as readers and producers simultane-
ously.
13
Their readers, in turn, understood that they were alluding to, com-
menting upon or reworking other compositions the same principles of
imitatio often observed by Lasso and his contemporaries when producing
67
10
I owe the concept of the urban salon as marketplace to Martha Feldman, City
Culture and the Madrigal at Venice (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1995), pp. 212.
11
On the growth of collecting and its eects, see Mary S. Lewis, Manuscripts and
Printed Music in the World of Patrons and Collectors, Atti del XIV congresso
della Societ Internazionale di Musicologia: Trasmissione e recezione delle forme di
cultura musicale, vol. 1, Round Tables (Turin: Edizioni di Torino, 1990), pp.
3205.
12
On these activities in the Roman palace of the Altoviti family, where Lasso
resided in 1551, see my article, Orlando di Lasso and Pro-French Factions in
Rome, Orlandus Lassus and his Time, pp. 312.
13
Ann Rosalind Jones, The Currency of Eros: Womens Love Lyric in Europe,
15401620 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 3.
madrigals and villanelle. In this milieu copies of recent compositions were
casually handed around, individually or in sets, becoming the property of
whoever wanted to keep or publish them. Modes of production depended
in large measure upon the social standing of participants and their attitude
toward print culture. For example, the work of an exclusive aristocratic
salon would often be collected in manuscript albums, because some
members of the feudal nobility (the old knightly class) considered print
beneath their station, desiring scripted fame instead. In contrast, the work
of a salon open to diverse social classes and professional aliations was
often published in a group-authored volume, sometimes without the
consent or knowledge of participants.
Now Doricos anthology undoubtedly represents the work of a
diverse group in which he, enabled by uid social conventions, operated as
an insider. The tone of his dedicatory letter is remarkably direct and ami-
cable, conrming knowledge of his patrons habits and taste:
To the generous M. Francesco Guidobono. Here for you, dear M. Francesco,
is an array of choice villanelle by which charming and graceful
shepherdesses come to venerate your exquisite noble intellect, being
portents of the future in which that intellect will be just as illustrious and
splendid as providential for this worthy and excellent art of music. So
welcome these villanelle agreeably, and while amusing yourself with them
sometimes, be reminded of someone who cares about you. In your service,
Valerio Dorico.
14
[Giovan] Francesco Guidobono II (b. 1544) was the son of Nicola
Guidobono di Giovan Francesco, scion of a prominent noble family from
Tortona (then in the state of Milan). By age ten Francesco had been pro-
vided with a major benece and sent to Rome to prepare for an ecclesiastical
career, having already taken minor orders.
15
Notarial records describe him
as a cleric and abbot in commendamof the monastery of S. Paolo outside the
donna g. cardamone
68
14
For the original dedication, see Suzanne G. Cusick, Valerio Dorico, Music Printer
in Sixteenth-Century Rome (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981), p. 186.
15
Under canon law the recipient of ordination had to have a means of support
such as a benece or private income, and he must have attained the appropriate
age, about seven for rst tonsure and minor orders. Denys Hay, The Church in
Italy in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977),
p. 51.
walls of Tortona.
16
Francesco was able to reap the fruits of an ecclesiastical
oce in his home region (which in eect he never occupied) because his
uncle, Giovan Battista Guidobono, had compiled a distinguished record of
service to the Roman court as judge of the Rota.
17
Most likely the judge
maintained his own home in Rome and provided quarters for his protg.
18
Italian noblemen like the Guidobonos with lucrative appointments
usually came fromregions in which a cardinal held major beneces or had
been given administrative responsibilities. Their chances of attaining a bril-
liant career in the church increased with a cardinals protection and the
opportunity to acquire a benece vacated by a member of his household.
19
Thus far it has not beenpossibletoconnect Francescotoacardinal-protector,
69
16
Francesco was nominated for the benece in a constitutio dated 27 January 1554,
and described as discretus adolescens Jo. Franc.s Guidobonus Terdonen in
decimo etatis suo anno. Rome, Archivio di Stato, Notai Auditor Camerae, vol.
6164, fol. 121. Marginalia in records pertaining to the benece verify that he was
known informally as Francesco.
17
During the process of nomination, Francesco was granted license to take
possession of the benece without expedition of bulls and to derive its fruits.
On 26 October 1554 the judge ruled in favor of his nephew, omnes et singules
fructus (ibid., vol. 6166, fol. 312). Another document, dated 14 October 1556,
contradicts the temporary nature of the nomination with the title perpetual
commendator, that is for life: Johannes Franciscus Guidobonis clericus
Terdonen abbas perpetuus comm.e datarius abbatie Sancti Pauli prope et extra
muros Terdonens (ibid., vol. 6172, fol. 376). I am truly grateful to Franca Camiz
for discovering and sharing the content of all the documents relating to the
Guidobonos, which were recorded by the notary Reidettus.
18
In 1545 the Camera Capitolina met in secret to confer Roman citizenship on
huomini eccellenti et virtuosi et facultosi, among them Giovan Battista
Guidobono. Rome, Archivio Capitolino, Atti della Camera Capitolina,
credenzone, vol. 18, fols. 67. Francescos brother, Giovan Battista Guidobono
(namesake of the judge), served both Albrecht and Wilhelm of Bavaria and
fraternized with Lasso, although this friendship seems to have evolved
circumstantially, independent of any prior connection to the Guidobono family.
In a letter to Wilhelm (2 April 1576), Lasso tells of gambling with Giovan
Battista and winning handsomely. See Leuchtmann, Briefe, p. 181. On the details
of Giovan Battistas career (and that of his maternal uncle, Prospero Visconti,
who collected music for Albrecht), see Henri Simonsfeld, Mailnder Briefe zur
bayerischen und allgemeinen Geschichte des 16. Jahrhunderts, Abhandlungen
der historischen Classe der Kniglich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 22
(1902), pp. 48893.
19
Gigliola Fragnito, Cardinals Courts in Sixteenth-Century Rome, Journal of
Modern History, 65 (1993), p. 53.
although a logical person to consider would be the worldly-minded Ippolito
II dEste, Archbishop of Milan (with jurisdiction over Tortona)
20
and an
activesupporterof Romanmusicians throughout hiscareer.
Francesco Guidobono, too, believed that a necessary step in his social
ascent was to become a patron of music, which he undertook at the tender
age of eleven. But he must have been guided in this venture by his uncle,
whose enthusiasm for villanelle probably arose through contacts formed in
Naples. The elder Guidobono held the oce of Monsignor at the
Neapolitan church of the Santissima Annunziata in 1546, the same year in
which the choirmaster and poet-composer, Giovan Thomaso di Maio, pub-
lished a collection of canzoni villanesche and established the paradigm for
a metrical form in wide use until about 1565 (in Rome villanesche were
sometimes called villanelle). Two-thirds of the compositions in Doricos
anthology have this form (abb abb abb ccc), including the opening villa-
nella, which is unique among Roman anthologies in providing readers with
a context for understanding how the repertory at hand evolved.
This villanella is narrated by the leader of a group of improvisers pre-
paring to perform for an expectant audience. However, in the course of col-
laboration they experience some indecision, which the leader resolves by
pointedly invoking a fatherly gure:
1 Credo che sia meglio ca se risolvemo I think its better that we resolve
Farli sentire qualche villanella: To make them hear some villanelle:
Ors, dicimo questa e no di quella. Come on, lets recite one of this and
one of that.
2 Quanto tardiamo chi, chi ce facimo The more we delay, the more well
Rompere a quisto e quillo le cervelle: Bust our brains making this and
that:
one of that.
3 Non dubitate ca ci accordiamo, No doubt well come to an
agreement,
donna g. cardamone
70
20
Conrad Eubel, Hierarchia catholica medii et recentioris aevi (Regensburg:
Monasterii, 1923), vol. 3, p. 310. DEste resigned the archbishopric of Milan in
1550, but reserved collation of beneces until 1558. See Lucy Byatt, Este,
Ippolito d, Dizionario biograco degli italiani (Rome: Societ Graca Romana,
1993), vol. 43, p. 367. G. B. Guidobonos cardinal-protector was probably
Umberto de Gambara from Tortona (d. 1549).
Et saccio ca dirimo la chi bella: And I know that well recite the
most beautiful one:
one of that.
4 O che bregogna dir tante parole, Oh, what a shame to utter so many
words,
Ognun canta e dica quale vuole, Let each person sing and recite
what he likes,
Ca dun patre
a
tutte son gliole. Because all [villanelle] are
daughters of one father.
a
Neapolitan dialect for padre.
This keynote villanella recalls a custom practiced two decades
earlier in Roman literary academies and institutionalized by the Accademia
della Virt. Every week during the carnival season the membership selected
a person with attributes of a king to host a banquet at which his vassals
staged a competition in his honor featuring improvisation of original verse
to instrumental accompaniment.
21
Signicantly, some members of the
Virt referred to themselves as padri, even after the academy had folded.
Although Monsignor Guidobonos name does not appear in documents
pertaining to this academy or its successors, it is still plausible that he and
his friend Annibal Caro,
22
one of the original Virtuosi, kept the tradition of
competitive improvising alive in Rome. Clearly the opening villanella of
Francescos anthology is a thematic device intended to draw attention to an
extemporaneous activity that thrived under Guidobono patronage. Thus
some readers might have understood the Monsignor as the patreand host
of competitions from which a repertory of choicevillanelle descended. At
the center of this activity, however, is the leader, to be construed as Lasso
because his name stands out on the title page in the company of other
excellent musicians.
There remains the possibility that the anthology was commissioned
shortly after Lasso left Rome in retrospective recognition of contributions
71
21
Michele Maylender, Storia delle accademie dItalia (Bologna: Licinio Cappelli,
1930), vol. 5, pp. 4667 and 47880.
22
Caros friendship with Guidobono is disclosed in a letter of 31 December 1546.
See Annibal Caro: Lettere familiari, ed. Aulo Greco (Florence: Felice Le Monnier,
1959), vol. 2, p. 23.
he had made to the Guidobono household. Lassos previous history of
employment in aristocratic homes with young children and active musical
salons (dAzzia in Naples and Altoviti in Rome), combined with his stature
as choirmaster of the Lateran Church, suggests that he would have been an
ideal preceptor for Francesco and organizer of domestic entertainments as
well. In this hypothetical scenario the Guidobonos stood to inherit expend-
able copies of villanelle that Lasso and his cohorts created under informal
conditions solely for purposes of amusement. Published as trios for two
high voices and a tenor, they were well suited to performance by Francesco
and his adolescent friends or by an adult ensemble with the upper parts
taken by falsettists.
The most popular villanella in the anthology proved to be Voria che
tu cantas una canzona, a solmization piece subsequently reworked by six
dierent composers who may have believed that Lasso composed the
model (see Ex. 4.1).
23
Neither the usual musical puns on solmization syl-
lables nor inganni are present in the model, however. The humor resides
instead in the poem, which centers on the gurative meaning of cantare la
solfa(to copulate). Double meanings arise from verbal punning on the syl-
lables (sol fa/solfa, so la/sola, fa mi/fami) or from references to playing
upon instruments which, in popular song traditions, signify love-making.
Citation of the famous adage, la sol fa re mi (re), at the end of the nal
strophe provides a droll pun on Lassos name, which may have been inten-
tional.
1 Voria che tu cantas una canzona, I would like you to sing a song,
Quando mi stai sonando la viola, While you are playing the viol for
me,
E che dicessi: fa mi la mi so la. And for you to say: fa mi la mi so la.
2 Voria lo basso far col violone, I would like to make the bass part
with the violone,
Tutto di contraponto alla spagnola, All of counterpoint in the Spanish
style,
3 Voria toccassi sempre di bordone, I would like you always to nger the
drone,
donna g. cardamone
72
23
Isabelle His, Les modles italiens de Claude Le Jeune, Revue de musicologie, 77
(1991), pp. 423.
73
Example 4.1: Anon., Voria che tu cantas una canzona, Villanelle dOrlando
di Lassus (Rome: V. Dorico, 1555), no. XV. Cantus from 1555 ed., tenor
from 1558 repr. (RISM 1558
16
, no. XVI), bass reconstructed
C
T
B
&
&
&
b
b
b
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
h =
w
Vo - -
w
Vo - -
w
Vo - -

ria che
.

ria che

ria che

tu can -

tu can -

tu can -

ta - s'u -

ta - s'u -

ta - s'u -

na can- zo -

na can - zo -

na can- zo -
.
.

na, Quan -
.
.
na, Quan -
.
.

na, Quan -
&
&
&
b
b
b
7

do mi stai so -

do mi stai so -

do mi stai so -

nan - do,

nan - do,

nan - do,

quando mi

quando mi

quando mi

stai so - nan- do

stai so - nan- do

stai so - nan- do

la vi -

la vi - - -

la vi -
w
o - - -
o -
w
o - - -
&
&
&
b
b
b
13
.
.
la, E

.
.
la, E

.
.
la, E

che di -

che di -

che di -

ces - si:

ces - si:

ces - si:
.

fa mi
.

fa mi
.

fa mi

la mi so

la mi

la mi so
&
&
&
b
b
b
.
.
.
.
.
.
18

la, fa mi

so la,

la, fa mi

la mi so

fa mi

la mi so

la, fa mi

la mi so

la, fa mi

la mi so

la, [mi so

la mi so
w
la.
w
la].
w
la.
Sonando sol re fa, non sol fa so la, Sounding sol re fa, not sol fa so la,
4 Chio cantaria per accordar con tene, Then I would sing to harmonize
with you,
Dolce conforto mio caro, mio bene, My sweet comfort, my dear beloved,
Tutta la notte: la sol fa re mi re. All night long: la sol fa re mi re.
Not surprisingly, a book lled with such clever songs invigorated the
market for villanelle and allowed Dorico to mobilize his business with a
reprint. Most likely he depended upon a generous subvention from the
Guidobono family for the rst edition, because the Roman market was not
strong enough to support independent sponsorship of publications by
music printers. By taking little nancial risk at the outset, Dorico would
have made a good return when he reprinted the anthology in 1558 (one of
two reprints in his single-impression annals).
24
Lassos gain, of course, was
not nancial but rather steady public exposure of his name. To clarify our
understanding of Lassos position in the Roman marketplace, it is helpful to
consider other types of nancial arrangements and methods of collecting
his music, especially those in which local editori played dening roles.
II
Like the struggling writers residing in Rome during the 1550s, young com-
posers faced a competitive environment in respect to attracting subsidies
for publications devoted exclusively to their works. Some may even have
preferred to promote themselves by circulating compositions informally in
hospitable salons or selling them to collectors and printers for a at fee
rather than risking their meager funds in temporary partnerships with
printers.
25
However, dedications to some madrigal books provide evidence
that a consequence of self-promotion could be publication without the
authors knowledge or consent, for example, Doricos unauthorized
edition of Montes rst book of ve-voice madrigals in 1554 (RISM
donna g. cardamone
74
24
The other one is Canzoni alla napolitana de diversi eccellentissimi autori
novamente ristampati, libro primo (RISM 1557
19
). The rst edition is lost.
25
Jane A. Bernstein, Financial Arrangements and the Role of Printer and
Composer in Sixteenth-Century Italian Music Printing, Acta musicologica, 63
(1991), pp. 502.
26
Brian Mann, The Secular Madrigals of Filippo di Monte, 15211603 (Ann Arbor:
UMI Research Press, 1983), p. 3.
M3327).
26
The dedication by the editore Giovanbattista Bruno to Cavalier
Honofrio Vigili, then caporione of Rome, discloses that Vigilis home was a
magnet for musicians, thus oering Bruno the opportunity to collect the
latest works by rising stars:
Most honored cavalier, this book justly and ttingly fullls the debt of my
devoted service, and similarly the obligation that this truly divine power of
music owes you today in Rome, as all the elegant spirits gathered regularly
in your home to enjoy the generous eects of your beautiful soul, will fully
testify.
27
Continuing, Bruno takes all the credit for bringing Montes madrigals
to light, just as he would do later in his dedication to Secondo libro delle Muse
a Cinque Voci, madrig. dOrlandus di Lassus (Rome: Antonio Barr, RISM
1557b). This time the enterprising collector positions himself in Spoleto
(Vigilis hometown), disclosing a location where copies of Lassos madri-
gals circulated as a set:
Finding myself a while ago in Spoleto, I happened by chance upon many
madrigals by Orlando di Lassus full of sweetness and art, which I held in
my possession for a long time, and because they are fruits of that most rare
talent, I am inclined by the requests of an innite number of discriminating
intellects to keep them hidden no longer.
28
Bruno also makes it clear that in the past he expended a great deal of
eort collecting music for his patron, Pier Francesco Ferrero, Bishop of
Vercelli. Moreover, he claims to be an intimate friend of Lasso, whom he
predicts will attain great fortuneunder Ferreros protection. If Bruno was
telling the truth, then under what circumstances would a friendly associa-
tion with Lasso evolve?
Inmid-centuryRometherewerenormallythreepartiestoanyprinting
contract: the printer, the editore or guarantor of nancial support, and the
author or his agent, often a friend.
29
Financial arrangements made for the
publicationof musicbookswereoftenmorecomplicatedandeditori, inpar-
ticular, assumed multiple roles. For instance, Bruno was a collector who
75
27
For the original dedication, see Cusick, Valerio Dorico, p. 183.
28
For the original dedication, see SW, vol. 2, pp. xviixviii.
29
Cusick, Valerio Dorico, pp. 934, summarizes the general practice which is
consistent with the few contracts for printing music that have survived. See also
Bernstein, Financial Arrangements, passim.
found silent partners in Vigili and Ferrero, and it is conceivable that he
formedliaisons withcomposers as well. Inspring1554, whenLassorealized
hewouldhavetoleaveRomehurriedlytovisit his ailingparents, hemayhave
approachedBrunoknowing that he made a habit of attending salons where
his music circulated in manuscript copies. If all the copies could not be
retrieved before departing which is plausible then Lasso might have
authorizedBrunotoroundthemupandndasupportivepatronandprinter.
There is, in fact, virtually no evidence that composers took pains to
keep their music out of the hands of editori, and it appears that Lasso
himself trusted the Venetian editore, Giulio Bonagiunta, to see his second
book of motets (RISM 1565c) through the press.
30
One wonders, then, if
Lassos initial foray into Venetian publishing the rst book of ve-part
madrigals was a calculated move on his part, masterminded by Bruno.
Issued by Gardano in 1555 (RISM 1555c, reprinted thirteen times between
1557 and 1586), this book was even more crucial to establishing Lassos
European reputation than Susatos miscellany. However, the circumstances
under which Gardano obtained the madrigals are puzzling. While claiming
to have printed them for the rst time, he does not provide the dedication
customarily found in a rst edition. No earlier edition has ever been
located, although a logical place of publication would have been Rome.
These circumstances leave open the possibility that by 1555 Bruno had col-
lected enough of Lassos ve-voice madrigals to ll two books, working
arduously for Ferrero as he disclosed in the dedication to the second book.
Moreover, he may have undercut Vigili by operating surreptitiously on his
turf for a wealthy bishop whom he described in the second book as mio
vero et unico Padrone.
31
Another Roman editore whom Lasso may have known was Francesco
donna g. cardamone
76
30
In the dedication Bonagiunta claims that Lasso generously gave him some
motets to use as he wished, for the editors own benet, which suggests that
Lasso was not yet nancially prepared to negotiate terms of publication for his
steadily growing repertory of motets. See CM, vol. 5, p. xi and Plate 2, which
includes a translation of the dedication.
31
Ferrero, from a powerful noble house in Piedmont, became cardinal in 1561
after serving as papal legate to the court of Philip II and as papal nuncio in
Venice. In 1556 he participated in Pope Paul IVs commission on reform and
may have met Bruno in Rome at that time. See Alessandro Gnavi, Ferrero, Pier
Francesco, Dizionario biograco degli italiani (Rome: Societ Graca Romana,
1997), vol. 47, p. 35.
Tracetti. Evidently aware that the market value of Lassos madrigals was
rising in Italy, he acquired a set and published them in association with
Dorico: Il primo libro delli madrigali dOrlando di Lassus et altri eccellenti
musici a quattro voci (RISM 1560
18
).
32
Tracettis dedication to cardinal
Louis I de Guise, like Brunos to Ferrero, leaves the distinct impression that
he sought to polish Lassos image as well as to increase his own status in
curial circles:
To the Illustrious and most Reverend Signor, Monsignor, Cardinal Guise.
Having brought together certain madrigals by Orlando di Lassus, and
desiring that such a sweet concept be made known to the world by bringing
them to light, I thought it would be proper to dedicate them to you, most
Illustrious and Reverend Signor, for two reasons. First, I believe that all
beautiful and virtuous works should be dedicated to you, because you
encourage and support virtuous artists. Second, because by bringing them
out under the name of such a kind, courteous, and generous Signor, they
will be seen, read, and sung by virtuous persons with so much more
pleasure. Therefore most Illustrious Signor, deign to accept my very humble
gift as a token of the faithful service and devotion that I bring you, and
retain me for the most humble and devoted servant that I am, and in
kissing your honorable hand, I pray that God may grant you all the
happiness you desire. Rome, 15 January 1560 [recte 1561]. Most humble
and devoted servant, Francesco Tracetti.
33
The extent of Tracettis connection to cardinal de Guise is not known,
although it is conceivable that he operated as an agent to further the inter-
ests of the culturally ambitious Guise family, whose patronage of artists and
musicians from Rome increased steadily during the 1550s.
34
If he is identi-
77
32
Dorico reprints the seven madrigals that Lasso included in his Opus l, but in a
dierent order. Moreover, the quality of editorial correction is far inferior and
not at all typical of Doricos products (Cusick, Valerio Dorico, p. 87). Here is an
example of how sets of the same compositions circulated in dierent
geographical locations, the separately obtained copy in Rome in need of a
competent editor.
33
For the original dedication, see Cusick, Valerio Dorico, pp. 1945, and SW, vol.
8, p. vi. Cusick assumed the cardinal to be Charles de Guise, but after 1547
Charles was known as cardinal of Lorraine. His younger brother Louis took the
title cardinal de Guise upon his elevation in 1553.
34
Jeanice Brooks, Italy, the Ancient World and the French Musical Inheritance in
the Sixteenth Century: Arcadelt and Clereau in the Service of the Guises,
Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 121 (1996), pp. 14790.
cal to the Francesco Tracetti employed as a tenor in the choir at San Lorenzo
in Damaso (annexed to the Apostolic Chancery) from January 1564 to
December 1569, then he was ideally situated to pursue his interests in col-
lecting music.
35
His name surfaces later in notarial records where he is
described as gallus belgicusand father of two musical sons, one of consid-
erable means.
36
Most of the persons responsible for collecting Lassos compositions
and bringing them to light lived in adjacent districts in the heart of
Renaissance Rome. The printers, Barr and Dorico, operated their presses
in S. Angelo, the district that Vigili represented. Clearly well positioned to
build informal neighborhood networks upon pragmatic interests, they
looked for social denition by establishing ties with local ocials like
Vigili.
37
In Rome class boundaries between artisans, bureaucrats, and cour-
tiers were vague and easily traversed, resulting in strongly felt connections
between persons of diverse occupations with shared values, including the
two music printers who were not mere artisans, but well-educated men.
This explains the ease with which Barr, a French priest, entered Vigilis
circle shortly after he arrived in Rome.
38
Before turning printer in 1555,
donna g. cardamone
78
35
Luca Della Libera, Lattivit musicale nella basilica di S. Lorenzo in Damaso nel
Cinquecento, Rivista italiana di musicologia, 32 (1997), p. 56.
36
In 1580 Tracettis son Lorenzo presented his bride with 200 gold scudi and many
precious jewels. Lorenzo was a lutenist whose estate, passing to his father upon
premature death, consisted of several plucked string instruments, a
clavicembalo, eleven books of intabulations and partbooks for compositions in
ve voices the makings of a well-equipped musical salon. Vera Vita Spagnuolo,
Gli atti notarili dellArchivio di Stato di Roma: Saggio di spoglio sistematico,
lanno 1590, La musica a Roma attraverso le fonti darchivio: Atti del Convegno
Internazionale Roma 46 Giugno 1992, ed. Bianca Maria Antolini et al. (Lucca:
Libreria Musicale Italiana, 1994), pp. 26, 412.
37
Barr dedicated his rst book of four-voice madrigals (1552, RISM B951) to
Vigili as well as the rst music book that he printed: Primo libro delle muse a
cinque voci (RISM 1555
26
). See John Steele, Antonio Barr: Madrigalist,
Anthologist and Publisher in Rome Some Preliminary Findings, Altro Polo:
Essays on Italian Music in the Cinquecento, ed. Richard Charteris (Sydney:
Frederick May Foundation for Italian Studies, 1990), pp. 923.
38
Barr is named as Dominus Antonius Bari in a contract to print Eliseo
Ghibellinis Introitus missarum (1564). See Gian Ludovico Masetti-Zannini,
Stampatori e librai a Roma nella seconda met del Cinquecento: Documenti inediti
(Rome: Fratelli Palombi Editori, 1980), p. 226. Barr may have been related to
the De La Barre family, whose most illustrious member was Antonius De La
Barr had been active both as composer and singer in the Cappella Giulia,
forming contacts and developing the instincts he needed to function as
anthologist. Flexible modes of transmission in Roman salons allowed Barr
to validate his method of gathering music by inferring that composers
acted irresponsibly. Nowhere is Barr more explicit than in the dedication
to his Terzo libro delle Muse (RISM 1562
7
, an anthology containing three
previously unpublished madrigals by Lasso), when he asserts that the
works would have almost perished through the negligence of their
masters, had it not been for his diligent eorts in recovering them.
39
In
bringing out Lassos third book of madrigals for ve voices (RISM 1563c),
Barr covered his tracks by exclaiming how gratifying the composers works
were for musicians and everybody else.
40
To summarize thus far, Lassos madrigals were continuously collected
in Rome and environs for almost a decade after his departure, a process he
appears to have set in motion by allowing copies of his works to circulate in
musical salons. If Lasso actually trusted Bruno to negotiate terms of publi-
cation, without risking his own funds, then he sacriced very little for the
sake of increasing his reputation in Italy. But these are only attractive specu-
lations. More demonstrable is the way in which Roman salon culture was
animated by the inux of musicians from the kingdom of Naples. In
turning to explore this matter, I shall stress reception of the Neapolitan
genres Lasso and his companions cultivated while in Rome, contributing to
the formation of a musical axis that ultimately extended to France.
III
Nestled among the villanelle in Guidobonos book is a pair of Neapolitan
arie in the proposta-risposta form so appealing to improvisers. The protag-
onists are aristocratic lovers lamenting their separation by political exile,
79
Barre I, appointed Archbishop of Tours in 1528. See Gallia christiana in
provincias ecclesiasticus distributa, ed. Bartolomaeus Haurau (Paris: Firmin
Didot, 1856), vol. 14, col. 133.
39
Emil Vogel, Biblioteca della musica vocale italiana di genere profano, con aggiunti
del Professore Alfred Einstein (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1972), vol. 2,
p. 656. The anthology is dedicated to Innico Piccolomini, Duke of Amal, then
living in exile in Rome. See Scipione Ammirato, Delle famiglie nobili napoletane
(Florence: Amadore Massi da Furl, 1651), parte seconda, pp. 2734.
40
Il Nuovo Vogel: Bibliograa della musica italiana vocale profana pubblicata dal
1500 al 1700 (Pomezia-Geneva: Staderini-Minko, 1977), vol. 1, p. 905.
yet poignantly holding out hope for a reunion in the homeland. These arie
came to be popularly associated with the Prince and Princess of Salerno,
who attracted public attention in 1552 when the prince was banished from
the kingdom of Naples for defecting to France. The widespread oral trans-
mission of the lyrics in variant forms as canzoni da cantare suggests that key
gures in their continual re-creation were musical exiles, among them
Salerno and his familiar, the famous lute-singer Don Luigi Dentice. Dentice
and Salerno were scheming with the French to liberate the kingdom of
Naples from Spanish occupation and therefore motivated to promote arie
in a picturesque dialect that for partisans, at least, signied Neapolitan
autonomy. Since the arie surfaced rst in Rome where Dentice (with his
teenage son Fabrizio, a precocious improviser) was stationed to promote
solidarity among Neapolitan fuorisciti, then the Dentices might be consid-
ered prime transmitters, if not creators, of songs conceived to carry a con-
soling message.
41
A natural venue for the Dentices would have been an
aristocratic salon receptive to improvisers and French partisans, which
points toward the Guidobonos, whose commission brought the arie to
light. (The likelihood that the Guidobonos were pro-French is increased by
the familys loyalty to Christine of Lorraine, whose citt dotale was
Tortona.
42
) Of all the hypotheses that could be advanced to explain the
sudden appeal of high-pitched Neapolitan songs in Rome, the most com-
pelling would be an intersection between Lasso (a tenor) and the Dentices
(falsettists) in a salon devoted to the vernacular arts.
Yet another explanation is oered by a theory of reception that postu-
lates a direct, immediate relationship between textual signals and hori-
zons of expectation in the experience of readers. During the 1550s their
imaginations were bound to be aected by the escalating struggle between
France and Spain, which generated rival factions in the Roman courts and
donna g. cardamone
80
41
This argument is advanced in my article, The Prince of Salerno and the
Dynamics of Oral Transmission in Songs of Political Exile, Acta musicologica,
67 (1995), pp. 77108, including modern editions of the arie.
42
On Christines relations with France and struggle to maintain control over
Tortona, given to her upon her rst marriage to Francesco Sforza II of Milan, see
Simonsfeld, Mailnder Briefe, pp. 54152. Francesco Guidobono became
Christines captain of the guard in 1565, having forsaken an ecclesiastical career to
marry. See Vittorio Spreti, Guidobono Cavalchini Garofoli, Enciclopedia storico-
nobiliare italiana (repr. Milan: Archetipograa di Milano, 1930), vol. 3, p. 643.
increased subversive actions in cadres of exiled Neapolitan noblemen.
Canzoni saturated with Neapolitan dialect and parallel fths would quite
naturally provoke diverse and contrasting responses, depending upon
ones political inclination. Furthermore, the ravages and massacres com-
mitted by the Turks, then allies of the French, caused widespread conster-
nation, and feverish preparations were made to fortify seaports throughout
central and southern Italy. Nowhere was strategic planning to contain
Ottoman advances more urgent than in Rome, where it was felt that the
popes, as spiritual heads of the respublica christiana, should assume leader-
ship for repulsing the indels made fanatically loyal to Islam and the
Sultan.
43
With this background it is hardly surprising that Barr would
sense a developing market for canzoni moresche, which are musical paro-
dies of Muslim slaves, and readily obtain patronal support for their printed
debut in Rome: Secondo libro delle muse a tre voci canzoni moresche di diversi
aut. novamente raccolte et poste in luce (1555).
Barrs dedicatory letter to Molto Mag. M. Francesco De La Mola
reveals that his patron was an amateur musician or at least interested in
music:
Knowing that among your Lordships virtuous activities, music is the most
pleasing, and because these charming and beautiful canzoni moresche
recently came my way by chance, never having been published, I wanted to
bring them to light under your name so that you (together with your
friends) might enjoy them.
44
From Barrs salutation, we can surmise that his patron was an unti-
tled member of the nobility, taking his name from the place where he
resided or where his family held efs, that is, Mola, a seaport on the Adriatic
in Terra di Bari. Mola was one of the few provincial cities in the kingdom of
Naples with a musical academy, founded by Gasparro Toraldo, third
marquis of Mola and Polignano.
45
When he died impoverished in 1551, his
81
43
On the Turkish peril and its inuence on the policies of the imperial powers,
France, Spain, and the Ottoman Empire, see Charles L. Stinger, The Renaissance
in Rome (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), pp. 10623.
44
For the original dedication, see Luigi Werner, Una rarit musicale della
Biblioteca Vescovile di Szombathely, Note darchivio, 8 (1931), pp. 1023.
Barrs anthology is not listed in RISM.
45
Scipione Ammirato, Delle famiglie nobili napoletane (Florence: G. Marescotti,
1580), vol. 2, p. 71.
lands (but not his title) were promptly sold to Giovan Francesco Carafa di
Stigliano;
46
however, in 1554 Polignano reverted to Gasparros wife Maria
Piccolomini so that she could establish a dowry for her eldest daughter,
Anna, betrothed to Carafa.
47
Since no member of this branch of the Toraldo
family living in 1555 bore the name Francesco, it is conceivable that Carafa
then holding the ef of Mola was Barrs patron. Like many other
persons named Giovan Francesco, he may have been familiarly known as
Francesco.
The continual presence of the formidable Ottoman eet in the
eastern Mediterranean presented a real threat to coastal towns such as
Mola, and the ruling families invigorated by Spanish power stood ready
to repulse the aggressors, as in 1555 when the Turks raided and plundered
towns from Naples to Mola, reputedly carrying o more than 4,000
persons.
48
Throughout the sixteenth century the struggle for supremacy of
power led to a brisk trade in slaves on both sides.
49
Moors, then broadly
dened as Muslims or narrowly as inhabitants of the Barbary coast, often
ended up as servants in noble households. In Rome, for example, they were
valued as exotica, yet subject to perpetual servitude by their masters.
50
Thus
in Francesco De La Molas frame of reception, the performance of morescas
could lead to vicarious reveling in the debasement of comic subjects as well
as reinforcing feelings of superiority.
Typically the opening gesture of a moresca sets the scene for a sere-
nade and then continues with episodes of singing and dancing which, in
context, would have been read as metaphors for love-making. Of the nine
morescas in Barrs anthology, Tiche toche is by far the most clever in
respect to musical and sexual puns (see Ex. 4.2). Like Voria che tu cantas
donna g. cardamone
82
46
Maria Luisa Capograssi, Due secoli di successioni feudali registrati nei cedolari
di Terra di Bari, Rivista del Collegio Araldico, 54 (1956), p. 194.
47
Pompeo Litta, Famiglie celebri italiane, 2nd series (Naples: Richter, 1911), s.v.
Toraldo di Napoli, plate 3.
48
Biblioteca Vaticana, Cod. Urb. Lat. 1038, fol. 76v (Avvisi di Roma, 13 July 1555).
49
Signicantly, in 1555 Barr published a best-selling book about persecution of
Christian slaves in the Ottoman Empire. See Steele, Antonio Barr, pp. 912.
50
In Rome Capitoline ocials could manumit baptised slaves who claimed
sanctuary in their oces. But Roman nobles, in deance of authority, still tried
to hold them in servitude. In 1546 Paul III was successfully petitioned to decree
that Romans could keep their slaves in perpetuity. Pio Pecchiai, Roma nel
Cinquecento (Bologna: Licinio Cappelli, 1948), pp. 37180.
83
Example 4.2: Anon., Tiche toche, Li quattro libri delle villotte alla
napolitana a tre voci de diversi eccellentissimi auttori con due moresche,
nuovamente ristampati (Venice: G. Scotto, RISM 1565
11
), pp. 756. First
printed in Barrs anthology of 1555, of which only the bass is extant.
C
T
B
&
V
?
4
2
4
2
4
2
1
O
c
= h

Ti- che toche,

Ti- che toche,

Ti- che toche,

ti - che toch,

ti - che toch,

ti - che toch,

tiche toche,

tiche toche,

tiche toche,

ti - che toch,

ti - che toch,

ti - che toch,

ti - che toch.

ti - che toch.

ti - che toch.
j

O Pa - ta -
J

O Pa - ta -
J

O Pa - ta -

le- na zoia

le- na zoia

le- na zoia
&
V
?
8

mi - a,
#

mi - a,

mi - a,
.
A - pri
.
J
A - pri
.
A - pri

por - ta Car -

por - ta Car -
b

por - ta Car -

ciof - fa - la

ciof - fa - la

ciof - fa - la

tu - a.

tu - a.

tu - a.
A - pri
A - pri
A - pri

pres - sa, cu -

b
pres - sa, cu -
b

pres - sa, cu -
&
V
?
4
3
4
3
4
3
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
3
4
3
4
3
-
-
-
15

la mi -

J
#
la mi -
b

la mi -
a,
a,
a,
h
= h k

Se voi

Se voi

Se voi

sen - ta

sen - ta
b

sen - ta

mau - ti -

mau - ti -
b

mau - ti -
h k = h
na -
na -
na -
h = h.
ta.
ta.
ta.
&
V
?
4
3
4
3
4
3
4
2
4
2
4
2
22

Gen - te

Gen - te

Gen - te

ni - gra

ni - gra
b

ni - gra

bo can -

bo can -
b

bo can -
h k = h
ta -
ta -
ta -
ta:
ta:
ta:

La sol

La

fa re mi,

sol fa re

La
donna g. cardamone
84
&
V
?
29

[la

mi,

sol fa re

sol fa re

[la sol

mi,

mi,]

fa re mi,]

la sol

la sol

la

fa re mi,

fa re mi,

sol fa re
mi,
la,

j
Ut

Ut re mi
&
V
?
36

re mi fa sol

Ut re mi

fa sol la, ut
la, ut

fa sol

re mi

re mi
la, ut

fa sol

fa sol

re mi
la, ut
la, ut

fa sol

re mi

re mi
.
J
la, sol

fa sol

fa sol

la mi

ut sol
&
V
?
4
3
4
3
4
3
43
la. Ni
fa. Ni
ut. Ni

ma- chi- da gi -

ma- chi- da gi -

ma- chi- da gi -

na- ca- che, ni

na- ca- che, ni

na- ca- che, ni

ma- chi- da gi -

ma- chi- da gi -

ma- chi- da gi -

h
3
na - ca- che.

na - ca- che.

na - ca- che.
= h k

Se

Se

Se

tu voi

tu voi

tu voi
&
V
?
4
2
4
2
4
2
50
h k
be - n'a

be - n'a

be - n'a
= h
c
me,
me,
me,
.
Cac - cia
.
J
Cac - cia
.
Cac - cia

ca- p'a 'sa per -

ca- p'a 'sa per -

ca- p'a 'sa per -

tu - sa,

tu - sa,

tu - sa,
Sen - ti
Sen - ti
Sen - ti

bel - la canta -

bel - la canta -

bel - la canta -
85
&
V
?
57

ra - ta:

ra - ta:

ra - ta:

Ut

Ut re

re mi

mi fa

fa sol

sol la,

Mi

la, Mi

ut

fa ut

fa sol

re mi

re mi

la re

fa sol

fa sol
&
V
?
64
mi.
la.
ut.

U- na, doi, e

U- na, doi, e

U- na, doi, e
tre, La,

tre, Fa,
tre, Fa,

la sol la,

fa mi fa,

fa sol fa,
j

Fa, fa mi

#
sol, sol fa
J

re, re la

re,

sol,

re,
&
V
?
71
Ut

re mi

Ut

fa sol

Ut

re mi

la, ut

re mi

fa sol

re mi

fa sol

la, ut

fa sol

la, ut

re mi
la.

re mi fa sol
fa.
&
V
?
4
3
4
3
4
3
78
j

Ca- lia,
la. Ca -

J
Ca -
j

ca - lia

lia tau -

lia tau -

tau - za
za ci -
za ci -
j

ci - lum
J
lum ce -
lum ce -
j

ce- lum- di -
.
lum - di -
.
lum - di -
h
3
ni.
ni.
ni.
= h k
.
j

Par - mi- ni,
.
J

Par - mi- ni,
.
J

Par - mi- ni,
una canzona(Ex. 4.1), it plays on the gurative meaning of cantar la solfa
and quotes the motive La sol fa re mi with a solmization pun on the syl-
lables, perhaps a humorous reference to Lasso.
51
donna g. cardamone
86
51
This motive was Fabrizio Dentices trademark and he frequently used it as the
subject of ricercari. For examples, see Dinko Fabris, Vita e opere di Fabrizio
Dentice, nobile napoletano, compositore del secondo Cinquecento, Studi
musicali, 21 (1992), pp. 925. Lassos musical signature utilized the pitches La
sol (Leuchtmann, Briefe, p. 197).
&
V
?
4
2
4
2
4
2
85
.
j
h k =
par - mi- ni
.
J

par - mi- ni
.
J

par - mi- ni
h
c
.
zor - fa -
.
J
zor - fa -
.
zor - fa -

na - ta,
#

na - ta,

na - ta,
Cia mu -

sa - ta,
j

lic - ca pi -
J

lic - ca pi -
J

lic - ca pi -

gna - ta,

gna- ta,

gna - ta,
&
V
?
92
j

Cu- la paz -

zu - ta,
j

musa cac -
J

musa cac -
J

musa cac -

ca - ta:

ca - ta:

ca - ta:
Ut
Ut

re mi

re mi

Ut

fa sol

fa sol

re mi

la, ut
&
V
?
100

la, ut re mi

fa sol la, ut

re mi fa sol

fa sol la, ut

re mi fa sol

la, ut re mi

re mi

la, ut

fa sol

fa sol

re mi
la, Ut
la, ut

fa sol

re mi

re mi
.
J
la, sol

fa sol

fa sol

la mi

ut sol
U
U
U
la.
fa.
ut.
4
Tiche toche, tichi toch. Ticky tocky, ticky tock.
O Patalena zoia
a
mia, Oh Patalena my joy,
Apri porta Carcioala
b
tua. Open the door to your Carcioala.
Apri pressa, cula
c
mia, Hurry up, open right now my rump,
Se voi senta mautinata. If you want to hear a morning song.
Gente nigra bo cantata: The black man is going to sing:
La sol fa re mi, La sol fa re mi,
Ut re mi fa sol la. Ut re mi fa sol la.
Ni machida ginacache. [Moorish jargon]
Se tu voi ben a me, If you love me,
Caccia
d
cap a sa pertusa, Put your head to this hole,
Senti bella cantarata: Listen to the nice singing:
Ut re mi fa sol la, Ut re mi fa sol la,
Mi fa sol la re mi. Mi fa sol la re mi.
Una, doi, e tre, One, two, and three,
La, la sol la,
e
La, la sol la,
Fa, fa mi re, Fa, fa mi re,
Calia tauza cilum celumdini. [Moorish jargon]
Parmini zorfanata,
f
Tell me about it in solfa,
cia musata, licca pignata,
g
hungry mouth, glutton,
Cula pazzuta, musa caccata: Crazed ass, lthy mug:
a
Venetian dialect for gioia, an example of editorial intervention.
b
Carciofolo, an obsolete form of carciofo, metaphor for phallus. A gurative
meaning in Neapolitan dialect is big, deformed nose. Carcioala and Patalena
(corpulent person) are aectionate nicknames.
c
Moorish slang for culo.
d
Metaphor for copulation. See Jean Toscan, Le carnaval du langage. Le lexique
erotique des potes de lequivoque de Burchiello Marino (XVeXVIIe sicles)
(Lille: Universit de Lille, 1981), vol. 4, p. 1672.
e
These syllables are sung by the cantus; tenor and bass have dierent syllables
corresponding to their pitches.
f
Neapolitan dialect for solmizing; another meaning is to repeat oneself
continually (ibid., 1674).
g
Female pudenda, metaphorically (ibid., 1732).
Given casual patterns in the circulation of Neapolitan genres in
Rome, it is safe to assume that Barr collected copies of morescas by
working circles previously inhabited by Lasso and his cohorts. Proof of
87
Lassos direct access to the Roman repertory is found in his Libro de villa-
nelle, moresche, et altre canzoni (RISM 1581g), which contains reworkings
of six morescas in Barrs anthology. Lassos predilection for Neapolitan
texts riddled with sexual puns is well known through his many reworkings
of canzoni villanesche by Gian Domenico da Nola, a singer, poet, and com-
poser from Naples. Both Nola and Lasso have been proposed as composers
of the morescas in Barrs anthology, and there is some support for the
notion that they met in Rome and launched the genre together. Nola cannot
be traced in Naples between 1547 and 1563; however, his madrigals circu-
lated in Rome where he probably ed for fear of being found guilty by asso-
ciation with leaders of the uprisings against Viceroy Toledo in 1547, among
them Luigi Dentice.
52
The re-use of textual phrases and musical motives in morescas
collected in Rome attests to production by an intimate circle of poet-
composers practiced in intertextual allusion and citation. Indeed, attribut-
ing the morescas in this repertory to any one person is dicult because the
style is remarkably uniform, suggesting group improvisation.
53
Of all the
Neapolitan genres, morescas are the most theatrical in content and design,
being essentially miniature comic skits. Therefore, they are likely to have
originated in artistic collectives comprised of musicians with a air for
comedic routines, bringing to mind Lasso (whose familiarity with the
broad tradition of Italian comedy is well known) and the Dentices, who had
doubled as singing actors in comedies staged at the Prince of Salernos
palace. Had these compatible spirits met in Rome and formed an ad hoc
troupe specializing in vivacious genres of Neapolitan entertainment, then
they would have found in Nola the ideal person to stylize their improvisa-
tions in three-part arrangements for public consumption.
This study concludes by coming around to where it began, on the axis
between southern Italy and northern Europe, with an anthology of Barrs
commissioned by Olivier Le Crec, ordinary nuncio in Rome for Henry II of
France: Secondo libro delle muse a tre voci, Canzon villanesche alla napoli-
donna g. cardamone
88
52
On Nola, the Dentices, and other musical refugees likely to have relocated in the
Papal States after the uprisings, see my article, Orlando di Lasso and Pro-
French Factions in Rome, pp. 3841.
53
O Lucia miau miau is attributed to Lasso in Il terzo libro delle villotte alla
napoletana (Venice: Gardano, RISM 1560
14
), p. 42.
tana di nuovo raccolte e date in luce (RISM 1557
12
). In the salutation, Barr
describes Le Crec as the Abbot of Jovis, a Cistercian monastery located at
what is now Jouy le Chatel (Dept. Seine-et-Marne).
54
Barr may have
known Le Crec before their paths crossed in Rome, since he was raised in
Langres (Haute-Marne). Clearly he was aware of the distinguished clergy-
mans taste in music:
My most Reverend Signor, having collected some new villanelle in these hot
days, I wanted to bring them to light for the amusement of virtuous
persons, and knowing that beside your other talents how much you enjoy
music, I wanted to dedicate and oer them to you so that you may entertain
yourself with them some time and share them with your friends both here
and at your Majestys court, where I understand similarly pleasing
canzonette are valued for their charming and delightful qualities. Therefore,
Your Excellency, deign to accept them together with my aection, and also
make Monsignor of S. Martino enjoy them, so that even he, through Your
Excellency, may count me among his admirers, in whose grace I pray that
he may always hold me, promising that we will soon send him some others.
And oering myself to Your Excellency and to him, I kiss your hands.
Although the Monsignor remains unidentied, he is likely to have been
associated with St. Martin of Tours and a vital member of a clerical circle of
collectors that included Jean du Moulin (d. 1563), canon and cantor at Sens
Cathedral where Le Crec, too, was canon. At some point in their association,
du Moulin gave Le Crec the manuscript now known as the Copenhagen
Chansonnier, which conrms his interest in collecting music.
55
It appears as if Le Crec was sent to Rome following the invasion of the
Papal States by the Duke of Alba in August 1556, which inuenced Henry II
to decide in favor of an expedition to Naples. The community of Neapolitan
exiles in Rome rallied around the Prince of Salerno and Duke Franois de
Guise, both commanders in Henrys army. That Le Crec and his associates
in the French embassy would nd canzoni in the rustic dialect of Naples,
harmonized with parallel fths, amusing in the hot daysof summer 1557
89
54
Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music 14001550
(Neuhausen: Hnssler-Verlag, 1979), vol. 1, p. 163.
55
Knud Jeppesen, ed., Der Kopenhagener Chansonnier (Copenhagen: Levin &
Munksgaard, 1927), p. xxvii. I am deeply grateful to Paula Higgins for drawing
my attention to Le Crecs ownership of the Copenhagen Chansonnier.
is a clever allusion on Barrs part to a potentially mixed reception. Henry
had come to doubt the promise of Guises expedition, and there were vast
dierences of opinion among all concerned persons in Rome, including the
French diplomats present, about how to proceed.
56
Enthusiasm for villanesche alla napolitanaat Henrys court was due in
large part to the presence of Neapolitan exiles in the retinue of the Prince of
Salerno, who had been extended a warm welcome by Queen Catherine de
Medici. A captivating lutenist-singer, Salerno introduced Neapolitan songs
to the French court in 1544 and upon returning, he carried on a politicized
musical discourse centered on the pair of laments mentioned earlier.
However, credit for spreading Neapolitan songs beyond the court to the
clerical elite must be given to both Barr and Le Crec. All the canzoni Barr
collected are anonymous, yet similar in metrical form and content to those
in Guidobonos book. Quite likely they emanated from the same circle of
composers that formed around Lasso.
57
Following the Treaty of Cateau
Cambrsis in 1559, which resolved the conict between France and Spain,
the market for anthologies of Neapolitan songs dried up in Rome. The most
logical explanation for this turn of events would be the breaking up of
coteries sponsored by persons with a vested interest in Neapolitan genres,
and the dispersal of exiles and their supporters who had mobilized the
rustic idioms to reinforce dynastic claims.
donna g. cardamone
90
56
Frederic J. Baumgartner, Henry II, King of France 15471559 (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1988), pp. 1912.
57
Le Crecs book contains ve canzoni that enumerate the physical attributes of
courtesans, presumably resulting from group improvisation on a common
theme: O biancolella come gelsomino, O dolce pi che luva moscatella, O
faccia duna luna rotondella, O dolce saporita cianciosella, O occhi manza
mia cigli dorati (reworked by Lasso, Libro di Villanelle, 1581).
5 Lassos Standomi un giorno and the canzone in
the mid-sixteenth century
mary s. lewis
A new madrigal genre began to appear in Italian publications in the
mid-1540s, consisting of settings of entire multi-stanza poems, some with
as many as fourteen strophes. The genre came to be known collectively as
the canzone, although other multi-stanza poetic forms such as the sestina
andottava rima were also set. The genre had its rst ourishing in the 1540s,
but continued in popularity throughout the end of the century. Here I will
address some of the compositional problems and solutions resulting from
the composers decision to write in such a large-scale form, concentrating
on an early example of the genre by Lasso.
In 1557 Antonio Barr
1
published his Secondo libro delle muse, a
cinque voci, madrig. dOrlando di Lassus con una canzone del Petrarca (RISM
1557
22
=1557b), a collection devoted for the most part to works of Lasso not
previously published. Leading o the collection was Lassos setting of the
six stanzas of Petrarchs Standomi un giorno,a visionary poem which had
been set to music in its entirety only once before.
2
By 1557 Lasso had already
been away from Rome for at least two years. His music in Barrs anthology,
while published in Rome, appears not to be directly connected to the com-
posers sojourn there. In the volumes dedicatory letter its signator,
Giovanbattista Bruno, who styles himself one who knows the author well,
stated that he had come into possession of the pieces by Lasso many days
91
1
The orthography of the publishers name given here is the one he used himself.
See Maureen E. Buja, Antonio Barr and Music Printing in Mid-Sixteenth
Century Rome, Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina (1996).
2
It seems probable that Matteo Rampollinis setting predated Lassos, but see the
discussion of its publication below. A setting for four voices of the rst stanza
was printed in 1543 in Gardanos Secondo libro de li madrigali de diversi (RISM
1543
18
), where it was attributed to Jan Gero. In two subsequent editions (1549
30
and 1552
19
), Scotto attributed the work to Arcadelt.
ago in Spoleto.
3
How the music came to be in Spoleto we are not told, but
we must assume these pieces were composed by Lasso while he was still in
Italy, perhaps in Naples, and left behind when he traveled north.
Lassos Standomi un giornowas not the rst multi-stanza madrigal
that Barr printed, and even those he published earlier had been preceded
by examples in Venetian publications. Barrs Primo libro delle muse a
quattro voci madrigali ariosi (RISM 1555
27
) included his own setting of four
stanzas from Ariosto, Dunque a ver dicea, and his ve-stanza madrigal
on Francesco Bellanos Sorgi superbo, as well as a three-stanza madrigal
by Lupachino,Occhi leggiadri amorosette gravi.Another of Barrs pub-
lications of that year, the Primo libro delle muse a cinque voci (RISM 1555
26
),
is made up almost entirely of canzone, including works by Arcadelt, Ruo,
Jachet Berchem, and Barr.
4
Multi-movement madrigals had appeared sporadically during the
1540s. The earliest tobe publishedwas probably Jachet BerchemsAla dol-
combra de la belle frondi, included in Donis Dialogo of 1544 (RISM
1544
22
). The participants in the Dialogo seemnot to have been surprised to
nd an entire sestina set to music. There is no sense of novelty; conversa-
tion centers around some mistakes in the music.
5
The singer who intro-
duces the piece mentions that he found it in a book, but we do not know if
the book was printed or in manuscript; no source for the piece survives
frombefore 1544. However, the attitude of those present suggests that the
composition of entire canzone had been taking place for at least a little
while before 1544.
Gardano rst published multi-movement madrigals in 1547. One
was a setting of Io vo cangiar lusato by LHoste da Reggio in that com-
posers Primo libro de madrigali a 4. The others are part of Animuccias
Primo libro di madrigali a quatro a cinque & a sei voci (RISM A1241).
Anearlier originhas beenclaimedfor the canzoni of Rampollini, which
Moderne printed in an undated edition.
6
Alfred Einstein suggested it was
mary s. lewi s
92
3
The entire dedication and its translation are given in Buja, Antonio Barr,
pp. 31113. [Ed. note: See also Donna Cardamones discussion on p. 75 above.]
4
For complete contents and further information on these prints, see Buja,
Antonio Barr, pp. 2029.
5
Antonfrancesco Doni, Dialogo della Musica, ed. Virginia Fagotto (Venice:
Fondazione Giorgio Cini, 1965), pp. 13063.
6
Il primo libro de la musica di M. Mattio Rampollini . . . sopra di alcune canzoni del
divin poeta M. Francesco Petrarca. Lyons: Moderne, [n.d.] (RISM R215).
printedin1540or1541,
7
butSamuel Poguehasgivenconvincingbibliograph-
ical andhistorical evidence tosupport a date of 1554or later; Pogue chose the
date 1560 based on a citation of the book by Poccianti in his Catalogus, pub-
lished in Florence in 1589.
8
Frank DAccone, however, has argued for a date
somewhere between Einsteins and Pogues.
9
If DAccone is correct, then
Rampollinis setting of Standomi ungiorno,included inModernes collec-
tion,wouldhaveprecededLassos.Wedonot knowif LassoknewRampollinis
setting. The older composer set the work not in six movements as Lasso did,
but inseven,devotingtheseventhmovementtothecommiato.
Despite its early publication history in Venice, compositionally the
canzone was not really a Venetian phenomenon. Rather, its chief practition-
ers before 1560 appear to have been composers who worked at some time in
Florenceor Rome, as well as agroupof musicians activeintheVeneto, several
of whomhadprofessional connections at one time or another withthe acad-
emies of the area.
10
Barr, Animuccia, Arcadelt, Palestrina, Lupacchino,
Ruo, Rore, Nasco, Porta, and Portinaro are the most important of these.
11
Berchem, the innovator, is more dicult to place as we knowso little about
his life, but he evidently spent some time inVenice andVerona around1546.
He may have been in Rome before then, but the evidence for such a stay is
slight.
12
While the canzone of Petrarch take pride of place among the multi-
stanza texts these composers set, they were joined by the poetry of Ariosto,
Sannazaro, Bembo, Tansillo, Cassola, Aani, Bellano, andBoccaccio.
13
lasso
standomi un gi orno
and the canzone

93
7
Alfred Einstein, The Italian Madrigal (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1949), p. 135.
8
Samuel Pogue, Jacques Moderne: Lyons Music Printer of the Sixteenth Century,
Travaux dhumanisme et renaissance 101 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1969),
pp. 21415.
9
Frank A. DAccone, Matteo Rampollini and his Petrarchan Canzoni Cycles,
Musica Disciplina, 27 (1973), pp. 7981.
10
For a list of multi-movement madrigals published in Italy in the sixteenth
century, see Patricia Ann Myers, An Analytical Study of the Italian Cyclic
Madrigals Published by Composers Working in Rome ca. 15401614, Ph.D.
diss., University of Illinois (1971), pp. 274375.
11
Other composers who wrote canzone during the forties and fties include
Fiesco, Dorati, Werrecore, Passetto, Boyleau, Fogliano, LHoste da Reggio,
Martoretta, and Taglia.
12
Dale Hall, The Italian Secular Vocal Works of Jacquet Berchem, Ph.D. diss.,
Ohio State University (1973), pp. 917.
13
Myers, An Analytical Study, pp. 376414, gives a list of Italian texts set as
cyclical madrigals c. 15401614.
We can only speculate as to the impetus for writing these large-scale
works. Perhaps the academicians with whom the composers were asso-
ciated objected to the practice of setting dismembered stanzas from larger
poems. Perhaps the composers themselves felt limited by the small scale of
the one- or two-part madrigal. And perhaps they wished to experiment
with the problems of organizing music over a longer time span. Certainly a
dierent approach to the music was required of both performers and listen-
ers by these extended works.
Producing a coherent setting of such long texts within the stylistic
requirements of the madrigal posed a major compositional problem for
composers. In the past, the principal multi-movement forms had been the
mass and the Magnicat. Masses were, rst of all, not intended for sequen-
tial, uninterrupted performance. Even so, in addition to being in the same
mode throughout, they often used thematic unifying devices, such as a
cantus rmus, a motto, or a polyphonic work to be imitated in some way.
Magnicats usually were based on the Magnicat tones, which automati-
cally bound the various movements together. The closest earlier relative of
the multi-movement madrigal would probably be the motetti missales cycle
of the fteenth century, a genre that poses numerous historical and musical
diculties of its own.
The multi-movement madrigal, however, had no thematic devices at
its disposal. Its composers had to resort to other organizational means in
building a large musical structure. Sometimes they used a varying number
of voices, usually in a pattern such as 54345, in which the texture thins
towards the middle stanzas, and then thickens again as the end of the work
approaches. At other times, contrasting mensurations, such as
and

, or
even triple meter, were employed, again in some sort of overall structural
pattern. In Standomi un giorno, Lasso maintained a ve-voice texture
throughout, however, although from time to time in this work one or two
voices may drop out, usually in response to the text. Likewise, he kept all six
movements in
mensuration.
Sometimes, the text and its musical expression could provide their
own shape for a piece. This was particularly true in the sestina, with its
pattern of recurring words at line endings, but aective shape could also be
achieved at the stanza level, where contrasts of mood would be reected in
the musical setting.
mary s. lewi s
94
Probably the most important structural tool available to composers
of multi-movement works, however, was the musical and aective use of
mode. The composer could work with modal traditions on both the general
and local level. Employment of the modes and their aesthetic is both the
most complex and the most intriguing aspect of the approach to large-scale
musical structures in these pieces. In our investigation of Lassos canzone,
we will study one example of the use both structurally and aectively of the
modal pitch spectrum in these pieces.
Petrarch wrote Standomi un giorno in the 1360s, long after the
death of Laura. This strange and mystical poem presents six visions, each
describing the destruction of a beautiful object, and ends with the despair-
ing cry of the poet who wishes for his own death. In a typical Petrarchan
paradox, each stanza produces a vision of beauty in the rst half, and a
vision of beautys destruction in the second. Thus, the recurring idea of
metamorphosis, a central theme in Petrarchs poetry, is given dramatic
expression here.
14
The six visions reect recurrent emblematics in Petrarchs poetry a
deer, a ship, a laurel tree, a fountain, a phoenix, and a beautiful lady.
References both to Petrarchs own poetry and to myth are abundant. Thus,
the gure of Eurydice is evoked in the sixth stanza when the lady dies after
being bitten by a snake, and the deer in the rst stanza recalls the story of
Actaeon. Robert Durling sees Standomi as a counterpart to no. 23 of the
Canzoniere, Nel dolce tempo de la prima etade, the canzone in which
Petrarch recounts the story of his love for Laura, as reenactments of six
Ovidian myths of metamorphosis.
15
In a highly complex set of references,
the two poems represent both the lover and Laura as a laurel tree, the lover
as Actaeon and Laura as a deer, Laura as a fountain of inspiration, and the
lover as a fountain of tears.
16
Stanza 1
1(1) Standomi un giorno solo a la fenestra, While one day at my window as I
stood
1(2) onde cose vedea tante, et s nove, Alone, I saw so many novel sights
1(3) chera sol di mirar quasi gi stancho, That merely gazing almost wearied
me:
lasso
standomi un gi orno
and the canzone

95
14
Robert M. Durling, Petrarchs Lyric Poems (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1976), p. 26.
15
Ibid., p. 27.
16
Ibid., p. 32.
1(4) una fera mapparve de man destra, At my right hand appeared a
creature wild,
1(5) con fronte humana, da far arder Giove, With human features that could
Jove iname;
1(6) cacciata da duo veltri, un nero, un Two hounds pursued her one was
biancho; black, one white;
1(7) che lun et laltro ancho They tore rst one ank, then
1(8) de la fera gentil mordean s forte, The other ravened till, in a short
time,
1(9) che n poco tempo la menaro al passo They brought that gentle beast to
such a pass
(10) ove, chiusa in un sasso, That there, enclosed with stone,
(11) vinse molta bellezza acerba morte: Was beauty great by bitter death
laid low,
(12) et mi fe sospirar sua dura sorte. Which left me sighing at its
grievous fate.
Stanza 2
1(1) Indi per alto mar vidi una nave, Then on the high seas I beheld a
ship
1(2) con le sarte di seta, et dr la vela, With silken rigging and a sail of
gold,
1(3) tutta davorio e debeno contesta; All framed of ivory and ebony;
1(4) e l mar tranquillo, et laura era soave, The sea was tranquil, and the breeze
was soft,
1(5) e l ciel qual se nulla nube il vela, As when heaven glows, veiled not by
any cloud;
1(6) ella carca di ricca merce honesta: Freighted she was with rich and
virtuous goods;
1(7) poi repente tempesta A sudden eastern storm
1(8) oriental turb s laere et londe, Then cast into great tumult wind
and waves,
1(9) che la nave percosse ad uno scoglio. And so the vessel splintered on a
reef.
(10) O che grave cordoglio! Oh, insupportable woe!
(11) Breve ora oppresse, et poco spatio Brief hour oerwhelmed and little
asconde, space concealed
(12) lalte ricchezze a nulaltre seconde. Those noble riches, next in rank to
none.
mary s. lewi s
96
Stanza 3
1(1) In un boschetto novo, i rami santi In a new-planted grove, a laurel
bloomed
1(2) orian dun lauro giovenetto et With hallowed limbs so young and
schietto, pure, it seemed
1(3) chun delli arbor parea di paradiso; A tree of those that grow in
Paradise;
1(4) et di sua ombra uscian s dolci canti And from its shade there issued
such sweet songs
1(5) di vari augelli, et tantaltro diletto, Of divers birds, and other great
delight,
1(6) che dal mondo mavean tutto diviso; That I was carried wholly from the
world.
1(7) et mirandol io so, While, marveling, I stared,
1(8) cangiossi l cielo intorno, et tinto in The sky above was altered
vista, overcast;
1(9) folgorando l percosse et da radice Flashing, it struck and by the roots
at once
(10) quella pianta felice Tore up that happy plant,
(11) sbito svelse: onde mia vita trista, And ever since, my lifes been full of
woe,
(12) ch simile ombra mai non si racquista. For shade like that Ill never nd
again.
Stanza 4
1(1) Chiara fontana in quel medesmo In that same wood a crystal
bosco fountain owed
1(2) sorgea dun sasso, et acque fresche et Out of a stone, and waters cool and
dolci sweet
1(3) spargea, soavemente mormorando; Came gushing, murmuring
delightfully;
1(4) al bel seggio, riposto, ombroso et To that fair seat, hidden, shaded,
fosco, and dark,
1(5) n pastori appressavan n bifolci, No country folk nor shepherds
ventured near,
1(6) ma nimphe et muse a quel tenor But nymphs and muses singing
cantando: harmony;
1(7) ivi massisi; et quando There I sat down; as I
1(8) pi dolcezza prendea di tal concento Most sweetness took from such a
melody
lasso
standomi un gi orno
and the canzone

97
1(9) et di tal vista, aprir vidi uno speco, And from such a view I saw a
chasm yawn
(10) et portarsene seco And borne away within
(11) la fonte e l loco: ondanchor doglia The fountain and the place: still I
sento, feel pain;
(12) et sol de la memoria mi sgomento. By that mere memory am I
dismayed.
Stanza 5
1(1) Una strania fenice, ambe due lale Observing a rare phoenix in the
woods
1(2) di porpora vestita, e l capo doro, Alone and proud, with both her
wings attired
1(3) vedendo per la selva altera et sola, In purple, and in gold her head, I
thought
1(4) veder forma celeste ed immortale At rst to view her heavenly,
deathless form
1(5) prima pensai, n cha lo svelto alloro Till she to that uprooted laurel
came
1(6) giunse, ed al fonte che la terra invola: And to that fountain swallowed by
the earth:
1(7) ogni cosa al n vola; All, in the end, takes ight.
1(8) ch, mirando le frondi a terra sparse, For, seeing scattered leaves upon the
ground,
1(9) e l troncon rotto, et quel vivo humor The broken trunk, that living liquid
secco, dry,
(10) volse in se stessa il becco, Upon herself her beak
(11) quasi sdegnando, e n un punto She turned as in disdain, and
disparse: vanished all
(12) onde l cor di pietate et damor At once; whence love and pity sear
marse. my heart.
Stanza 6
1(1) Aln vidio per entro i ori et lerba At last amidst the grass and owers
I saw
1(2) pensosa ir s leggiadra et bella donna, A pensive lady go, so graceful, fair,
1(3) che mai nol penso chi non arda et That just to think of her I burn and
treme: quake:
1(4) humile in s, ma ncontra Amor One humble in herself, against Love
superba; proud;
mary s. lewi s
98
1(5) ed avea indosso s candida gonna, And she was wearing such a awless
gown,
1(6) s texta, choro et neve parea inseme; Woven to seem of gold and snow at
once,
1(7) ma le parti supreme But yet her crowning parts
1(8) eran avolte duna nebbia oscura: Were all enfolded in a mist obscure;
1(9) punta poi nel tallon dun picciol Then a small serpent pricked her
angue, heel, and as
(10) come or colto langue, A gathered ower wilts,
(11) lieta si dipartio, nonch secura. She passed not only certain, but in
joy.
(12) Ahi, nulla, altro che pianto, al mondo Woe! Nothing, save for tears, in this
dura! world lasts.
Commiato
(I) Canzon, tu puoi ben dire: Song, you may surely say:
(II) Queste sei visioni al signor mio All these six visions of my master
(III) n fatto un dolce di morir desio. Produced in him a sweet desire for
death.
17
The poem is a canzone with stanze divisi, the form of all but one of
Petrarchs canzoni. The six lines of each stanzas fronte and the six of the
sirima serve perfectly to express the paradox of life and death in each of the
six stanzas. The rhyme scheme of each strophe is ABCABCcDEeDD.
18
The
poem ends with a commiato of three lines, addressed, as is so frequently the
case in Petrarchs verse, to the song itself. We will see that Lasso responded
musically to the requirements of the poems form as well as to its symbolism
and emotional impact.
The style of Lassos setting is essentially that which James Haar has
identied as belonging to the composers Roman, and even Neapolitan,
lasso
standomi un gi orno
and the canzone

99
17
The text and its translation are taken from Petrarchs Songbook: Rerum
vulgarium fragmenta, a Verse Translation by James Wyatt Cook with Italian text
by Gianfranco Contini (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early
Renaissance Studies, State University of New York, 1995). This version is quoted
in the following discussion. The Italian text as it appears in SWis presumably
the version Lasso knew. It sometimes diers in orthography and punctuation
from the critical text established by Contini.
18
In this scheme, capital letters stand for eleven-syllable lines, lower-case letters
for seven-syllable lines.
years, before he left Italy for the Netherlands in 1554.
19
The setting is for the
most part line-by-line, with clear cadential demarcation of line endings,
but Lasso carries the music forward whenever there is a continuation of
meaning or syntax from the end of one line to the beginning of the next.
Most strong cadences occur at the ends of poetic lines, though not all poetic
lines end with strong cadences. There is very little of the fragmentation of
the line into syntactic units that we can see in the Venetian style of the
period. On the other hand, Lasso occasionally repeats a line, or a portion of
a line, for emphasis. The texture is frequently chordal, with some rhythmic
variety and a few brief melismas, mostly for expressive purposes. Text
setting is generally syllabic, with melismatic writing found mainly at orna-
mented cadences. Within these general guidelines, Lasso seems to have
employed what might be described as a declamatory, recitational style
intensied by various aective elements. Thus, while the chordal texture,
stretches of uniform note values, stepwise melodies with frequent repeated
notes, and melodic reminiscences of recitational performance suggest the
art of the improvvisatori, the music is imbued with aective devices such
as sudden upward leaps greater than a third, chromaticism and cross-
relations, colorful harmonies and harmonic juxtapositions, short melis-
mas and expressively ornamented cadences, tone painting of various sorts,
and imitation, all of which reect the text.
While the use of imitation in this work is restrained, Lasso employs
two types. The rst occurs at the beginnings of phrases, sometimes at the
start of a stanza and sometimes to launch an internal phrase. The latter
points are often incomplete and disguised, without the participation of all
ve voices and with contrapuntal writing in the other voices overlapping
the imitative entrances (e.g. mm. 825; see Ex. 5.1). A second kind of imita-
tion occurs in connection with text expression, and consists of short frag-
ments of rhythmic imitation tossed about from one voice to another, as in
the setting of the word sospirarin mm. 4850 (see Ex. 5.2).
Throughout the canzone, Lasso both respects and exploits the duality
mary s. lewi s
100
19
James Haar, The Early Madrigals of Lassus, Revue Belge de Musicologie, 3940
(19856), pp. 1732. Space restrictions have limited me to only a few musical
examples in this article. For a score of Lassos setting the reader is referred to SW
or SW2, vol. 2, pp. 89110. Measures are numbered consecutively through the
entire madrigal rather than beginning anew in each parte as in SW2.
of the poems contents and structure. At the end of the sixth line, the mid-
point of the stanza and the point where, metaphorically speaking, light
turns to darkness, there is always a clear cadence. Some of these are stronger
than others, with suspensions and bass support, but all allow opportunity
for a new musical and emotional impulse.
Lasso uses the traditional hierarchy of modal cadential pitches, as
cited by the theorists, to shape the music both structurally and aectively
on a large scale from strophe to strophe, and within the course of each indi-
vidual movement. The rst, second, and last strophes turn to the nal of the
lasso
standomi un gi orno
and the canzone

101
Example 5.1: Lasso, Standomi un giorno, mm. 825
&
&
V
V
?
82

ce'ho - ne - - -
w
w
ne - sta,

w
merce'ho - ne -

ca di ric - - -
-

sta, El -
w

sta,
.

El - la
.

sta, El - la car -

ca mer - - -

la car - ca di

El -
w

car - ca di

ca di ric - ca

ce'ho - ne - sta,

ric - ca merce'ho -

#

la car - ca di
w

ric - ca mer -

w
mer - ce'ho - ne -

#
di ric - ca
w
w
ne - sta.
Example 5.2: Lasso, Standomi un giorno, mm. 4850
&
&
V
V
?
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
48

so - spi - rar, so -
#

fe so - spi - rar, e

so - spi - rar, so -

fe so - spi - rar,

mi fe so - spi -

spi - rar,

mi fe so - spi - rar

#
spi - rar, so - spi -
.

so - spi - rar sua

rar, so - spi - rar
w

sua du - ra
a

rar,
w

du - ra
w

sua du - ra
mode for their closing cadences; in between, the stanzas cadence rst on the
most widely accepted alternative pitch, then on one less-often recom-
mended as primary, and in stanza 5, on a pitch widely used for expressive
irregular cadences in modes 3 and 4 A-mi.
20
Thus we see a pattern of nal cadences: EEAB/EA-miE. Lasso
appears to have constructed a basic tonal plan in which, at least as far as nal
cadences are concerned, the pitch structure begins and ends around the
phrygian E, but wanders into the realm of the repercussion in the middle
stanzas. In the theoretical literature of the time, both A and B have support
as the second-most important cadential point in an E-mode piece.
Theorists are generally agreed on a repercussion of B or C for mode 3, and A
for mode 4; Lasso is extremely sparing in his use of B as a cadential pitch.
The tonality of Standomi un giornois somewhat ambiguous, a situ-
ation not unusual for E-mode pieces. The works range suggests mode 3, but
Lassos treatment of A as the repercussion is strongly suggestive of the
fourth mode. Throughout the work, Lasso makes careful use of commixtio
modi and of cadences irregular to the mode for both structural and expres-
sive purposes. As we have seen, not all stanzas close on E, for instance, and
those that do, do not always end with the cadential motion in the tradition-
ally strong cantotenore pair. Thus, stanza 1 cadences on E, but in the alto
and quinto (tenor 2), and stanza 2 employs the canto and quinto for its nal
Ecadence. The third stanza has the strongest nal cadence up to that point,
employing the canto and tenore with bass support, but on the repercussion
A rather than on E. In stanza 4, Lasso brings the canto and quinto to a
cadential octave on B, but with e in the basso (reached by an upward fth
from A to e). Stanza 5 closes with the tenore and basso sounding an A-phry-
gian cadence, though a cadence on E between alto and basso is heard two
measures earlier (mm. 2589). Finally, the last movement cadences on E in
m. 342 in the alto and tenore, and closes on a weak E cadence in m. 344.
mary s. lewi s
102
20
For aective use of the A-mi cadence see Bernhard Meier, The Modes of Classical
Vocal Polyphony Described According to the Sources, trans. Ellen S. Beebe (New
York: Broude, 1988), pp. 25979. In the following discussion capital letters
usually refer to a pitch class in general, while lower case letters (e, e) refer to
specic octaves.
Viewing the structure of the poem, the rst two stanzas appear to
belong together, portraying the visions seen from the poets window. The
next three stanzas depict visions of a laurel tree, a fountain, and a phoenix in
a magical grove, while the sixth stanza focuses away from the grove toward
the lady . . . so graceful, fair who is now revealed as the true object of the
entire poem. Lassos tonal plan would seem to t with such a reading, with
the stanzas that close more or less rmly on E belonging to the opening pair
of visions and to the last one, though the last cadence is weakened some-
what, perhaps in response to the poets unfullled longing for death. The
three stanzas describing visions seen in the grove then have nals on A, B/E,
and A-mi.
Most of the cadences in this canzone, both nal and internal, fall on
pitches recommended as cadential points within the mode by one theorist
or another, although the theorists are far from unanimous as to what those
pitches should be. Zarlino recommends e, g, and b. Pontio calls for primary
cadences on e and a, with g and b per transito, and c come propera. Dressler
lists e, b, and c as primary cadence points, and g and a as secondary. Both
Lusitano and Montanus name e and c, with Montanus adding a.
21
No theo-
rist cites d as a cadential pitch for mode 3, and we shall see that Lasso fre-
quently cadences on that pitch at moments of aective signicance. Only
Aaron lists D as a regular cadential pitch for mode 4, and then only d, not d.
Most cadences, then, fall on modally acceptable pitches E, A, G,
and C with moves to Dand A-mi reserved for such aectively signicant
words as asconde,trista,treme,and oscura.Such usage has a cumu-
lative eect throughout the piece, as irregular cadences repeatedly under-
score words of deep emotional signicance against a background of modal
unity emphasized by the tensions of the nal cadential pitches of the
stanzas. Thus, the young Lasso worked within a structural-aective pitch
hierarchy that skilfully blends the familiar traditions of modal pitch
signicance with madrigalian text expression. In the following section, I
will present a more detailed discussion of some of the strategies Lasso used
in setting Petrarchs canzone.
lasso
standomi un gi orno
and the canzone

103
21
Ibid., pp. 10516.
Stanza 1
The stage is set with the poet standing alone at a window for the appear-
ance of strange and new things. The rst vision: an animal (a deer) with a
beautiful human face appears, pursued by two hounds, one black and one
white, who trap it in a rocky pass and kill it. The poet sighs at the animals
harsh fate.
The E-mode tonality is established in the quinto and then the alto and
canto, through the statement of a rising line starting with an ea leap which
then works its way upward with successive pitch goals of b, c, and d (mm.
36), thus outlining the upper range of the authentic mode.
As we can see from Table 5.1, Lasso cadences primarily on A (ve
cadences) and C (four). Four cadences, including the rst and last, fall on E,
and there are three on D and G. The D cadences are reserved for special
moments. The rst occurs in mm. 67 on the words giornoand fenestra,
as Lasso repeats the opening motive a fourth higher. This early move into
modally foreign territory ushers the listener into the visionary world seen
from the window.
22
mary s. lewi s
104
22
In all of the tables ! denotes an irregular cadence in the mode.
Table 5.1 Cadences in Standomi un giorno, Stanza 1
Line Measure Voices Pitch Comments
21 23 AQ E
2 27 CT D! fenestra/giorno
11 TQ A
22 15 AQ D! nove
23 18(20) AT C
24 24 TQ C
26 AB A/D! humana
25 28 CA A
26 31 AQ C
27 33 AB E
28 37 AB G
29 39 CT A
10 42 TB G
11 467 CQ G/C
12 51 AB E
55 AQ E/A, then E
The role of the D cadence in pointing to that visionary world is reiter-
ated in m. 15 in the quinto and basso on the word nove(novel). Finally, at
one of the more dramatic moments in the stanza (m. 26), as it is revealed
that the beast has a human face, on the word humana an expected A
cadence is diverted to one on D by way of an E major to D major chord pro-
gression. Throughout the work, Lasso uses such motion of major triads a
whole step apart to underscore important moments.
If we consider the strongest cadences in the stanza, most of which are
at the ends of lines, we nd the following series: DA CCAC GAGE.
The DA section corresponds to the opening phrases of the text, those that
set the scene. The section emphasizing C and A corresponds to the descrip-
tion of the beast, while the GAGE section describes the beasts death and
poets sorrow.
The passage fromthe world of reality to that of visions takes place by
way of a modally unsettling passage that moves through a downward circle
of fths as the viewers gaze moves through the window to see so many
strange things. The passage begins in m. 11 with a cadence on A. By m. 15
the cadence on D discussed above has been reached; it is followed in the
next measure by one on G. Then, in m. 18 the alto, tenore, and basso have a
transitory cadence on C that is followed by a plagal one (mm. 1920) also
on C. In that cadence, all ve voices come together on long notes on the
wordstancho, ending together at the close of the third line. By this time,
all sense of E-mode has been erased, and the music works in an area closer
toAand Cuntil it cadences on Gat the close of line 8 in m. 37. Beginning in
m. 37, the trapping and death of the beast are described, as the music
moves through a series of cadences on G, A, G, A, and nally, when the
speaker expresses his sorrow, back to a nal cadence on E with a cadential
coda.
The nal cadence is a phrygian one on E in the alto and quinto (m.
55), but sounded within an A minor triad. The harmonic language gradu-
ally settles towards a clearer statement of E in the coda, but without another
strong cadence. Thus, the hearer is left with a sense of anticipation rather
than one of closure.
lasso
standomi un gi orno
and the canzone

105
Stanza 2
The second strophe of the poem describes a vision of a boat with golden
sails that is shattered against the rocks in a sudden storm. The opening
point of imitation includes a strikingly aective upward leap of a sixth in all
voices on the word alto. Lasso points immediately here to the focus on A
that is one of the marks of the pitch structure of this stanza. An Acadence in
m. 61 is balanced two measures later, however, with one on E in the quinto
and basso. This second cadence lacks both the suspension treatment and
the lower-voice support of the rst.
At the end of line 2 (mm. 667) Lasso introduces another strong
cadence on A, on the word vela. As the poet marvels in line 3 at the ivory
and ebony decorations on the boat, Lasso moves further aeld to an equally
strong cadence on C on the word contesta, ending the rst part of the
fronte there.
Lasso cuts the fourth line in half (E l mar tranquillo) with a grand
pause after the word tranquilloand a cadence on D that can also be inter-
preted as an interrupted cadence on G. The eect undermines the sense of
mary s. lewi s
106
21 261 CA A
263 QB E
22 267 CQ A
23 271 TQ C
24 273 AB G interrupted
276 TQ D/G
25 279 AQ A
26 280 SQ A
285 ST A
287 SQ A-mi! honesta
288 ST G
278 291 AQ E/A
29 294 TB G
10 297 QB A/E
11 299 AT D! asconde
12 107 SQ A
109 SQ E with coda
tranquillity that has just been introduced by the long notes on tranquillo.
Tension is continued as line 4 ends without a real cadence. The succeeding
line, which states a new thought Freighted she was with rich and virtuous
goods is heard not once but twice. Only the second statement, however,
closes with a cadence, in this case a phrygian cadence on A that hints of the
drama soon to come.
The description of the tempest in lines 7 and 8 is recitational yet poly-
phonic in style, set syllabically with frequent repeated notes. The eect is
one of straightforward narrative, almost devoid of emotion, its only
aective characteristic being the quickening of note values and the cross-
relations (FF
and CC
) on percosse ad uno (m. 93).

Line 10, however, brings a dramatic change. Lasso sets the words Oh,
insupportable woeto a descending series of long notes, starkly contrasting
in mood and rhythmic motion to the description of the storm that came
before. The phrase ends with a double cadence, rst to A and then plagally
to E (mm. 947), thus extending the AEtension of the strophe.
The narrative style returns briey for line 11 as do several cross-
relations and unusual pitch juxtapositions FF
, CC
, C
(mm.
989), as the phrase ends on a D cadence on asconde. This is the only
cadence in the second half of the strophe with both lower-voice support
and suspension treatment, and its emphasis underscores the poets horror
at the destruction of a thing of such beauty.
The nal line of the stanza completes the thought begun in line 11,
but Lasso sets it at the start with the descending tetrachord of grief (mm.
98102), which is echoed in various permutations in the other voices, until
the superius closes with an octave descent in long notes to the E nal (mm.
1059), with a phrygian cadence in mm. 1089 and a brief coda in which the
other voices nish out their descents.
Tonally, this stanza, like the rst, seems to correspond to the two
halves of the strophe. The principal cadences in the rst half emphasize A
and are on AEACAAA-mi, while those in the second half are on
GEGEDAE. The second half, besides introducing cadences on G
and D, also places more emphasis on the nal, E. However, the AE dichot-
omy that forms a structural device in the entire work and that mirrors the
paradoxes of the poem itself has been skilfully introduced here.
lasso
standomi un gi orno
and the canzone

107
Stanza 3
In the third stanza, Petrarch moves in his visions from the elevated location
of his window, looking out over the sea and the hunt, to a woodsy setting.
There he sees a laurel tree of those that grow in Paradise, and whose
unhappy end is the result of a lightning bolt and storm. Lasso begins the
strophe in narrative style with the rst really strong cadence at the end of
line 2, on A (m. 117).
The style has by now become more aective as the poet contemplates
the scene before him. The ecstatic emotion of the lover as he listens to the
songs of the birds inspires the composer to move beyond the mode to a pair
of cadences on D (mm. 128 and 1301). Thus we see that Lasso uses D
cadences in this work to express both positive and negative strong emo-
tions. Following a strong cadence on A in m. 135, the sixth line describes the
lovers transport into another world as the music moves to a new cadence
point on C (m. 138), ending the fronte there, as in stanza 1.
At the end of line 9 (mm. 1456), on the word radice, Lasso intro-
duces a phrygian cadence on A, but avoids a cadence at the very end of the
line by using the motion of a D cadence to bridge the two lines between the
mary s. lewi s
108
21 114 AQ G
22 117 CQ A
23 123 QB G
24 127 ST B/E
25 131 AB D! variuccelli
135 CQ A
26 138 TB C
27 141 AQ G
28 144 CB G (no leading tone)
29 146 CQ A-mi/D! then to A, radice
10 146 AT D! radice quella; enjambment
10 149 TQ E felice
11 151 AB A-mi! then to E in m. 152; trista
12 154 CA G
156 TQ C
158 CQ B/E
161 ST A
words radice and quella (mm. 1467). Slightly more denition is given
to the cadence on E at the end of line 10 (mm. 1489), but such denition
can be seen as appropriate since immediately afterwards four of the voices
declaim the word subitotogether, launching the passage in which the poet
declares that his life is sorrow. On the word trista we hear another phry-
gian cadence on A (m. 151), this one ornamented to underscore the word,
which moves immediately to a cadence in all four sounding voices on E to
end the line (m. 152).
23
After the words subito svelse the canto drops out
(mm. 1502), leaving the four lower voices to express the observers grief.
Lasso repeats the text after a cadence on G (m. 154), closing on a strong,
ornamented cadence on A without a coda. Here, at the poems midpoint,
Lasso has avoided the Enal altogether.
Stanza 4
lasso
standomi un gi orno
and the canzone

109
23
One could argue that the melodic conguration in m. 151 is not a true cadence,
since it occurs within a word. Nevertheless, the vocal lines move in a strongly
delineated cadential pattern through A-mi on the way to the E cadence in
m. 152.
21 166 TQ D! bosco
22 169 AB E/A
23 172 AQ C
175 SB G
24 178 TB C
25 182 AB G
26 186 TB C
1889 CQ E/A
28 192 TB C
195 CQ B concento
29 199 AT C
10 200 ST E seco
11 204 QB A-mi! sento
12 208 CQ G/E, then C
216 CQ B/E sgomento
Still in the grove where the laurel tree grew, the poet now sees a fountain that
further enhances the beauty of the secluded place. But yet again disaster
strikes, as a chasm opens and swallows up both the fountain and the grove,
restoring the poets grief. The setting opens in narrative style. Aective ele-
ments are soon introduced, however, in the form of a CC
cross-relation
between alto and canto in mm. 1634, and a cadence on D at the end of the
rst line, on the word bosco a note of foreboding, perhaps, that yet
another calamity lurks behind this peaceful scene. The D cadence, however,
is immediately supplanted by one on G which bridges the two lines and
their enjambment (mm. 1656). A cadence on A in m. 167 on sassois fol-
lowed by a drawn-out ornamented double cadence on E and A on the word
dolci (mm. 16870). The second half of this cadence, on A, however, is
also used to bridge the enjambment to the next line (waters cool and
sweet / Came gushing, murmuring delightfully). An evaded cadence on C
closes line 3. We see here in the beginning of the strophe a tendency to
deect importance away from cadences on the nal, E, and to emphasize A
as well as modally irregular tones. Cadences on C and G in line 4 further
move the tonal palette away fromE and into other modal territory.
The sirima begins peacefully enough (There I sat down; as I / Most
sweetness took from such a melody / And from such a view). Lasso sets
these words in a primarily syllabic polyphony, but cadences most unusually
on a B on the word concento (mm. 1945). The quintus and bassus initi-
ate the description (mm. 1968) of the opening of the chasm (aprir vidi
uno speco). The narrative style is then invoked, with syllabic and homo-
phonic declaration, e portarsene seco (m. 199). The four declaiming
voices cadence on E almost simultaneously (mm. 199200), and dramatic
rests in the canto and alto leave the listener balanced, as it were, on the edge
of the chasm, while at the same time the music carries across the enjamb-
ment with the beginning of line 11 to tell us that both the fountain and the
place have been carried away. The chilling news is greeted by silence in all
voices in m. 201, before the four lower voices intone, still I feel pain,
closing with a long, drawn-out phrygian cadence on A in mm. 2034 on the
word sento. This cadence is the rst modally irregular one we have heard
since the D cadence at the beginning of the stanza, unless we count the
cadence on B in m. 195, a pitch that Lasso has so far avoided treating as a
repercussion or even a common cadential pitch.
mary s. lewi s
110
Lasso ends the strophe ambiguously as canto and quinto form a phry-
gian cadence on B that is supported by an AE leap of a fth in the basso
(mm. 21517). Thus, while the nal triad is E major, the canto and quinto
have suggested B as the cadential pitch instead, perhaps recalling the B
cadence on concentoin m. 195 in the same voices, as the harmony of that
moment has indeed been transformed into fear.
Stanza 5
The next vision is of a phoenix who vanishes after viewing the destruction
of the laurel and the fountain. The imitative and aective opening makes
use of wide leaps to introduce us to the appearance of the phoenix. In line 3,
at the words vedendo per la selva,Lasso introduces a chromatic passage
undoubtedly inspired by Petrarchs choice of selvanow instead of bosco
in which we nd an E major and D major triad juxtaposed (m. 228), fol-
lowed by a B
in the tenore, a C
in the quinto, and an F
in the canto (mm.

2289).
In line 9, the cantos statement of rotto is emphasized by an FF
cross-relation between the canto and alto. Only the three upper voices sing
the text of line 10 upon herself her beak she turned.In this short phrase
(less than two measures) Lasso varies the rhythmic motion, and introduces
lasso
standomi un gi orno
and the canzone

111
21 223 AB E
22 227 AQ C
23 231 TB C Cadence formed 68/21
24 235 CT A
25 238 AT B/E
26 240 CT D!/G
27 243 (C)Q B/E
28 245 ST E/A
29 247 (A)Q G
10 249 CA D! becco
11 251 ST G
12 256 AT C
258 AQ A-mi! (through ficta)/D!
261 TB A-mi! damor marse
within a few beats of each other the chromatic tones B
, C
, and F
(mm.
2489). Perhaps we could read such a passage as an example of the mode,
like the phoenix, turning against itself.
A startling contrast ensues between the patter-like minims of line 11,
which illustrate the speed with which the phoenix vanished, and the slow,
descending opening of line 12. The nal line of the stanza is rst intoned in
long notes in the four upper voices (onde l cor); that brief phrase is set
apart by a cadence on G in m. 253 before the gradually intensifying setting
of the rest of the line di pietate et damor marse.Lasso repeats the words
of the last line, leading up to a cadence on Awhich is followed by a coda that
ends with a pathetic cadence on A-mi.
Stanza 6
Stanza 6 presents the nal, climactic vision of Petrarchs apocalyptic poem.
We readily recognize Laura as the bella donna of this vision. Like
mary s. lewi s
112
1 268 CQ A
2 274 QB G
3 276 AQ E
277 TB A-mi! treme
4 283 AT G
56 292 CT A
7 294 CT G
8 297 CA D! oscura
9 301 AQ G
1011 309 CQ G
12 315 TB A-mi! dura
321 CA A
322 AT D! dura
I 324 AB G
326 CB A-mi! dire
II 331 QB C
III 334 CA D! desio
338 AQ C
342 AT E/A, then E
Eurydice, this beautiful lady is taken from life by the bite of a snake, and
follows the deer, the ship, the laurel tree, the fountain, and the phoenix into
oblivion, leaving the poet with nothing, save for tears. In the commiato,
Petrarch addresses the poem itself, stating that the six visions have made
him also wish for death.
Lassos setting begins solemnly, and with a cross-relation GG
between basso and canto on n. In line 2 [I saw] a pensive lady go, so

graceful, fair we hear rst a D major to C major triad juxtaposition and
then a brief melisma, both pointing up the words leggiadra et bella.
There is no overlap with the beginning of line 3 That just to think of
her I burn and quake. The note values gradually increase to mirror the
trembling of the text as chi non arda et treme is repeated, with a biting
CC
cross-relation and C
juxtaposition in m. 277. The line closes on

an A-phrygian cadence, stressing the emotional intensity of the moment.
The rst brief phrase of line 4 ends with a cadence on E, the second with a
phrygian cadence on A, at the repeat of the text humile in s, while the
fronte ends with a clear cadence on A (m. 292).
The short span of line 8 is marked rst by a CC
cross-relation in
m. 292, and a more agitated, scattered dotted-rhythm texture as the ve
voices all intone the changing mood at dierent times. Line 8 completes the
ominous thought begun in line 7 But yet her crowning parts / Were all
enfolded in a mist obscure.Lasso continues through this line (mm. 2937)
in a markedly aective style; upward leaps are followed by long descents,
and the phrase closes with a modally irregular cadence on D on the word
oscura.
At the beginning of line 12, rst the upper four voices, and then all
ve, join in a deeply aective statement Woe! Nothing, save for tears, in
this world lasts. The use of irregular cadences now increases. The passage
begins with a homophonic exclamation of Ahi on an F major chord, in
startling juxtaposition to the G major chord that ended the previous
phrase. The music continues to a B
chord B
having been heard through-

out the piece in phrygian relationship to A and the phrase is liberally
sprinkled with B
s as it passes through a modally irregular cadence forma-

tion on D in m. 314 on its way to a phrygian cadence on A. Here, Lasso
brings together, at the emotional climax of the piece, pitches that have
served aective goals all along the B
of the A-mi cadences, an A-mi

lasso
standomi un gi orno
and the canzone

113
cadence itself, the C
so often used in cross-relations, and a hint at a modally

irregular Dcadence. The text is repeated, with greater intensity, as the music
moves toward the sharp side, introducing a G
in the cantos slow descend-

ing line (m. 316). Here Lasso turns to the language of the madrigal lament,
with outcries, chromaticism, octave leaps (tenor m. 315), and thoroughly
polyphonic texture. There are abrupt minim melismas on the words
mondoand dura,leading to a cadence on A followed by an irregular one
on Dwhich overlaps the beginning of the commiato.
In the commiato, Petrarch addresses his own song. Song, you may
surely say: / All these six visions of my master have / Produced in him a sweet
desire for death. Here the poem reaches new pathos. The music, launched
from the irregular D cadence in m. 322, sings the rst line twice (mm.
3217). The rst statement closes simply on a G cadence (m. 324); the
second, moving into a higher range and dropping the basso, increases in
intensity and introduces a B
in the canto (m. 325) which is repeated in the

quinto as part of the phrygian A cadence in m. 326. That cadence is
extended to an implied D cadence in m. 327, just as the basso rejoins the
other voices at the beginning of the commiatos second line, the rst part of
the quotation. In m. 333 B
is heard, but this time the cadence is another

modally irregular one on D(m. 334). The full text of the line is sung three
times, with additional repeats of the phrase di morir desio to the end of
the piece. B
continues to be heard as the canto falls silent in mm. 3357. The

third statement of the line introduces a brief but expressive melisma after
an upward leap in the canto on the word morir(m. 339). That melisma is
followed by a weak G cadence (m. 341) and then a stronger one on E that
essentially acts as the nal cadence of the work. Three measures of coda
follow, repeating the last phrase and ending on an E major triad (a tradi-
tional two-voice cadence having appeared in m. 342 in the alto and tenore).
Stanza 6 ends in much the same way that stanza 1 did, with a similar har-
monic framework and the same tentative, expectant unwinding in the coda
and with the same G
in the superius of the last chord.

To summarize, then, Lasso maintains a consistent tonal plan
throughout the six strophes of the canzone, a tonal plan that unies the
work both structurally and expressively. Tension between the nal, E, and
the secondary cadential pitch A is introduced early in the work and under-
lies the structure. This can be seen in the use of these two pitches for nal
mary s. lewi s
114
cadences in the various strophes, in the scheme EEAB/EA-miE. The
relationship of pitch structure to text is evident in the fact that the rst two
stanzas, which end on E, deal with visions from the window, and the next
three, ending on A, B/E, and A-mi, are concerned with events in the grove,
while the last stanza, which ends on E, turns to a vision of Laura. The AE
tension is intensied by the frequent introduction of phrygian cadences on
A. The importance of the B
of the A-mi cadence is stressed by its use at par-

ticularly intense moments, as in its appearance as the root of a triad when
the poet cries out that nothing in the world lasts except our tears (m. 311).
Within the frame of stanzas 1 and 2, and then 6, with their E endings, Lasso
placed two strophes, 3 and 5, with endings on A and A-mi, and between
those, stanza 4 whose ambiguous EB nal cadence reinforces our uncer-
tainty about the actual modal identity of the work modes 3 or 4.
Throughout the entire work, Lasso makes telling use of cadences
irregular to the mode, especially those on D, of major triads whose roots lie
a whole step apart, and of cross-relations, especially involving C and C
, to
underscore semantically signicant words and phrases. Thus, these pitch
congurations become encoded in the listeners ear to correspond to the
dark side of the canzone.
Lasso clearly perceived all six stanzas as being in a mode 3/4 tonal
matrix. Indeed, it is the overall E-mode foundation that permits the play of
irregular pitches against it to make an aective impact. He appears to have
viewed the work as a large unity with six movements,bound together now
by modal treatment and expressive devices, rather than by any kind of
melodic or motivic unifying device.
Only further study of the multi-movement madrigal repertory will
reveal whether other composers adopted the same approach. That
endeavor is beyond the scope of this study, which should none the less help
us to understand the compositional solutions adopted by sixteenth-
century composers in writing these large-scale works.
lasso
standomi un gi orno
and the canzone

115
6 Lassos Fertur in conviviis: on the history of
its text and transmission
bernhold schmid
The Oxford contratenor partbook of the Meslanges dOrlande de
Lassus
1
contains deletions in the texts of several pieces. In a few cases,
though not always, the canceled words are replaced by others in a contem-
porary hand. This is true in Fertur in conviviis,a piece whose text was also
replaced by a contrafactum in a number of other sources. In the Oxford
source a passage in the fourth strophe,. . . Angelorum chori, / Deus . . .,was
changed to . . . Bacchantium chori, / Bacchus. . . . The question arises
whether this can be traced to an existent source, so that a previous version of
the text served as a model, or whether the scribe introduced his own vari-
ants. In order to provide an answer the following discussion provides an
edition of the original text with indication of all known variants in the exis-
tent printed sources,
2
which are then considered in relation to the manu-
script alterations in Oxford.
To begin, the sources for the original text, grouped according to
related editions, are listed in Table 6.1.
3
The table shows that the piece with
its original text was included both in chanson and motet prints. French
chanson prints in particular regularly include pieces with Latin texts, so
116
1
Paris: Le Roy and Ballard, RISM 1576i; Bodleian Library, Douce L subt.29.
2
The only known manuscript source (Ulm, Sammlung Schermar, Ms. Mus.
without shelf mark, c. 1590; see Boetticher, Lasso, p. 835) will not be considered.
The composition is printed in SW, vol. 3, p. 99.
3
Regarding the Septiesme livre of 1564, see Henri Vanhulst, Catalogue des ditions
de musique publies Louvain par Pierre Phalse et ses ls 15451578 (Brussels:
Acadmie Royale de Belgique, Classe des beaux-arts, 1990), pp. 11416. The
Septiesme livre appeared in a large number of editions over a long period of
time (see Henri Vanhulst, Un succs de ldition musicale: Le Septiesme livre des
chansons a quatre parties [15601661/3], Revue Belge de Musicologie, 323
[19789], pp. 97120), but only the edition of 1564 contains pieces by Lasso.
Table 6.1 Sources for the original text of Fertur in conviviis
Sigla used in this study RISM sigla and number in the print Brief title
A 1564d, no. 9 Quatriesme livre des chansons, Phalse (in both reprints,
1567c and 1570g, Fertur in conviviis is not included).
B RISM deest, 1564, no. 38 Septiesme livre des chansons, Phalse (in all later editions
Fertur in conviviis is not included).
C1 1565
8
, no. 1 Sesieme livre de chansons, Le Roy & Ballard (Fertur in
conviviis is included in all later editions).
C2 1567
9
, no. 1 Sesieme livre de chansons, LR&B
C3 1570
11
C4 1573
11
C5 1575
10
C6 1579
1
C7 1584
3
C8 1591
5
C9 RISM deest, 1599, no. 1 Sesieme livre de chansons, Ballard
D 1569
8
, no. 7 Liber secundus sacrarum cantionum, Phalse (the only
known edition)
E1 1570d, no. 39 Mellange dOrlande de Lassus, LR&B
E2 1576i, no. 57 Meslanges dOrlande de Lassus, LR&B
E3 1586g, no. 50 Meslanges de la musique dOrlande de Lassus, LR&B
F1 1579b, no. 67 Altera pars selectissimarum cantionum, Gerlach (Fertur
in conviviis is not included in the first edition, 1568b)
F2 1587f, no. 67 Altera pars selectiss. cant., Gerlach
that an unequivocal distinction of genres is not possible on the basis of the
prints.
4
The limited resonance in Phalses output is striking; to be sure, he
published the piece in three dierent prints, with chansons as well as
motets, but he excluded it from the later editions of his Quatriesme livre and
Septiesme livre, perhaps because he had taken it up in a motet book (D). Le
Roy and Ballard on the other hand printed Fertur in conviviisexclusively
in chanson books.
The text follows the version of C1, which is the most widespread, with
orthography normalized.
5
In source B, Phalses 1564 Septiesme livre of
chansons, of which only the contratenor survives as a unicum in the
Bibliothque Royale of Brussels, the text is deleted. However, the upper and
lower extensions of the letters are still visible, so the source can none the less
be considered here. Characteristic variants (see note 6) can thus be seen
that establish this text transmission as identical with that of source A.
(1) Fertur in conviviis vinus vina vinum.
Masculinum displicet, placet femininum;
et in neutro genere vinum est divinum,
loqui facit clericum optimum latinum.
(2) Volo inter omnia vinum pertransire:
Vinum facit vetulas leviter salire
et ditescit pauperes, claudos facit ire,
mutis dat eloquium, et surdis audire.
(3) Potatores incliti semper sunt benigni
tam senes quam juvenes; in aeterno igni
cruciantur rustici, qui non sunt tam digni,
ut gustare noverint bonum haustum vini.
(4) Meum est propositum in taberna mori
et vinum apponere sitiente ori;
ut dicant cum venerint angelorum chori:
Deus sit propitius huic potatori.
bernhold schmi d
118
4
Bernhold Schmid, Kontrafaktur und musikalische Gattung bei Orlando di
Lasso, Orlando di Lasso in der Musikgeschichte. Bericht ber das Symposion der
Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Mnchen, 4.6. Juli 1994, ed. Bernhold
Schmid (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1996),
especially pp. 25340.
5
I am most grateful to Daniela Sadgorski for her help in preparing the editions of
all the texts in this paper.
(5) Et plus quam ecclesiam diligam tabernam:
illam nullo tempore sprevi neque spernam,
donec sanctos angelos venientes cernam,
cantantes pro ebriis: Requiem eternam.
6
In the Oxford partbook a few words are changed, while others are
only deleted and not replaced by another text. The variant Bacchus for
Deus,known from DandF1/F2, is also found in Oxford; the other Oxford
variants are unique. The version of the text in Le Roy and Ballard, found in
all the sources listed under CandE, is constant. The Phalse prints, A/Band
D, have characteristic variants, and both versions dier from each other. In
D, the motet print of 1569, in which the title specically mentions sacrae
cantiones, are found exactly those variants that sharpen the text, potat-
orumfor angelorum(4,3), Bacchusfor Deus(4,4), and iustos pota-
tores for sanctos angelos (5,3), while the texts as a rule are puried
instead. The agreement of the variants surdisque for et surdis (2,4) in
A/B, D, and F1/F2, and Bacchusfor Deusin Dand F1/F2 is also striking.
This leads to the conclusion that Leonhard Lechner, who saw to the editing
of the 1579 Selectissimae cantiones for Gerlach, drew on source D. However,
Lechners version of the text is not identical to that of D, but rather agrees in
some places with the most widely distributed version, that of sources Cand
E. He may have known other sources besides D, and perhaps the text was
lasso
fertur i n convi vi i s
119
6
Variants among the sources in Table 6.1:
1,2 placet] atque A, B, D; atque corresponds to the reading of the text
transmission that is otherwise usual.
1,3 et] sed A, B; sed corresponds to the reading of the otherwise usual text
transmission; see below.
1,3 est] & E1.
2,4 et surdis] surdisque A, B, D, F1, F2.
3,1 benigni] beni deleted E2 Oxford.
3,4 noverint] valeant A, B; bonum] boni A, B.
4,3 angelorum] potatorum D; deleted E2 Oxford, replaced with Bacchantium.
4,4 Deus] Bacchus D, F1, F2; deleted E2 Oxford, replaced with Bacchus.
5,1 ecclesiam] deleted E2 Oxford, replaced with mulierem.
5,3 sanctos angelos] iustos potatores D.
5,3 sanctos] deleted E2 Oxford.
5,4 pro ebriis: Requiem eternam.] deleted E2 Oxford.
already familiar to him as well, so that he was able to make changes to the
version of source Dfrom memory.
7
A few quotations contained in the text of the poem should be briey
mentioned. Requiem aeternam needs no explanation; it is the beginning
of the introit of the Mass for the Dead. The source of Deus sit propitius
huic potatoriin Lassos fourth strophe is not so immediately obvious. It is a
parodistic allusion to Luke 18:13, Deus, propitius esto mihi peccatori
(God be merciful to me, a sinner).
8
A variety of contrafacta of Fertur in conviviis are known to have
been made. In the Magnum opus Musicum (RISM 1604a), the collected
edition of Lassos motets prepared by his sons, the content of the text was
turned upside down. Somewhat earlier a poem in memory of Clemens non
Papa, Tristis ut Euridicen, was underlaid to the music. The sources of the
contrafacta are listed in Table 6.2.
Two versions of the contrafactum Tristis ut Euridicen are known.
Source E2 in Table 6.1 has the original text underlaid, but Tristis ut
Euridicen appears at the end of the piece as an alternate text with the
inscription Calliope loquitur. Epitaphium Clementis non Papae. This is
lacking in E1, E3, and E4, which contain only the original text. In E3 and E4
the index contains an indication of the connection with Tristis ut
Euridicen,since the text incipit Fertur in conviviisin those two sources is
headed by the senseless inscription Epitaphium Clementis non Papae.In
sources H13 the poem is underlaid to the music in a slightly dierent
bernhold schmi d
120
7
Further variants can be found in parallel settings by other composers. Prof.
Ignace Bossuyt called the following variants in the composition of Jean de
Castro to my attention: 3,4, haustum bonum vini rather than bonum
haustum vini; 5,1, rem medicam rather than ecclesiam; 5,3, istos
potatores rather than iustos potatores, as in source D. Because here and also
in 4,3 potatores or potatorum appear rather than angelos or angelorum,
and in 4,4 Bacchus rather than Deus, de Castro, whose composition
according to Bossuyt is modeled on Lassos piece, must have gone back to source
D for his text. Further on de Castros setting, see Bossuyt, Orlando di Lasso as a
Model for Composition as Seen in the Three-Voice Motets of Jean de Castro, in
the present volume. I am grateful to Prof. Bossuyt for supplying this
information before the publication of his paper.
8
Carmina Burana. Texte und bersetzungen, ed. Benedikt Konrad Vollmann,
Bibliothek des Mittelalters, 13 (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1987),
p. 1218.
version. It is not designated Epitaphium in these sources. The fth
strophe remarkably is absent in H2 andH3.
In the following reproduction of the contrafactum from Magnum
opus musicumthe variants from the version established above from C1 are
printed in italics:
(1) Fertur in conviviis vinus vina vinum.
Masculinum displicet, nocet femininum;
et in neutro genere vinum est nocivum,
loqui facit homines pessimum latinum.
(2) Volo nunquam igitur vinum pertransire:
quia facit homines leviter salire
et jubet pauperibus, divites praeire,
tecta pandit omnia, facitque perire.
(3) Potatores nequeunt eri beati
tam senes quam juvenes daemone sunt sati,
nam sunt ad coelestia jussa non parati,
edunt, bibunt et ludunt, hinc erunt damnati.
(4) Horum est propositum in taberna mori
et vinum apponere sitienti ori;
ut dicant cum venerint inferorum chori:
Bacchus sit propitius huic potatori.
(5) Hi plus quam ecclesiam diligam tabernam:
hanc nec ullo tempore ducunt condemnendam,
donec malos angelos venientes cernant,
cantantes his non fore: Requiem eternam
121
Table 6.2 Sources of contrafacta of Fertur in conviviis
RISM sigla and number
Sigla used in this study in the print Brief title
G 1604a, no. 141 Magnum opus Musicum,
Nicholas Heinrich
H1 1576l, no. 41 Thresor de musique
[Geneva, S. Goulart]
H2 1582h, no. 61 Le thresor de musique
[Goulart]
H3 1594b, no. 61 Le thresor de musique
[Cologny, Paul Marceau]
lasso
A comparison with the various versions of the original text shows that
one of the Fsources probably served as the source for this version. One indi-
cator is in the fourth line of the second strophe, where surdisque (F
among others) becomes facitque in the contrafactum, while in other
sources the -que is replaced by a preceding et. This is made even more
likely by Bacchusin line 4, strophe 4, which in sources other than Fand the
contrafacta appears as Deus. The changes compared to the model are
sometimes very economical. Basically the content is simply changed into its
opposite. This is one of the contrafacta that are found only in MOMand
possibly made specically for that edition. Besides Fertur in conviviis,the
group also includes Nunc gaudere licet,Bestia stultus homo, and Jam
lucis orto sidere; additional pieces could be listed.
9
The reproduction of Tristis ut Euridicenfollows source E2, because
its version of the text is closer to the original in two details than that of
source H. The original poem in strophe 2, verse 2 has leviter salire,which
is taken over into strophe 4, verse 4 of E2; Hon the other hand has ludendo
gaudere.In E2strophe 5, line 4 begins cantare pro mortuo,which is closer
to the original cantantes pro ebriis than the cantare Clemens habet in
source H.
(1) Tristis ut Euridicen Orpheus ab orco
revocaret coniugem resonante plectro
lyrae nervos tetigit dulciter canendo.
Fecit et idem David Deo iubilando.
(2) Mens mea desiderat musicam probare
et eam prae ceteris artis laudare:
moerentes laeticat, graves mitigare,
poenas novit cordium et deos placare.
(3) O cantores incliti, Musicae clientes,
bernhold schmi d
122
9
Modern editions of Nunc gaudere licet in CM, vol. 6, pp. 8790 (original text),
and SW, vol. 19, p. 66 (contrafactum); Bestia stultus homo in SW, vol. 11, p. 95
(contrafactum), and SWNR, vol. 1, p. 67 (original text, which begins Bestia
curvaa); Jam lucis orto sidere in CM, vol. 7, and SW, vol. 21, p. 84. In SW,
vol. 21, edited by Adolf Sandberger, the original texts were printed, not the
contrafacta that appear in MOM, contrary to the practice of the other motet
volumes in SW. On Nunc gaudere licet see further Bernhold Schmid, Nunc
gaudere licet Zur Geschichte einer Kontrafaktur, Compositionswissenschaft:
Festschrift fr Reinhold und Roswitha Schltterer, ed. Bernd Edelmann and
Sabine Kurth (Augsburg: Verlag Dr. Bernd Wissner, 1999), pp. 4756.
videte Pierides Phociden colentes,
iam Clementis non Papae eunt celebrantes
(heu) tristes exequias lachrimis madentes.
(4) En Apollo respuit Cirrha personare
et Euterpe calamos atibus urgere,
Terpsichore citharam digitis movere
et Erato pedibus leviter salire.
(5) Phoebus ipsi dederat Musices coronam,
nec eum Calliope sprevit, neque spernam.
Nunc adeste sedulo musici, fas est nam
cantare pro mortuo Requiem aeternam.
10
The dependence of Tristis ut Euridicenon Fertur in conviviiscan
already be seen in the variants discussed preceding the reproduction of the
text. Several passages show how strongly the poet of the contrafactum ori-
ented himself to the original in spite of the completely dierent content.
The encomium of music (moerentes laeticat . . .) in strophe 2, verses 34
of the contrafactum corresponds to the encomium of wine in strophe 2,
verses 24 of the model. The models Potatores inclitiin strophe 3, verse 1,
becomes O cantores inclitiat the same place in the contrafactum. Sprevi
neque spernamin strophe 5, verse 2 of the model is taken up in the contra-
factum as sprevit, neque spernam.Finally, both the model and the contra-
factum end with Requiem aeternam.
After all the text variants have been discussed, a fairly reliable stemma
of the sources may be constructed, in which it cannot be unequivocally
decided whether A or B is the rst edition:
11
lasso
123
10
Variants from E2:
1,4 et idem] melius H.
2,4 poenas] curas H.
2,4 deos] iras H.
3,2 Phociden] Parnassum H.
3,3 iam] deest H.
4,1 Cirrha] plectro H.
4,4 leviter salire] ludendo gaudere H.
5,14] deest H2, H3.
5,4 pro mortuo] Clemens habet H1.
11
In the Septiesme livre a semibrevis a is lacking for the syllable foe- of
foemininum in strophe 1, which is added in the Quatriesme livre. If one
concludes from this that an error in the rst printing was corrected in the
second edition, then the Septiesme livre is the rst edition.
All together we have twenty-two surviving sources, which can be grouped
into eight publications, most of which were reprinted several times. The
piece was published in chanson as well as motet books with three dierent
texts over a span of fty-ve years. The popularity of Lassos Fertur in con-
viviiscould hardly be demonstrated more convincingly.
But let us return to the original text. It is based on a medieval drinking
song that in turn goes back to a text by the Archpoet, namely the so-called
Confession of Golias,which is included in the Carmina Burana as no. 191.
Bernhard Bischo gives the following four late medieval sources for the
song:
12
K = Copenhagen, AM 622 4
o
, c. 1550, from Iceland, p. 12.
Sl = London, British Library, Sloane 2593, 15th century, fol. 31rv (old
numeration 78rv).
bernhold schmi d
124
12
Otto Schumann and Bernhard Bischo, Carmina Burana, I. Band: Text, 3. Die
Trink- und Spielerlieder. Die geistlichen Dramen, Nachtrge (Heidelberg: Carl
Winter Universittsverlag, 1970), pp. 1921 (Text des jngeren Trinklieds,
Quellenverzeichnis und Lesarten). Carmen Buranum 191, the Confession of
Golias, is printed ibid., pp. 68. The following discussion is based on Bischo
except where Lasso is the subject. In the presentation of the poem on p. 125
Bischos remarks appear in italics.
A (1564) / B (1564)
C1 (1565)
C2 (1567)
D (1569)
C3 (1570) E1 (1570)
C4 (1573)
C5 (1575)
E2 (1576) H1 (1576)
F1 (1579) C6 (1579)
H2 (1582)
C7 (1584)
E3 (1586)
F2 (1587)
C8 (1591)
H3 (1594)
C9 (1599)
G (1604)
E4 (1619)
Vo = Volterra, Biblioteca Guarnacci 8653, 14th century, fols. 13v14r.
Pa = Rome, Vatican Library, Pal. Lat. 719, 15th century, fol. 24r.
For strophe 5 he cites additional sources, one of which is the following:
M
1
= Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 10751, written 1575 in
Westphalia, fol. 61.
On the basis of these sources Bischoestablishes the following text:
(1) Meum est propositum . . . as in Confession, strophe 12.
[That text is reproduced by Bischoas follows on p. 7:
Meum est propositum in taberna mori,
ut sint vina proxima morientis ori;
tunc cantabunt letius angelorum chori:
Sit Deus propitius huic potatori.]
(2) Potatores singuli sunt omnes benigni
tam senes quam iuvenes; in eterno igni
cruciantur rustici, qui non sunt tam digni,
qui bibisse noverint vinum boni ligni.
(3) Vinum super omnia bonum diligamus!
nam purgantur vitia, dum vinum potamus.
Cum nobis sit copia vini, tunc clamamus:
qui vivis in secula, te deum laudamus.
(4) After the greatly varied line 1, continuing as in Confession, strophe 11.
[The rst line is given here following the version Lasso set, as shown above;
this corresponds closely to one of the variants Bischocites on p. 17.
Et plusquam Ecclesiam diligo tabernam.]
illam nullo tempore sprevi neque spernam,
donec sanctos angelos venientes cernam,
cantantes pro mortuis Requiem aeternam.
(5) Fertur in convivio vinus vina vinum.
Masculinum displicet atque femininum;
sed in neutro genere vinum est divinum,
loqui facit socios optimum Latinum.
lasso
125
Strophes 1 and 4 are taken directly from the Confession of Golias,in
which they appear as strophes 12 and 11. The other three strophes are not
found in the Archpoet. Strophes 1, 2, 4, and 5 appear also in Lassos text, in
the order 4, 3, 5, and 1. Strophe 3 of the drinking song is absent in Lasso. The
sources Vo and Pa, however, each include a strophe 3a, which is reproduced
from Bischo, p. 21:
(3a)Vini mirabilia volo pertransire:
vinum facit hominem leviter salire
et ditescit pauperem claudos facit ire,
mutis dat facundiam, surdis dat audire.
Here we have Lassos strophe 2 before us, apart from the rst half line and a
few other small variants.
If one proceeds exclusively from Bernhard Bischos edition of the
text of the drinking song, one might reach the conclusion that Lassos text
reorders the strophes and makes a few other alterations in the text of an
older poem that existed in a rmly xed state. This is not correct, for
Bischos edition shows the existence of a highly unstable textual tradition
in this drinking song. This unstable tradition is our starting point, not
a rmly established text. The number and order of strophes are also
unstable.
13
When we examine Bischos rather extensive list of variant readings
(pp. 1920), the instability of our text emerges even more strongly. A few of
the readings he gives may also be found in the Lasso prints: conviviis
rather than convivio and clericum rather than socios in Lassos
strophe 1 appear also in the above-mentioned source M
1
. Lassos strophe 4
has et vinum apponererather than ut sint vina proxima,and Bischo(p.
17) mentions Vinum sit appositum and vinum est apponere. In the
same strophe are to be found sitienti ori (Lasso) rather than morientis
ori and ut dicant cum venerint (Lasso) rather than tunc cantabunt
letius.It was already mentioned above that Et plus quam ecclesiam diligo
bernhold schmi d
126
13
The succession of ve strophes given above is found in the source Sl. Source K is
quite similar in its ordering; it has six stanzas: after 1, 2, 3, and 5 above follows
strophe i from Carmen Buranum 219, and strophe 4 from source Sl serves as its
nal strophe. Sources Vo and Pa have still other numbers and orders of strophes,
though Vo begins with strophe 1.
tabernam (Lasso, strophe 5) rather than Tertio capitulo memoro taber-
namis to be found among Bischos variant readings.
Lassos text and its variants thus t completely into the picture of the
unstable transmission of the drinking song, with its varying number and
order of strophes and its most diverse textual versions: in it we have one of
the numerous versions within the entire text transmission before us. Since
the sources listed by Bischo fall in part within the sixteenth century (M
1
:
1575, K: 1550; the latter stems from Iceland, and the geographic distribu-
tion was also extraordinary), the poems further appearance in Lassos work
is not surprising. Ludwig van Beethoven also took up our text in his
Ritterballet (WoO1): in the autograph Mihi est propositum is written at
the beginning of No. 6, the Trinklied. However, it must have been
intended only as a motto or citation, not as a continuously sung text, since
Beethovens musical declamation corresponds to only the rst three lines of
every half-strophe. Beethoven probably came to know the poem through
his teacher in Bonn, Christof Gottlob Neefe, who produced in 1780 and
1783 two versions of a melody that set a German translation by G. A. Brger
(1777). The Latin text was sung to the melody of Gaudeamus igitur,found
in the collections of student songs (the so-called Kommersbcher, 1788 and
1818).
14
With a composer like Lasso, whose strong involvement with the text
was observed and discussed very early,
15
it is reasonable to ask how far it is
possible to interchange texts without thereby destroying the relationship of
text and music.
16
The contrafactum of Fertur in conviviisin MOMturns
the sense of the original text into its opposite. However, grotesque tensions
result in some measure from the moralizing warning against wine; it strug-
lasso
127
14
The information about Beethoven from Kurt E. Schrman, ed., Ludwig van
Beethoven. Alle vertonten und musikalisch bearbeiteten Texte (Mnster:
Aschendor, 1980), pp. 6312.
15
See for example Joachim Burmeister, Musica poetica (Rostock, 1606), who
analyzed Lassos In me transierunt in accordance with his theory of musical
gures. See Gottfried Scholz, Zur rhetorischen Grundlage von Joachim
Burmeisters Lassus-Analyse. Ein Beitrag zur Frhgeschichte der Musikanalytik,
Zur Geschichte der musikalischen Analyse. Bericht ber die Tagung Mnchen 1993,
ed. Gernot Gruber (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1996), pp. 2543.
16
See for example Richard Freedman, Divin Accords: The Lassus Chansons and
their Protestant Readers of the Late Sixteenth Century, Orlandus Lassus and his
Time, pp. 27394.
gles too much against the original, since it can agree only in part with the
playful character of the composition. To replace the original drinking song
with a serious text, an epitaphium for Clemens non Papa, seems far-
fetched,
17
though it can work in specic places. The chant citation of
Requiem aeternam in the drinking song has a parodistic character, and
the citation can be taken over into the memorial motet for Clemens without
damage, since it takes on a serious character corresponding to the text,
although Lasso repeatedly introduces chant quoted in a parodistic sense
into less serious compositions.
18
The passage in the original, cantantes
(pro ebriis),so strongly expressive of the text, is completely unproblematic
in cantare (pro mortuo) in the epitaphium, and thus the text expression
in the original continues to be valid. These however are exceptions in our
piece, since its compositional style on the whole cannot serve for a lament-
ing text. Boetticher not unreasonably brings the original into relationship
with Lucescit jam o sociiand the four-voice villanescas through strophic
construction, songlike caesuras, and dancelike meter.
19
Songlike caesuras
come about in connection with the extensive declamation of the text in
block chords, dancelike meter through the frequent rhythmic patterns in
three beats. The piece is in tempus imperfectum diminutum, but several
passages in tempus perfectum diminutum are introduced (loqui facit
clericum,Potatores incliti,ut gustare noverint bonum haustum vini).
In addition, the hidden three-beat patterns brought about by syncopations
within the duple meter are striking (see Ex. 6.1). (See also for example
vinus vina vinum,mm. 46, et in neutro genere,mm. 1315, and inter
omnia, mm. 256, as well as the subsequent cadence on vinum pertran-
sire, mm. 268.) Finally, unexpectedly short note values, which are none
the less underlaid with text, leap to the eyes (see Ex. 6.2). All this seems to
bernhold schmi d
128
17
See also Ludwig Finscher and Annegrit Laubenthal, Cantiones quae vulgo
motectae vocantur. Arten der Motette im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, in Ludwig
Finscher, ed., Die Musik des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, Teil 2, Neues Handbuch
der Musikwissenschaft vol. 3,2 (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1990), p. 348.
18
On the citation of the Gregorian Requiem aeternam and similar chant
citations see Bernhard Meier, Melodiezitate in der Musik des 16. Jahrhunderts,
Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 20 (19645),
p. 3; he refers to the contrafactum text from MOMfound in SW, without noting
that SW, vol. 3, p. viii, prints the original text.
19
Boetticher, Lasso, p. 595 (Lucescit jam o socii, SW2, vol. 16, p. 174, and SWNR,
vol. 1, p. 121) and p. 230 (comparison with the villanescas).
have been done so as to make the meter stagger, which corresponds to the
parodistic character of the original text, perhaps even to connect it very
directly with the staggering of a drunken person. In any case it does not
match in the least the character of a lament.
If one considers the text-expressive passages in the original in com-
parison with the epitaphium, the impression is then reinforced that the
lamenting text and the music that was not originally written for it do not
belong together. The succession of semiminims at leviter salire in the
original text is clearly to be understood as expressive of the text, while
artibus laudare in the epitaphium cannot be connected convincingly
with the semiminims (see Ex. 6.3). On the other hand, when leviter salire
appears in the epitaphium (the original had huic potatori at that point,
mm. 779), longer note values appear. In strophe 4, verse 4 of the original
text Deus is emphasized with two breves, which can be understood as a
lasso
129
Example 6.1: Fertur in conviviis, mm. 646, original text
&
&
V
?
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
in
in
-
tum
-
tum

w
ta - ber -

w b
ta - ber -

w
in ta - ber -

w b
in ta - ber -
w b

na mo - ri
w
#
na mo - ri
w
na mo - ri
w

na mo - ri
Example 6.2: Fertur in conviviis, mm. 678, original text
&
&
V
?

w
et vi -

w
et vi -

w
et vi -

w
et vi -

num ap - po - ne - re



Example 6.2
noma. When the epitaphium places Et E(rato) under these long notes,
they lose their meaning. Finally, the underlay (heu) tristes exequias lachri-
mis madentes under a rhythm of longshortlongshort in tempus per-
fectum (originally set to ut gustare noverint bonum haustum vini) is
completely inappropriate. In short, the epitaphium must be considered a
failure.
In summary it may be said that the dependence of the various sources
on one another is claried by the variants in the text. Which sources Lassos
sons used for MOMhas not yet been explored suciently.
20
Specic text
variants make it probable, though, that Lechners Selectissimae cantiones
(source F) is the basis for Fertur in conviviis in MOM. The large number
of previously unknown text variants is itself an indication of the need for
the revision of the motet volumes of the collected edition. The source of
Lassos text can be established. Finally, it can be shown once again that in a
contrafactum problems of the relationship between text and music often,
though not inevitably, arise.
*
Let us return to our starting point, the Oxford contratenor partbook of the
Meslanges dOrlande de Lassus of 1576 (E2). It was remarked at the begin-
ning that in this source changes and cancellations in the text were found not
only in Fertur in conviviis but also in other compositions. They can be
mentioned briey in closing: Vous qui aymez(fol. 41v): in the last line in
bernhold schmi d
130
20
See Horst Leuchtmann, Zum Ordnungsprinzip in Lassos Magnum Opus
Musicum, Musik in Bayern, 40 (1990), pp. 4672, especially pp. 479.
Example 6.3: Fertur in conviviis, mm. 312, original text above,
epitaphium text below
&
&
V
?
-
-

las
is
le -
ar -
vi -
ti -
ter
bus
sa -
lau -
li -
da -
-
-

is
las le -
ar -
vi -
ti -
ter
bus
sa -
lau -
li -
da -
-
-

las
is
le -
ar -
vi -
ti -
ter
bus
sa -
lau -
li -
da -
-
-

las
is
le -
ar -
vi -
ti -
ter
bus
sa -
lau -
li -
da -
w
re,
re,
w
re,
re,
w
re,
re,
w
re,
re,
nomine Domine is crossed out. Deus qui bonum vinum (fol. 35r): the
rst Deus is crossed out but still can be read; the second line also begins
with Deus, which is crossed out and completely unreadable. Vinum
bonum et suave (fol. 84v, Contra; fol. 85r, secundus Bassus): text variants
are introduced at two points:
Original text Variants
Christus vinum semel fecit Bacchus vinum semper nobis inf
ex aqua, quod non defecit ex aqua, quod non defecit
. . . . . .
Ergo Christum invocemus Ergo Bacchum invocemus
In the contra the line Christus vinum semel fecit is crossed out, and the
cancellation has led to the ink eating away the paper. Christum in the
second passage is also crossed out, and here too the paper has deteriorated.
In the bassus the same cancellations and erosion of the paper are found, but
the variants are written above the original text. The meaning of the syllable
inf is unclear; possibly a more extensive emendation of the text following
Bacchus was planned but not carried out, which would also apply to the
following verse. It is signicant that both times Christus was replaced by
Bacchus,which leads to the conclusion that in Deus qui bonum vinum
the same change would have been undertaken.
When one considers the diverse manuscript alterations in the Oxford
copy of the Meslanges as well as the variants in the original text of Fertur in
conviviis listed above in its reprints, it may be seen that all of the changes
that have to do with the subject of drinking lend a more caustic character to
the text. This is unusual and should be especially noted at the end of this
study, since alterations in texts are usually for the purpose of purication
and are more likely to soften than to intensify the original.
Translated by Peter Bergquist
lasso
131
7 Orlando di Lasso and Rome: personal contacts
and musical inuences
noel oregan
The common use of the Italian version of his name serves to under-
line the important part played by Italy and Italian music in the life and
work of Orlando di Lasso. His earliest adult musical experiences took place
there inthe 1550s andhe paidfrequent visits thereafter; he composedmad-
rigals and villanelle to Italian texts and his music attained considerable
popularity in Italy. This essay examines Lassos relations with one impor-
tant Italian center, Rome. Personal and musical contacts between the com-
poser and the city occurred during three main periods: the early 1550s
when, as a young man, he lived and worked there; the early 1560s when his
compositions played a major part in an exchange of music between Rome
and Munich; and the year 1574 when he revisited the papal city while on a
tour of Italy looking for singers.
1
The 1550s and 1574 provided opportu-
nities for personal contacts with Roman musicians; as well as the 1560s
exchange, evidence of musical contact also comes from Roman manu-
scripts and fromcontemporary inventories of music held at the citys insti-
tutions.
Of particular interest is the possibility of musical cross-fertilization
between Lasso and Palestrina, the two major musical gures in their respec-
tive cities, who also coincidentally died in the same year. While there is no
direct evidence of personal contact between them, these two composers
must surely have known each other when they simultaneously held posi-
tions as maestri di cappella at Romes two most important basilicas during
the early 1550s. In a city with as small a population as Rome then had
(around 80,000) it is inconceivable that they should not have had some
contact. We do not know exactly how long Lasso spent at S. Giovanni in
132
1
Leuchtmann, Leben, p. 170.
Laterano: the only known reference to him in the basilicas archives is to the
granting of a cotta to il maestro cappella Orlando on 21 May 1553.
2
Evidence from another archival source (see below) establishes that he was
already in the post on 31 March of that year
3
and may have taken up the
position as early as 1552: he had denitely left by December 1554, and
Samuel Quickelberg, writing in 1566, said that he served a bienniumat S.
Giovanni.
4
So a tenure from late 1552 to late 1554 seems most likely.
Palestrina was maestro at the Cappella Giulia in S. Pietro from 1551 to 1555.
At that stage there would have been quite a contrast between the two men:
the slightly younger Lasso was already a cosmopolitan musician, having
seen the court of Charles V in Flanders as well as service in Mantua, Milan,
and Naples; Palestrina, on the other hand, had been plucked from the rela-
tive obscurity of an organists post in the town of Palestrina to become
maestro di cappella at St. Peters, and had no experience beyond the Roman
hinterland.
The archconfraternity of Santissimo Crocesso in
San Marcello
One institution which could have provided a point of contact
between the two musicians was the Arciconfraternit del Santissimo
Crocesso attached to the church of S. Marcello, for which both organized
musicians during those years (Lasso in 1553 and Palestrina in 1552, 1558,
and 1570). In particular, Palestrina and Lasso organized singers in succes-
sive years (1552 and 1553) for the Holy Thursday/Good Friday procession
which had been pioneered by that body and in which all the confraternities
of Rome took part.
5
This was the only major Roman institution, apart from
S. Giovanni in Laterano, for which Lasso is known to have organized music.
Table 7.1 gives all surviving payments which either mention one of the two
composers by name, or which remunerate singers from the institutions for
orlando di lasso and rome
133
2
Raaele Casimiri, Orlando di Lasso, maestro di cappella al Laterano (Rome:
Edizione del Psalterium, 1920).
3
See below, Table 7.1.
4
Quoted in Leuchtmann, Leben, p. 89.
5
For information on this and other Roman processions see Noel ORegan,
Processions and their Music in Post-Tridentine Rome, Recercare, 4 (1992),
pp. 4580.
noel o
regan
134
Table 7.1 Documented payments by the Arciconfraternit del
Santissimo Crocefisso to Lasso or Palestrina
a
scudi
LASSO
8 Aprile 1553. A M. Orlanno maestro di cappella di Sancto Giovanni
scudi quattro et baiocchi quaranta e sonno per il Venerdi Santo in
processione a Sancto Pietro. 4.40
(Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Arciconfraternit del SS. Crocefisso, A-XI-20,
Libro entrate-uscite 155253, fol. 25v)
16 Giugno 1553 (Processione del Corpus Domini). Alli cantori di S.
Giovanni 2
Pifari de Castello 2
Pifari de Campidoglio 1.50
Trombetti de Campidoglio 1.50
(A-XI-15, Libro entrate-uscite 155054, fol. 73v)
23 Giugno 1553. Per la festa di Santa Croce alli cantori di S. Giovanni
in Laterano 1.50
(A-XI-15, fol. 74)
PALESTRINA
22 Aprile 1552. Mandato del maestro de capella de Sancto Pietro per la
procesione de la Venerdi Santo scuti cinque e mezo 5.50
Mandato alli trombeti per fare lo bando del Venerdi Santo duo scuti 2
Mandato de Frate Agostino per aconcare lorgano 1
Mandato al maestro de capella de Santo Aluisci per la processione de lo
Venerdi Santo 1
(A-XI-18, Libro entrate-uscite 155152, fol. 4)
22 Aprile 1552. Pagar al maestro di cappella di S. Pietro per haver
accompagnato la sera del Venerdi Santo la nostra processione scudi
cinque de oro 5.50
Pagar ad lo trombetta che ha bandito in li luoghi ordinarii et
extraordinarii le indulgentie et processione del Venerdi Santo 1
(A-XI-15, fol. 37)
7 Aprile 1558. A maestro Rubino [Mallapert] cantor per una cappella di
cantori che viene a la processione del Jovedi Santo alli 7 de Aprile 4
Ali cantori di San Joanni per esser venuti alla processione del Giovedi
Santo paghai al Signor Jo:Batta Salviati 6
(A-XI-27, Libro entrate-uscite 155758 (included with non-foliated
mandati), fol. xv)
15 Giugno 1558. Mandato di scudi dodici de moneta da pagar alli cantori
che venirno al processione del Corpus Domini Mercordi 15 de Junio
1558 vz. scuti quattuor alli cantori di S. Jovanni quattro a quelli di S.
Maria Magior et quattro a quelli di S. Loisi 12
which they were working. This updates and extends the information given
by Domenico Alaleona.
6
In the case of Lasso, only the rst payment (for the Good Friday pro-
cession which fell on 31 March in 1553) mentions him by name and calls
him maestro di cappella di S. Giovanni di Laterano. The other payments
(for the feast of the Discovery of the Holy Cross and the Corpus Christi pro-
cession) simply mention the singers of S. Giovanni (this has to be S.
Giovanni in Laterano: S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini did not have any singers at
this period, nor did any other church dedicated to a S. Giovanni). The inclu-
sion or not of a named maestro di cappella in such records of payment for
135
6
Domenico Alaleona, Storia delloratorio musicale in Italia (Milan: Fratelli Bocca,
1945), pp. 32732.
Table 7.1 (cont.)
On the reverse:
Io Firmino maestro di capella di Santo Ludovico ho riceputo [...] Ita est
Firmin Lebel. Io Adriano Valent maestro di capella di Santa Maria
Maggiore [...] Ita est Adriano Valent. Ho pagato li quattro scudi alli
cantori di San Giovanni li quali porto M. Giovanni de Alatre adi 27 di
Luglio
(A-XI-27, Mandati 155758, non-foliated)
Mandato de scudi dodici de moneta da pagar alli cantori per venirno alla
processione del Corpus Domini Mercordi 15 de Jugnio 1558 vz. scudi 4
alli cantori di S. Jovanni in Laterano, 4 di S. Maria Maggiore e 4 di S.
Loysi. 12
(A-XII-98, Mandati 155761, fol. 13v)
[...] scudi 1.20 per colatione delli trombetti di castello per accompagnorno
sonando la processione del Corpus Domini 1.20
(A-XII-98, fol. 15)
21 Aprile 1570. Pagar ad M. Marcello Tortora [singer at S. Maria
Maggiore] scudi quattro a bon conto della musicha del Giovedi Santo 4
Pagar ad M. Jovanni Pietro Luisio scudi dieci per la musica del Giovedi
Santo questo di 21 di Aprile 1570 10
(A-XII-100, Mandati, 156477, fol. 75)
Note:
a
Where two versions of a payment survive, these are both given. Any payments to
other musicians for the same occasions are also included. Original spelling has
been retained but abbreviated words are written out in full and modern
capitalization is used.
special occasions by Roman institutions was arbitrary: his non-appearance
in the payment does not rule out his participation (in a number of cases
dierent versions of the same payment can include or omit the name of the
person in charge). Since Lasso is not thought to have left Rome until 1554 it
seems reasonable to assume that he was also in charge of the singers from S.
Giovanni on these other two occasions in 1553 though we will probably
never be absolutely sure of this. If this was the case, it trebles the known
occasions for which Lasso provided the confraternity with music and
means that he was eectively its chosen musician-in-charge in 1553.
Palestrinas involvement was on a more extended scale: while only
one payment actually mentions him by name (the Holy Thursday proces-
sion in 1570), that for the same procession in 1552 was made to the maestro
di cappella of S. Pietro, a post known to have been held by him in that year.
The two payments for 1558, by which time Palestrina had taken over Lassos
old position as maestro di cappella at S. Giovanni in Laterano, are more
problematic: for Holy Thursday, with singers hired both from that basilica
and from the then freelance Rubino Mallapert, payment was made, not to
Palestrina, but to one of the singers of S. Giovanni. The same thing hap-
pened for the Corpus Christi procession when three choirs were hired, from
S. Maria Maggiore, S. Luigi dei Francesi, and S. Giovanni in Laterano. The
maestri of the rst two signed for the money due to their singers, but
Palestrina did not; instead it was signed for over a month later by one of his
singers. This was not uncommon and, as stated above, does not rule out
Palestrinas involvement. The sums of money involved imply that the major
part of the choir was involved, and it is reasonable to assume that Palestrina
was also present. His nal known provision of music for SS. Crocesso
(upgraded to the rank of archconfraternity since 1564) was in 1570, again
for the Holy Thursday procession. Although still only providing one of the
choirs, he was now paid ten scudi, which would indicate that he provided a
greater number of singers.
As well as singers, the archives also record payments to piari (cor-
netts and trombones) and trumpeters. These were always found at Roman
processions, though there is no evidence that they accompanied the
singers. Groups of singers and instrumentalists were spaced out along the
processions length, particularly at the head and tail. The great Holy Week
procession started on the evening of Holy Thursday and continued
noel o
regan
136
through the night into Good Friday, with members of all Roman confrater-
nities (in habits and hoods) making their way from their individual church
or oratory to St. Peters Basilica, where they were shown relics of the Passion
(veil of Veronica, spear of Longinus etc.) before making their way back to
their bases. Many of the confraternities included agellants among their
number. Of note is the payment to a trumpeter in 1552 for broadcasting
news of the special indulgences to be gained by those taking part in this pro-
cession, a common method of advertising in those days. The Corpus
Domini procession was a more local aair, held by each confraternity
within its own locality.
There is no evidence that either composer was a member of the arch-
confraternity of SS. Crocesso: neither name appears in a register of
members from 1550 to 1557.
7
Palestrinas grandmother had left four
barrels of wine to the archconfraternity in her will of 1527 and she may have
been aliated.
8
Among its members were the piari di castello (i.e. the
papal windband) and many of the papal singers, who normally belonged to
this confraternity: Palestrina would thus have participated in corporate
membership during his period of service in the papal choir
(JanuarySeptember 1555). Although he also seems not to have been a
member, the exiled Florentine Archbishop Antonio Altoviti left fty scudi
to the archconfraternity in his will on his death in 1573.
9
Now Lasso was a
member of Altovitis circle while in Rome in the 1550s and was a guest at the
Altoviti palace.
10
Another member of that circle was the Tuscan composer
Giovanni Animuccia, who was to succeed Palestrina as maestro di cappella
at the Cappella Giulia in 1555, and who dedicated his Primo libro de motetti
of 1552 to the archbishop. Another member of the Altoviti circle at that
time was Filippo Neri, who was already embarked on his apostolate with the
young people of Rome and was shortly to start including the singing of
laude spirituali in his gatherings, many composed by Animuccia. Lasso was
thus in personal contact with two of the most important gures in Roman
musical and devotional life during his early years in the city.
137
7
Rome, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Fondo SS. Crocesso, Z-I-48.
8
Lino Bianchi and Giancarlo Rostirolla, Iconograa palestriniana (Lucca: Libraria
musicale italiana, 1994), p. 51.
9
Rome, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Fondo SS. Crocesso, F-XIX-23, non-foliated.
10
Donna Cardamone Jackson, Orlando di Lasso and Pro-French Factions in
Rome, Orlandus Lassus and his Time, pp. 2344.
What music might Lasso have provided for the confraternitys pro-
cessions? We can only speculate, with little to go on at this period. Later in
the century we know that motets for four and ve voices, litanies and psalms
were sung in processions such as these.
11
A number of motets in Lassos Il
primo libro de motetti a cinque e a sei voce of 1556 have texts suitable for Holy
Week, with themes of penitence and conversion (for example, Peccavi
quid faciam, Domine, non est exaltatum cor meum, and Domine pro-
basti me). Another of those pieces, Gustate et videte, has a text which is
normally associated with the Eucharist; Wolfgang Boetticher reported
Edward Lowinskys speculation that it might have been written for the
Corpus Christi procession at S. Giovanni in Laterano in 1553.
12
The piece
appears in both a Roman manuscript and print (see below, Table 7.2); while
both date from well after Lassos time in Rome, it is possible that the motet
(which is in a style more consistent with the 1550s than later) was composed
by him in 1553, when it could have been used for either the Holy Thursday
or Corpus Christi processions, or both (since the former feast is also cen-
tered on the Eucharist).
A musical exchange between Rome and Munich
It was to be nearly ten years before there was any further explicit
musical contact between Lasso and the city. In 15612 an exchange of music
was organized between Munich and Rome, with the inuential Cardinal
Otto, Truchsess von Waldburg, acting as intermediary.
13
This exchange
may have been motivated by contemporary discussions about the suitabil-
ity of polyphonic styles of sacred music, though there is no specic evi-
dence of this. It might simply have been an act of homage by one court to
another at a time when Cardinal Otto would have been keen to cement rela-
tionships between Rome and Munich. The retention of Bavaria within the
Catholic fold was of crucial importance to Truchsess who, as well as being
Bishop of Augsburg, also represented the Holy Roman Emperor at the
papal court. His personal interest in music and his enthusiasm for Lassos
noel o
regan
138
11
See ORegan, Processions.
12
Boetticher, Lasso, p. 127.
13
Lewis Lockwood, The Counter-Reformation and the Masses of Vincenzo Ruo
(Vienna: Universal, 1970), p. 82.
music in particular are well documented.
14
It was exactly at this time too
that he formed his own cappella, with Jacobus de Kerle as maestro.
15
Music from Munich was sent to Rome rst, all of it seemingly com-
posed by Lasso (although he was not yet maestro di cappella at the Munich
court), but there is no record of what exactly it was. On 28 February 1561
Cardinal Otto reported from Rome that Lassos music, particularly the
masses, has pleased not only [Cardinal] Vitelli in particular, and everyone
here, but especially Cardinal Borromeo, who has had them copied and
wishes to have them performed in the Papal Chapel. Unfortunately, no
manuscript copies of masses by Lasso survive in the Cappella Sistina
library, or in any other Roman collection (though printed copies do see
below). On the other hand, the cardinals statement implies that works
other than masses were also sent: a number of motets by Lasso are found in
Roman manuscripts, and it is perhaps among them that we must look for
tangible evidence of the music by Lasso known in the city. We do know that
Palestrinas Missa Benedicta es was sent to Munich.
16
Lasso was subse-
quently to base a Magnicat on the model for Palestrinas mass (Josquins
Benedicta es caelorum Regina), a clear acknowledgment that he had
taken the Roman work seriously.
Lassos 1574 visit to Rome
Another opportunity for personal contact betweenLassoandRoman
composers came in 1574 when Lasso is known to have visited the city and
presented Pope Gregory XIII with the second book of his Patrocinium
Musices, the Missae Aliquot, dedicated to the pope, receiving in return the
139
14
Truchsess asked Duke Albrecht of Bavaria to bring his singers (led by Lasso)
with him when he visited the cardinal at Dillingen for Christmas 1566. See
Adolf Layer, Musikpege am Hofe der Frstbischfe von Augsburg in der
Renaissancezeit,Jahrbuch des Vereins fr Augsburger bistumsgeschichte, 10
(1986), p. 204.
15
See Otto Ursprung, Jacobus de Kerle (Munich: J. Heldwein, 1913).
16
Palestrinas mass was copied into Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Mus.
Ms. 46, about 1565. It was accompanied by the Missa Ultimi miei sospiri in
Mus. Ms. 45, said to have been composed by F. Roussel/Rosselli (See
Lockwood, Vincenzo Ruo, p. 82), but KBM 5/1, p. 170, has now claried its
authorship as being by the north Italian composer Giovanni Maria de Rossi
(Il Rosso).
Order of the GoldenSpur fromPope Gregory XIII. Lassowas inRome from
15 to 20 March and again around 6 April, visiting Naples in between. It is
dicult toimaginehimnot seekingout Palestrina, sincethetwowouldhave
hadsomuchtodiscuss about developments insacredmusic inthe years fol-
lowing the Council of Trent. The 6thof April was the Tuesday of Holy Week
andit is possible, evenlikely, that Lassomanagedtoattendsome HolyWeek
services in the city, for example at the Cappella Giulia, and the Holy
Thursdayprocessionof confraternities. Sincehewasonarecruitingmission
hewouldhavebeenkeentohearasmanysingersandmusiciansaspossible. It
can hardly be just a coincidence that later in the same year, on 9 October
1574, the Germanorganist at St. Peters, MarkHoutermann, was givena rise
insalaryfromthreescudi amonthtofour becausehehadthreatenedtoleave
to work for the Duke of Bavaria, and the authorities at St. Peters wanted to
keep himsince he had given excellent service for thirteen years.
17
If Lasso
heardandmet Houtermann, he must alsohave met Palestrina, the Cappella
Giuliasmaestro. It isalsohighlylikelythat LassovisitedtheGermanCollege,
wherehewouldhavemet theyoungVictoria, thenModerator Musicae.
Music by Lasso known in Rome
Seven four-voice motets by Lasso were included in an anthology of
1563, compiled by Antonio Barr, the Rome-based printer and editor who
had been a member of the Cappella Giulia in 15523, while Lasso was in
Rome.
18
Five of these had already appeared in Lassos own rst publication,
his Il primo libro dovesi contengono madrigali, villanesche, canzoni francesi,
et motetti a quattro voci (Antwerp, Susato, 1555);
19
for the other two, Quia
noel o
regan
140
17
Giancarlo Rostirolla, La Cappella Giulia in S. Pietro negli anni del magistero di
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Atti del convegno di studi Palestriniani, 28
settembre2 ottobre 1975, ed. Francesco Luisi (Palestrina: [s.n.], 1977), p. 246.
18
Liber primvs mvsarvm cvm qvattvor vocibus sacrarvm cantionvm qve vvlgo motetta
vocantvr ab Orlando di Lassvs, Cipriano Rore, et aliis ecclesiasticis avthoribvs
compositarum, ab Antonio Barr collectarum & in lucem nunc primum editarum
(Venice: Gardano, RISM 1563
3
).
19
There were two editions of this publication printed in Antwerp in 1555, one
with the Italian title given here and the other with the French title, Le
quatoirsiesme livre quatre parties contenant dixhuyct chansons italiennes, six
chansons franoises, et six motetz...par Rolando di Lassus (RISM 1555b and 1555a
respectively).
vidisti me Thoma and Scio enim quod redemptor meus vivit, Barrs
anthology is the earliest known source. Though printed in Venice as part of
a series edited by Barr for Gardano (the other volumes concentrated on
secular music) the anthology gives a good indication of the music available
and sung in Rome at this time. As well as the seven pieces by Lasso (the
largest number by a single composer) there were three by Cipriano de Rore,
two each by Palestrina, Adrian Valent, and Hernando Lerma (all of whom
had musical positions in Roman churches), and one each by Paolo
Animuccia, Josquin Baston, Jacob Clemens, Johannes Lupi, Jean Maillard,
and the Italian, Annibale Zoilo, Palestrinas earliest protg. One further
early Lasso motet is found in both a Roman manuscript and printed source
dating from the 1590s: the ve-voice Gustate et videte,mentioned earlier,
which rst appeared in Lassos Il primo libro de motetti a cinque & a sei voci
of 1556 (Antwerp, Laet). It is possible that these Lasso motets were among
the pieces sent to Rome in 1562, though it seems more probable that Lasso
would have sent more up-to-date music. All of the motets in Barrs 1563
anthology are stylistically similar, examples of standard mid-century
Franco-Flemish imitative polyphony, characterized in particular by long
melismatic lines.
Table 7.2 lists individual pieces by Lasso found in Roman manu-
scripts (dates of rst publication are given in brackets). Printed music by
the composer is also included in a number of surviving Roman inventories
dating from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: Table 7.3
lists particular prints which can be identied, together with the institutions
where they appear. Publications of Lassos sacred music feature particularly
strongly in an inventory from the Chiesa Nuova (perhaps reecting Lassos
acquaintance with Filippo Neri in the early 1550s). They are also included
in sixteenth-century lists from San Luigi dei Francesi and San Rocco.
20
The
Cappella Ponticia has only his 1574 masses, presumably the copy pre-
sented by the composer to Pope Gregory XIII in that same year. Evidence of
Roman performances of specic pieces is conned to his setting of Deus
misereatur nostri, sung at the Collegio Germanico on 17 January 1583
141
20
On the other hand, there are signicant Roman institutions for which
inventories of printed music survive which do not include Lasso; these include
the Cappella Giulia, S. Giovanni in Laterano, S. Maria Maggiore, S. Lorenzo in
Damaso, S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli, and S. Maria di Monserrato.
noel o
regan
142
Table 7.2 Pieces by Lasso found in Roman manuscripts
(Rn=Biblioteca Nazionale; Rsc=Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia;
Rvat =Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)
5vv Gustate et videte (1st ed. 1556) Rsc G 796804
a
Benedicam Dominum (1562) Rn Mss. Mus. 7788
Confitemini Domino (1562) Rn Mss. Mus. 7788
In me transierunt (1562) Rvat Cappella Sistina 484
Surrexit pastor bonus (1562) Rsc G 796804
a
6vv Quare tristis es, anima mea (1564) Rn Mss. Mus. 7788
Locutus sum in lingua mea (1568) Rn Mss. Mus. 7788
8vv In convertendo Dominus (1565) All three 8vv pieces are found in:
Deus misereatur nostri (1566) Rn Mss. Mus. 7788 (revised)
Levavi oculos meos in montes (1566) Rvat Cappella Giulia XIII 24
(revised)
Rsc G 792795/Rn Mss. Mus.
117121 (revised)
Note:
a
These pieces are also found in Jean Matelart, Responsoria, antiphonae et hymni in
processionibus per annum (Rome: Nicolo Mutii, 1596).
Table 7.3 Publications by Lasso listed in inventories from Roman
churches
Motettorum 5,6vv (1561) (Chiesa Nuova)
Sacrae Cantiones 5vv (Nuremberg, 1562) (San Rocco)
Sacrae lectiones novem (Venice, 1565) (San Luigi dei Francesi)
Sacrae cantiones liber secundus 5,6vv (Venice, 1566) (Chiesa Nuova)
Sacrae cantiones liber tertius 5,6vv (Venice, 1566) (Chiesa Nuova)
Motettorum 6,7vv (1569) (Chiesa Nuova)
Patrocinium Musices...missae aliquot, secunda pars, 5vv (Munich, 1574) (Cappella
Sistina)
Patrocinium Musices...Magnificat aliquot, quinta pars, 46, 8vv (Munich, 1576)
(Chiesa Nuova)
The Chiesa Nuova inventory (1608) lists two further books of motets by Lasso
without sufficient information to identify them exactly.
after Compline as part of a special Forty-Hours Devotion to pray that the
Archbishop of Cologne would not turn Lutheran.
21
Particularly signicant
evidence of his continued popularity in Rome is the fact that the maestro at
S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Felice Anerio, caused six unspecied pieces by
Lasso to be copied from a print in 1590.
22
Two of the pieces in Table 7.2,
Gustate et videte and Surrexit pastor bonus, are found in sources con-
nected with both S. Spirito in Sassia (the Rsc partbooks) and S. Lorenzo in
Damaso (Matelarts 1596 publication).
23
The three eight-voice pieces are
found in manuscripts connected with the Cappella Giulia, Chiesa Nuova,
and SS. Trinit dei Pellegrini. All of this represents a considerable number
of Roman institutions with experience of Lassos music. Further evidence
of interest is provided by an inventory of the goods found in the room of the
rector of the Collegio Capranica on 5 September 1590: included was an
unspecied bundle of books by Orlando di Lasso, the only named com-
poser in the list. These may, however, have been madrigals, since the inven-
tory also lists a set of ve viols and a cittern.
24
An inventory of the books
found in the shop of a bookseller called Giacomo Verrecchio in the Via del
Pellegrino, at his death on 1 July 1591 included copies of Lassos rst and
third books of madrigals a4, his rst, second and fth books of madrigals
a5, and fteen copies of an unspecied book of motets.
25
Perhaps the most signicant thing to emerge from the two tables is the
predominance of individual pieces and publications dating from the 1560s.
143
21
Archives of the Germano-Hungarian College in Rome, Diario del Padre Michele
Lauretano 15823, 51. Quoted as Document 60 in Thomas D. Culley, Jesuits and
Music, i: A Study of the Musicians Connected with the German College in Rome
during the 17th Century and of their Activities in Northern Europe (Rome: Jesuit
Historical Institute, 1970).
22
Rome, Archive of S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, 197, unfoliated.
23
ORegan, Processions.
24
Vera Vita Spagnuolo, Gli atti notarili dellArchivio di Stato di Roma. Saggio di
spoglio sistematico: lanno 1590, La musica a Roma attraverso le fonti darchivio:
Atti del convegno internazionale, Roma 47 giugno 1992, ed. Bianca Maria
Antolini, Arnaldo Morelli, and Vera Vita Spagnuolo (Lucca: Libreria musicale
italiana, 1994), p. 63.
25
Ibid., pp. 578. Only one book of four-voice madrigals by Lasso is known to
exist. It is not clear whether the reference to a third book is in error or evidence
of a madrigal book that has not survived. If the latter, it would follow that a
second book has also been lost. Further on this see Boetticher, Lasso, pp. 751
and 754, s.v. 1563 and 1565.
This implies either a strong interest in Lassos music during this decade in
Rome, or a continued interest in the music which Lasso published in the
1560s, or most likely both. Now it was precisely during this decade that
Roman church music, undergoing radical change in the aftermath of the
Council of Trent, would have been most open to inuence by Lassos music.
If this were the case it is likely to have been felt mostly in the areas of texture
and sonority, since melodically there remained signicant dierences
between Lasso and Roman composers.
It was in the matter of texture, in particular, that a fundamental
change took place in Roman church music during the 1560s. It is, however,
dicult to pinpoint this precisely in the published works of Palestrina and
Giovanni Animuccia, the only composers publishing in the city during that
decade; the unresolved debate over the dating of the Missa Papae Marcelli
is a witness to this. It is compounded by the fact that Palestrinas severely
imitative and contrapuntal 1563 Motecta festorum totius anni are for four
voices only, and would thus be less likely to exhibit newer textural tenden-
cies; his next book of motets, the Primo libro dei mottetti a cinque, sei e sette
voci of 1569, shows a pronounced move to more layered homophony, at
least some of which is the result of the greater number of voices employed.
Palestrina published no masses between the strongly Franco-Flemish rst
book of 1554 and those of 1567 which were written, as he himself said in the
dedication, in a new manner. Animuccias only published masses are
those of his Missarum liber primus of 1567 in which he endeavored that the
music might disturb the hearing of the text as little as possible.These, and
his Magnicats of 1568, show a signicant break from the style of his earlier
works, but he had not published any sacred music since 1552.
All but two of the Lasso pieces in Table 7.2 (Benedicam Dominum
and Gustate et videte) have the sort of antiphonal dialogue between sub-
groups of voices which became a feature of both Palestrinas and
Animuccias style from their 1567 masses onwards. For instance, Example
7.1, taken from In me transierunt, found in the manuscript, Cappella
Sistina 484 (and published in 1562), and Example 7.2, taken from Locutus
sum in lingua mea in the Biblioteca Nazionale partbooks (and published
in 1568), are clear examples of the sort of pseudo-polyphonic writing
which was seen to satisfy the requirements of the Council of Trent, while
showing a keen sensitivity to the words. These can be compared to Example
noel o
regan
144
7.3, from Palestrinas Crucem sanctam subiitfrom 1569, or Example 7.4,
from Animuccias Missa Christe Redemptor of 1567. Another feature of
all these examples is the stronger harmonic sense, reinforced by a bass line
which moves a lot in fourths and fths.
Now, it would be simplistic to claim that Lassos was the only
inuence which led to Animuccia and Palestrina adopting this new style.
There were other models to hand for Roman composers: some of these tex-
tural features are already found in the music of Morales and, in particular,
in that of Jacobus de Kerle, such as his Preces Speciales or his Sex Missae, both
from 1562. Kerle was regularly in Rome between 1562 and 1565 in the
145
Example 7.1: Orlando di Lasso, In me transierunt (1562), mm. 2639
(CM, vol. 2)
Cantus
Altus
Tenor 1
Tenor 2
Bassus
&
V
V
V
?
26
w w
i> con -
.
w
i> con -
w w
i> con -
w w
tu - i>
i>
tur - ba - ve- runt

.

tur - ba- ve- runt
.

tur - ba- ve- runt

con -
w

me,
w

me,
.

me, <con- tur- ba -
w

tur - ba -

.

con - tur- ba -
w

<con - tur -
w
<con -

ve- runt me,> con -
w
ve- runt me,

w
ve- runt me,

#
ba - ve - runt
w
w
tur - ba - - -
.

tur - ba- ve - runt

<con -

<con -

me,> con- tur- ba- ve -
w

I
ve - runt
w

me:
.

tur - ba- ve - runt
.

tur - ba- ve - runt
&
V
V
V
?
32
-

w
runt me:
w

me:>
w
cor
w
w
me:> cor
w
w
me:> cor
cor
w
w #
me -
w
w
me -
w
w
me -
w
cor
me -
w
w
um,
w
w
um,
w
w
um
w
w #
me -
um
w .

<cor me -
w
w
cor me -
w

w
w
um
w w
con -
w

um> con -
w
.

um con -

con -

tur- ba- tum

tur- ba- tum

tur- ba- tum

tur- ba- tum
. w

con - tur -
w
est, <con- tur -
w

est, <cor me -
w

est, <con- tur -
w

est,

w
ba-tum est,

ba-tum est,> con -
.

um con -

ba-tum est,> con -

<con-
noel o
regan
146
Example 7.2: Orlando di Lasso, Locutus sum in lingua mea (1568), mm.
5766 (CM, vol. 6, pp. 523)
Cantus
Altus 1
Altus 2
Tenor
Bassus 1
Bassus 2
&
V
V
V
?
?
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
57
-
w
num,
-
w w
num,>
-
w
w
num,
w
w
num,> ut

ut
w

ut vi - de -
w

ut vi - de -

vi - de - ant qui

vi - de - ant

ant qui o - de -

ant qui o - de -
.

o - de - - - -

qui o - de -

ut vi - de -
w

runt me, ut
w w
runt me,
-
w
runt

ut
w
w
runt me,

ant qui

vi - - - de -

ut vi - de -
w

me,

vi - de - ant
w

&
V
V
V
?
?
62
.

o - de - - -

ant qui o - de -

ant qui o - de -

qui o - de -
w
runt me,
w
w #
runt me,
w
w
runt me,

et
w

runt me, et

et

et
#

et

et

w
con- fun - dan-tur,

b
w
con- fun - dan-tur,

w
con- fun - dan-tur,

con- fun - dan - tur, et

b

con- fun - dan - tur, et

con- fun - dan - tur, <et
et

et

<et

#

con- fun- dan- tur, quo-
w
con- fun- dan- tur,

w #
con - fun- dan -

w
con- fun- dan- tur,

w
con- fun- dan- tur,
w
con- fun- dan- tur,>
employ of Cardinal Truchsess who, as we have seen, was a key mover in
musical trac.
26
The most that can be said is that newer stylistic features of
texture and harmony are found widely in Lassos publications from the
early 1560s; some of this music was known and used in Rome and could well
have helped show the way forward during those crucial few years immedi-
ately after the end of the Council of Trent. The esteem in which Lasso was
147
26
Ferdinand Siebert, Zwischen Kaiser und Papst: Kardinal Truchsess von Waldburg
und die Anfnge der Gegenreformation in Deutschland (Berlin: Junker und
Dnnhaupt Verlag, 1943), pp. 3545. Truchsess had earlier accepted the
dedication of Glareans controversial Dodecachordon in 1547 and was later to be
the patron of Victoria and the dedicatee of his rst book of motets in 1572.
Example 7.3: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Crucem Sanctam subiit
(1569), mm. 3342
Cantus
Altus
Tenor 1
Tenor 2
Bassus
&
&
V
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
33
.

ten - - - ti -
.

po - - ten -

w
po - ten -
.

ten - - - -

sur -
w

a, sur -

ti - a, sur -
w
w
ti - a,

w
ti - a,
w

re - xit di -
w

re - xit di -
w

re - xit di -

.
e ter - ti -

. #
e ter - ti -

.

e ter - ti -
w

a,
w

a,

a, sur - re - xit

w
sur - re -

w
sur - re -
&
&
V
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
38

di - e ter -
w

xit di - e
w

xit di - e

w
ti - a,
.

w
ter - ti - a,
. b
w
ter - ti - a,
w
w
sur - re -
w w
sur - re -
w
w
sur - re -
w
sur - re -
w
w
sur - re -

xit di - e ter -
w

xit di - e
w

xit di - e

xit di - e ter -
w

xit di - e
w
ti - a.

ter - ti - a.
.
w
ter - ti - a.

ti - a.
.

w
ter - ti - a.
already widely held, together with the memory of personal contact in the
1550s, would have added weight to any examples of his up-to-date music
which might have reached Rome.
Polychoral music
In the area of polychoral music the evidence for Lassos inuence on
Roman composers is more direct. In particular, three eight-voice pieces by
Lasso are found, in a revised form, in the three related sets of Roman part-
books listed in Table 7.2. It appears that these pieces, together with others by
noel o
regan
148
Example 7.4: Giovanni Animuccia, Gloria from Missa Christe
Redemptor (1567), mm. 8393
Cantus
Altus
Tenor 1
Tenor 2
Bassus
&
&
V
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
83
w

tris, mi - se -
w

tris, mi - se -
w

tris, mi - se -
w

tris,
w

tris,

w
re - re no -

w #
re - re no -
b

w
re - re no -
w
bis. Quo - ni -
w

bis.
w
bis. Quo - ni -
.
w
Quo - ni -
. w
Quo - ni -

am tu so - lus
#

am tu so - lus

am tu so - lus

am tu so - lus
w

san - ctus, tu

tu
w
san - ctus, tu
w

san - ctus, tu
w w
san - ctus,
&
&
V
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
88

.

so - lus Do - mi -

.

so - lus Do - mi -

.
so - lus Do - mi -

.

so - lus Do - mi -

w
nus,
w

nus, tu
.
#

N
nus, tu
w

nus, tu

tu
.
so - lus Do - mi -

.

so - lus Do - mi -

.

so - lus Do - mi -

.

so - lus Do - mi -
w
tu so -
w

nus, tu
w

nus, tu

nus, tu
w

nus, tu
. w
lus al -
w
so - lus al -
w
.

so - lus
w

so - lus al -
w
so - lus al -
.
w

tis - si -
.

tis - si -

al - tis - si -

.
tis - - - si -
.
w

tis - si -
Palestrina and Marenzio, were rewritten in order that they could be per-
formed by separated choirs.
27
Clearly these pieces were known and
admired in Roman circles. As stated above, Deus misereatur nostri is
mentioned in the German College diaries in connection with the Forty-
Hours Devotion though we do not know which version was used. The
presence of the revised versions in the Cappella Giulia partbooks is particu-
larly signicant. The rst layer of these partbooks, which include the Lasso
reworkings, was certainly compiled during Palestrinas second period as
maestro most likely in 1584
28
making it clear that the revisions were
carried out with his approval. While he could have carried them out
himself, the case for his student and colleague in the revision of plainsong,
Annibale Zoilo, is stronger. Rn7788 has two of the three pieces written in a
handwriting which has been identied as Zoilos;
29
it is clear that the origi-
nal Lasso versions were rst written in and then altered by rubbing out and
correcting over; some of the original notes can still be read. The same part-
books have two versions of Palestrinas Laudate Dominum omnes gentes
and Animuccias Pater noster,both the published versions from 1572 and
1570, respectively, and revised versions along the same lines as the Lasso
pieces. The revision of Palestrinas Laudate Dominum could surely only
have been done with the composers sanction, if it was not actually carried
out by himself.
Such revisions for performance purposes by one composer of
anothers music are certainly unusual (as opposed to the adding of an extra
part, or parodying both of which imply an act of homage or imitatio). The
rewriting cannot be said to have improved these pieces: indeed, Wolfgang
Boetticher was misled by this into thinking that the revised versions were in
fact Lassos own earlier attempts.
30
Why did Zoilo not simply write new set-
149
27
Noel ORegan, The Early Polychoral Music of Orlando di Lasso: New Light
from Roman Sources, Acta Musicologica, 56 (1984), p. 234. The paper includes
examples of the alterations.
28
There is a payment in the archives of the Cappella Giulia for the binding of
twelve books of the chapel on 31 January 1584 which may well refer to this set,
since no other set of twelve partbooks is known to have been in the chapel at
this time. See Rostirolla, La Cappella Giulia, p. 273.
29
The handwriting was identied by Lucia Navarrini. See her La musica di
Annibale Zoilo (Florence: Tesi di laurea, Universita degli studi di Firenze, 1984).
30
Wolfgang Boetticher, Eine Frhfassung doppelchriger Motetten Orlando di
Lassos, Archiv fr Musikwissenschaft, 12 (1955), p. 206.
tings of these texts? The revision process suggests homage of a dierent
kind, a desire to keep highly regarded pieces in the repertory by bringing
them up to date for the needs of the 1580s for full cori spezzati pieces. It also
makes clear that these Lasso pieces were known in Rome in their original
form and highly regarded in particular by Zoilo and Palestrina. The
motets were published in Paris and Venice in 1565 and 1566, respectively;
we do not know when they rst arrived in Rome.
The most crucial stage of development for Roman polychoral music
occurred between 1572 and 1575.
31
Eight-voice pieces had been published
by Giovanni Animuccia, Palestrina, and Victoria in 1570 and 1572; these
were not properly polychoral since there was no consistent division into
two choirs, but they had many of the features of that idiom. In 1575
Palestrina published the rst Roman music for two harmonically indepen-
dent choirs; Victoria partly adopted the new style in 1576 and composers
such as Zoilo, Giovanni da Macque, and Annibale Stabile began to write in
the new idiom shortly thereafter. This change could have been entirely
indigenous, but it is natural to look for any antecedents from outside Rome
which might have helped the process. The only non-Roman polychoral
music found in Roman manuscripts which was composed before 1572 are
the three pieces by Lasso listed above and two by Domenico Phinot,
32
Incipit oratio and Tanto tempore. The Phinot pieces were rst pub-
lished in 1547, but are more likely to have reached Rome in the anthology
RISM 1564
1
. They do have some features which were to characterize Roman
polychoral music, particularly in their use of antiphonal repetition by two
largely independent choral groups, but they are still very much in the
experimental stage. The original versions of the three Lasso pieces, on the
other hand, do present many elements which could have inuenced
Palestrina in 1572 and 1575.
Firstly, all three are psalm-motets, as were Palestrinas four 1572
pieces and Jubilate Deo from the 1575 set (the other 1575 pieces also use
sectionalized texts such as sequences or Marian antiphons). In the 1572
pieces Palestrina did not try to mark the divisions of his psalm-derived texts
noel o
regan
150
31
See Noel ORegan, Sacred Polychoral Music in Rome 15751621, unpublished
D. Phil. diss., University of Oxford (1988).
32
These are found in Rsc 7925/Rn 117121, which also contains the revised Lasso
pieces.
into verses by musical means; his concern was more with the individual
phrase or word, and with setting that as eectively as possible. He used his
eight voices as a exible palette, continually changing vocal grouping in
response to the text. In 1575, on the other hand, he made his task easier by
his use of distinct choirs on the Lasso model. From this point on, like Lasso
(and the earlier salmi spezzati of Willaert and Jachet), he does observe the
verse divisions and half-divisions by alternating choirs or by changing from
single choir to tutti. Palestrina also invariably begins with an extended
opening phrase for Choir I, something found in each of the three Lasso
pieces, and a practice which was to continue in use by Roman composers of
polychoral music up to the late 1580s.
In one of the 1572 pieces, Contebor tibi, Palestrina sets dierent
syllables to consecutive semiminims, something very exceptional in his
sacred music, though it was becoming widely used for text declamation in
secular music (see Ex. 7.5). This can be seen in Lassos Locutus sum in
lingua mea (see Ex. 7.2) and is common in his double-choir pieces, as in
Example 7.6 from In convertendo. Younger Roman composers were
much quicker to take up this sort of text declamation, as in Annibale Zoilos
Nunc dimittis from the Cappella Giulia XIII 24 partbooks (see Ex. 7.7).
The antiphonal fragmentation of the text seen in Example 7.6 is exactly
what became common in Roman polychoral music from the 1580s
onwards. On the more general stylistic level, in his eight-voice pieces from
1572, and even more so those from 1575, Palestrina moved closer to Lasso
in using shorter melodic phrases with repeated notes and more harmonic
bass lines, with more frequent cadences. These features occur even more
prominently in the music of Zoilo, Giovanni da Macque and other Rome-
based composers of the late 1570s.
Lassos brief visit to Rome in 1574 came right in the middle of this
period of stylistic change in Roman polychoral music. While one can only
speculate on what might have passed between the two composers, assum-
ing that they met, the time would certainly have been right for an in-depth
discussion of cori spezzati. Could this have centered around the three Lasso
pieces with, perhaps, the composer even being consulted about their revi-
sion? Conditions in the old St. Peters Basilica were quite dierent from
those at the Munich court chapel, and it was presumably this which forced
the change to writing for independent choirs which could be separated by a
151
considerable distance. Apart from the harmonically independent bass
lines, however, the Munich and Roman versions of the polychoral idiom
have more in common than either has with the Venetian one and this
despite the known prolonged periods of residence in Munich by both
Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli.
In the area of musical imitation or parody there are a number of links
between Lasso and Roman composers. Mention has already been made of
the imitation Magnicat which he based on the model used by Palestrina in
the mass sent from Rome to Munich in 1562. In 1589 he published a mass
based on Palestrinas madrigal Io son ferito (published in 1561 and also
used by Palestrina himself as the basis of his Missa Petra sancta); Lasso
also composed a Magnicat (published posthumously in 1619) on
noel o
regan
152
Example 7.5: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Contebor tibi (1572),
mm. 111
Cantus 1
Altus 1
Tenor 1
Bassus 1
Cantus 2
Altus 2
Tenor 2
Bassus 2
&
&
V
?
&
&
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
1
Con -
w
Con -
w
Con -
w
w
fi - te -
Con -
w
w
fi -
w
w
fi -
bor
w w
fi - te -
w

te - bor ti - - - -
w

te - bor
.
w

ti - - - bi

bor ti - - -

w

ti - bi
.
w

Do - mi -
w

bi Do - mi -

bi Do - - -
.

b
Do - mi -
ne
w

ne
#
w
mi - ne
ne
.

quo - ni -
.
quo - ni -
Giovanni Maria Naninos Erano capei doro (published in 1579). These
show his familiarity with at least some secular music emanating from
Rome. On the other hand, there are no reciprocal examples of Roman com-
posers using works by Lasso as the basis of their compositions. Palestrinas
motet Susanna ab improbis uses the same opening material as Lassos
Susanne un jour(the tenor of Didier Lupi Seconds eponymous chanson
which was used for the very large corpus of settings of this text
33
) but there
are no other obvious connections between the two pieces. In the absence of
153
33
See Kenneth J. Levy, Susanne un jour: the History of a Sixteenth-Century
Chanson, Annales Musicologiques, 1 (1953), pp. 375408, and David Crook,
Orlando di Lassos Imitation Magnicats for Counter-Reformation Munich
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 177.
&
&
V
?
&
&
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
7

am i - ra - tus es
.

quo - ni- am i - ra -

am i - ra - tus es
.
w w
mi - hi,

tus es mi - hi,
b
mi - - -
.

quo - ni -
.

w
tus es mi -

i - ra - tus
hi,
.

am i - ra - tus es

w
tus es mi -
hi,
.

es mi - - -
w

con - - -

w
tus es mi -
w
w
mi - hi,
hi,
w
con -

hi, con -

con -
w
con -
Roman imitation masses or other works based on models by Lasso which
might make a stronger case, the evidence for the Munich composers
inuence on Roman music is largely circumstantial. Yet, Lasso was
undoubtedly the European composer of the 1560s and 1570s, and was seen
as such throughout Europe; his esteem was underlined by the huge number
of contemporary publications which included his works, by his decora-
tions from both the emperor and the pope, and by his being awarded the
rst prize in the composers competition at Evreux on two occasions (1575
and 1583).
34
More particularly, the evidence that his music was regularly
noel o
regan
154
34
Leuchtmann, Leben, pp. 52, 55.
Example 7.6: Orlando di Lasso, In convertendo (1565), mm. 1925 (CM,
vol. 4, pp. 1945)
Cantus 1
Altus 1
Tenor 1
Bassus 1
Cantus 2
Altus 2
Tenor 2
Bassus 2
&
&
V
?
&
&
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
19
et
et
et
et

lin - gua no - stra ex - sul -

#

#



#
w
ta - ti - o - ne,

w
ta - ti - o - ne,

w #
ta - ti - o - ne,

w
ta - ti - o - ne,

et

et

et

et

lingua no - stra ex - sul -

n

#


being sung, copied, reworked, and bought in Rome up to the 1590s testies
to a continued lively interest which must, in turn, have had at least some
part in forming the newly developing styles of Roman composers in the
decades after the Council of Trent.
155
&
&
V
?
&
&
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
23

<et

et

et

et

#
w
ta - ti - o - ne,

w n
ta - ti - o - ne,

w
ta - ti - o - ne,
b

w
ta - ti - o - ne,
#

n
N

#



<lin - gua no - stra ex - sul -

w n
ta - ti - o - ne,>

w
ta - ti - o - ne,
w
ta - ti - o - ne,

w
ta - ti - o - ne,>

<et

<et
n
et

et
noel o
regan
156
Example 7.7: Annibale Zoilo, Nunc dimittis (Rvat Giul. XIII, 24), mm.
5661
Cantus 1
Altus 1
Tenor 1
Bassus 1
Cantus 2
Altus 2
Tenor 2
Bassus 2
&
&
V
V
&
&
V
V
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
56

#
Glo - ri - a Pa - tri,




. #


Glo - ri - a Pa - tri, et

.


Glo - ri - a Pa - tri, et

glo - ri - a

glo - ri - a

glo - ri - a

glo - ri - a

et Fi - li - o,
.

Fi - li - o,

.
J

et Fi - li - o,

Fi - li - o,
157
&
&
V
V
&
&
V
V
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
59
. #

Pa - tri, et Fi - li -

.
J

Pa - tri, et Fi - li - o, et
.

.
J


o, et Spi - ri - tu - i

Spi - ri - tu - - - - i
w

o, et Spi - ri -

o, et Spi - ri - tu - i San - - - -

#

San - cto,

San - cto,

tu - i San - cto,

cto,

glo - ri - a

glo - ri - a

glo - ri - a

glo - ri - a
8 Orlando di Lasso as a model for composition as
seen in the three-voice motets of Jean de Castro
ignace bossuyt
Orlandodi Lassomay without a doubt be consideredthe most illustri-
ous composerof thesecondhalf of thesixteenthcentury. Thanks totheinter-
nationalization of music publishing, his music enjoyed a degree of
distributionpreviously unknown. It was, however, not somuchthe quantity
and variety of his music that was praised by composers, theoreticians, and
poets of the day, but rather its quality and especially its expressivity and
humanity.
1
It comes thenas nosurprise tondthat innumerable composers
helduple plus que divinOrlande(Pierre de Ronsard) as the ideal example
to be emulated. The degree of intensity of this imitatio is astonishing, per-
meating the most diverse lands andall aspects of the compositional process.
Some composers borrowed texts fromLassos motets. This is clear fromthe
many cases where only one setting of a text exists other thanhis original. For
example, Alexander Utendal (c. 1543/581), singer and Vice-Kapellmeister
at the court of Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol at Innsbruck, appropriated
Lassotexts for twolightheartedsecular motets,Hispanumadcoenam and
Deusqui bonumvinumcreasti.
2
SomecomposersdrewfromspecicLasso
collections for theirowneditions, eitherinimitationof theadmiredexample
or in competition with the master, or perhaps a bit of both. Utendal again
provides a clear example: at the insistence of his patron, Ferdinand, the com-
poser presented his SeptemPsalmi poenitentiales (1570) as a kind of artistic
158
1
Leuchtmann, Leben, pp. 26496, notes more than fty poems in Lassos honor.
See also Bernhard Meier, Orlandus Lassus im Urteil der Mit- und Nachwelt,
Orlandus Lassus 15321594, ed. Ignace Bossuyt, exhibition catalogue (Leuven:
Fakulteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte K. U. Leuven, 1982), pp. 616.
2
Ignace Bossuyt, De componist Alexander Utendal (ca. 1543/451581). Een
bijdrage tot de studie van de Nederlandse polyfonie in de tweede helft van de
zestiende eeuw (Brussels: Koninklijke Academie van Belgi, Klasse der Schone
Kunsten, 1983), p. 92.
counterpart tothesecretPenitential PsalmscomposedbyLassoabout 1559
for Duke Albrecht of Munich. Utendal outdid his model by applying the
new theory of the twelve modes, propagated by Henricus Glareanus
(Dodecachordon, 1547), while Lasso had held to the old system of eight
modes.
3
Utendals secondbookof motets (1573) was alsoclearly inspiredby
Lassos 1566 Venetian collection (RISM 1566e), which was reprinted two
years later within the Selectissimae Cantiones issued in Nuremberg by
Theodor Gerlach, thepublishinghousefor all of Utendals works. It is partic-
ularly striking that the 1566and1573collections eachbeginwitha setting of
the opening words from the Gospel according to John, In principio erat
Verbum.
4
Another collection fromthat same year (1573), by Ivo de Vento,
organist at theBavariancourt, alsostarts withamotet onthis text.
5
One of the most common examples of imitatio is the contrafactum
technique. Besides the publication in Germany of German contrafacta
based on Lassos French chansons,
6
in France itself Lassos chansons were
the preferred models for religious contrafacta made by the Huguenots.
Their admiration for the musical qualities of his work was such that they
chose to recast his dubious texts in order to adopt his music, rather than
turn to other composers who had not lowered themselves to such scandal-
ous ditties capable of sullying Christian ears and inciting youth to moral
depravity.
7
lasso as a model for composi ti on
159
3
Ignace Bossuyt, Die Psalmi Poenitentiales (1570) des Alexander Utendal. Ein
knstlerisches Gegenstck der Busspsalmen von O. Lassus und eine praktische
Anwendung von Glareans Theorie der zwlf Modi, Archiv fr
Musikwissenschaft, 38 (1981), pp. 27995. Concerning Lasso and the eight
modes, see Georg Reichert, Martin Crusius und die Musik in Tbingen um
1590, Archiv fr Musikwissenschaft, 10 (1953), pp. 21012, and Bernhard Meier,
The Modes of Classical Vocal Polyphony Described According to the Sources, trans.
Ellen Beebe (New York: Broude, 1988), pp. 301.
4
Bossuyt, Alexander Utendal, pp. 978.
5
August de Groote, Ivo De Vento (ca. 1543/451575). Organist en componist in
de kapel van Orlandus Lassus, Orlandus Lassus and his Time, p. 303.
6
The collection Orlando di Lasso etliche ausserlessne/kurtze/gute geistliche und
weltliche Liedlein mit 4 Stimmen/so zuvor in Frantzsischer Sprach aussgangen,
compiled by the singer Johann Phler and published in 1582 by Adam Berg in
Munich (RISM 1582l).
7
Bossuyt, Orlandus Lassus (15321594) en het contrafact, De zeventiende eeuw
(1989), pp. 1907, and Richard Freedman, Divins accords: The Lassus
Chansons and their Protestant Readers of the Late Sixteenth Century, Orlandus
Lassus and his Time, pp. 27394.
The most current imitatio practice was that of the so-calledparody, in
whicha secular or a sacredcompositionservedas the point of departure for
the composition of a mass. Here again Lassos multifaceted oeuvre was an
almost inexhaustiblesourceof inspiration.At least eightymasses werecom-
posed on Lassos models.
8
Less common was the process of reworking,in
which a composition originally written for four or more voices was
arranged for three. This imitatio technique seems to have enjoyed a
remarkable vogue amongst the nobility and the well-o bourgeoisie in
Antwerp. Acrucial year in the history of the triciniumwas 1569, when in a
single burst of activity the Leuven publisher Pierre Phalse published no
fewer than seven collections of Latin motets and French chansons for three
voices. One of these editions was devotedsolely tothe motets andchansons
of GrardVanTurnhout, masterof themusicat theCathedral of OurBlessed
Lady inAntwerp; the collection is dedicated toAdriaen Dyck, chief clerk of
the city (Sacrarumac aliarumcantionumtriumvocum. . . Liber unus).
9
The
six other collections consist of two series of anthologies, each comprising
three books: three with motets (Selectissimarum Sacrarum Cantionum
(quas vulgo motetas vocant) ores, trium vocum) and three with chansons
(Recueil des Fleurs produictes de la divine musicque a trois parties, par
Clemens nonPapa, Thomas Cricquillon, et aultres excellens musiciens).
10
The
rst motet fromtherst part of theanthology,Adtelevavi oculos,isbyJean
de Castro. With six of the eighteen works to his name, he is the best-repre-
sented composer and, surprisingly, the least famous, surrounded by such
renowned gures as Thomas Crequillon, Hubert Waelrant, and Cornelius
i gnace bossuyt
160
8
Stefan Coninx, De parodiemissen op composities van Orlandus Lassus
(15321594), unpublished licentiate thesis, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
(1984). Around twenty-two to twenty-ve of these masses (a few are doubtful)
are by Lasso himself.
9
Available in a modern edition in Recent Researches in the Music of the
Renaissance, 910 (Madison: A-R Editions, 1970), ed. Lavern J. Wagner.
10
For the complete contents, see Henri Vanhulst, Catalogue des Editions de
musique publies Louvain par Pierre Phalse et ses ls 15451578 (Brussels:
Acadmie Royale de Belgique, Classe des Beaux Arts, 1990), pp. 1429. The
Premier Livre of the anthology of French chansons is a partial and slightly
reworked reprint of an edition of three-part chansons and motets from 1562
(Premier Livre du Recueil des Fleurs produictes de la divine musicque a trois
parties par Clemens non Papa Thomas Cricquillon & aultres excellens Musichiens).
However, no sequel appeared in the following years. Cf. ibid., pp. 801.
Canis, each of whomhas but one work, and Clemens non Papa with only
two. De Castro does not appear in the second part, while the third includes
one of his motets. The rst part of the chanson anthology is almost com-
pletely dominated by the names of Clemens and Crequillon, but in the two
followingparts deCastrodoes reappear withtwoandsixworks respectively.
By placing the newcomer Castro among the more established names,
Phalseclearlyreducedhisnancial risk, althoughthepublisherdidventure
togiveCastrotheplaceof honor intherst part of themotet anthology.
He did not, however, risk putting Castros rst complete collection on
the market; this appeared later in that same year (1569) in Antwerp under
the title, Di Iean Castro Il primo libro di madrigali, canzoni & motetti a tre
voci. At that moment there happened to be no publisher of renown active in
Antwerp. Tielman Susato had left the city in 1561; his son Jacob was able to
produce only one edition, in 1564, before he died later that same year.
Christopher Plantin had not yet ventured to print polyphony; only in 1578
did he see such repertory as a moneymaker. Jean de Laet, who had started
publishing music together with Hubertus Waelrant in 1554, had died in
1566. When in 1569 Jean de Castro wanted to create a name for himself as a
composer in Antwerp, his only available recourse was to Laets widow,
Elisabeth Saen, who published a further ten books after the death of her
husband, only three of which were given over to music. One of the latter was
Castros debut.
11
The fact that this work was not published by Phalse, at the
time the leading music publisher in the Low Countries, may have had
several causes. In the rst place, it would appear that Phalse was not overly
keen on untried talent. He was more likely to build on the fame of well-
known composers whose work had already appeared in Antwerp or abroad.
He left the discovery of new faces to others.
12
Secondly, until then Phalse
had yet to publish a single madrigal; he seems to have resisted the genre,
fearing his clientele was not familiar enough with Italian.
13
Thirdly, it was
tting that the collection should appear in Antwerp, since the dedicatee,
Giovanni Giacomo Fiesco, had been active there as a trader representing the
161
11
See the introduction by Saskia Willaert and Katrien Derde to Jean de Castro,
Opera Omnia, vol. 3, Il primo libro di madrigali, canzoni e motetti a tre voci
(1569), ed. Ignace Bossuyt, Henri Vanhulst et al. (Leuven: Leuven University
Press, 1995), p. 10.
12
Vanhulst,Catalogue, p. xxxvii.
13
Ibid., p. xxxi.
Genoese Nation, an inuential commercial and nancial presence in the
city since 1530. Together with the south German merchants and bankers
especially the Fugger family from Augsburg the Genoese were the main
nanciers (the so-called asentistas) to the Spanish crown, supporting the
power of both Charles V and Philip II in the Low Countries, especially by
bankrolling the Spanish troops stationed in the region.
14
Castros rst product shows remarkable parallels with another
Antwerp debut fourteen years previously, Susatos edition of Le quatoir-
siesme livre a quatre parties contenant dixhuyct chansons italiennes, six
chanson francoises, & six motetz . . . par Rolando di Lassus (RISM 1555a),
which was reissued in that same year as DOrlando di Lassus il Primo Libro
dovesi contengono Madrigali, Vilanesche, Canzoni francesi e Motetti a
quattro voci (RISM 1555b). Like Castros collection, Lassos includes a dedi-
cation in Italian addressed to a leading member of the Genoese Nation, the
nobleman-merchant Stefano Gentile. The contents are also similar: Italian
works (Lasso included villanesche along with madrigals) are followed in
both collections by French chansons and then Latin motets. Around this
same period Philippe de Monte was also able to count on the protection of a
Genoese gure of stature, Giovanni Grimaldi, to whom the composer dedi-
cated his third book of six-voice madrigals in 1576.
15
The names of Gentile,
Fiesco, and Grimaldi are regularly found mentioned together in ocial
documents.
16
Both Gentile and Grimaldi were praised by their contempo-
raries for more than their purely commercial activities: literature and
music were also close to their heart. These and other Italian merchants and
traders clearly played more than a marginal role in the spread of
Renaissance culture in the Low Countries.
17
Castros three-voice debut comprised twelve madrigals, thirteen
chansons, and eight motets. All the motets inthe collectionand eight of the
i gnace bossuyt
162
14
Willaert and Derde, Castro, Opera Omnia, vol. 3, p. 11. See also Willaert and
Derde, Het mecenaat van de Genuese natie in Antwerpen in de tweede helft van
de 16de eeuw, Orlandus Lassus en Antwerpen 15541556, exhibition catalogue
(Antwerp: Stad Antwerp, 1994), pp. 4756.
15
Cf. Brian Mann, The Secular Madrigals of Filippo di Monte 15211603 (Ann
Arbor, Mich.: University Microlms, 1983), pp. 45. The dedication to Grimaldi
is reproduced on p. 426.
16
Willaert and Derde, Castro, Opera Omnia, vol. 3, p. 11.
17
Karel Bostoen, Dichterschap en Koopmanschap in de zestiende eeuw. Omtrent de
dichters Guillaume de Poetou en Jan vander Noot, Deventer Studin 1 (Deventer:
Sub Rosa Deventer, 1987), pp. 1635.
thirteen chansons (but none of the madrigals) also appeared shortly there-
after in the same year (1569) in the Phalse anthology mentioned above.
Castros work, including the madrigals, must have made more than a
passing impression on Phalse, for a year later, in 1570, he devoted a com-
plete editionto Castro, this time complementing the chansons withmadri-
gals, even placing themrst in the collection although he cautiously gave
the chansons top billing in the title (Chansons et madrigales a quatre parties
. . . par Maistre Iean de Castro). It was at the same time Castros rst collec-
tion of four-voice works. The collaboration with Phalse seems to have
proceeded smoothly, for one year later a collection of ve-voice motets
made its appearance (with aneight-voice motet at its close): Sacrarumcan-
tionumquinque et octo vocum. . . Liber unus. Ioanne de Castro Autore. Anew
set of tricinia, this time all motets, appeared in 1574 (Ioannis a Castro
Musici Celeberrimi Triciniorum Sacrorum . . . Liber unus). Phalse even
turned to Castro when putting together two extensive collections of chan-
sons, one for three voices (a formwhich had become something of a Castro
speciality), and one for four voices. These collections appeared respec-
tively in1574 and 1575 as La Fleur des Chansons a trois parties, contenant un
recueil, produit de la divine musique de Iean Castro, Severin Cornet, No
Faignient, & autres excellens Aucteurs and Livre de Meslanges contenant un
recueil de chansons a quatre parties, choisy des plus excellens aucteurs de
nostre temps, par Iean Castro Musicien. In La Fleur no fewer than forty of
the ninety-one works are by Castro; in Livre de Meslanges Castro accounts
for nineteen of the seventy-three works.
18
The highlight of Castros Leuven
editions was without a doubt the 1576 collection of four-, ve-, and eight-
voice chansons on texts by Pierre de Ronsard (Chansons, odes et sonetz de
Pierre Ronsard, mises en musique a quatre, a cinq et huit parties, par Iean de
Castro),
19
with which Castro joined the Ronsard vogue of the 1570s.
20
163
18
For a complete table of contents, see Vanhulst, Catalogue, pp. 2068 and 21416.
Both collections also include a number of madrigals.
19
Modern edition by Jeanice Brooks in Recent Researches in the Music of the
Renaissance, 97 (Madison: A-R Editions, 1994). Cf. Ignace Bossuyt, Jean de
Castro: Chansons, odes et sonetz de Pierre Ronsard, Revue de musicologie, 74
(1988), pp. 17388. Phalse approached Castro to reorganize the contents of the
1576 edition of the Septiesme livre des chansons, according to Rudolf Rasch, The
Livre septiesme, Atti del XIV Congresso della Societ Internazionale di
Musicologia, Bologna 27. Aug.1. Sept.1987, ed. Angelo Pompilio et al. (Turin:
Edizioni di Torino, 1990), vol. 1, pp. 30618.
20
In the previous year, 1575, Phalse had published the Sonetz de Pierre de Ronsard
The year 1576 was also to mark the end of Castros rst Antwerp
period. He had been attracted to the international economic metropolis in
the 1560s because of the presence of wealthy, art-loving patrons. These
seem to have seen him as a promising composer worthy of generous
support, if we consider that (like Lasso) he made his debut with a complete
collection rather than merely a few compositions in an anthology. Like
Lasso in 15546, Castro did not hold a permanent position while in
Antwerp (editions mention him simply as musicienor musicus celeber-
rimus), although he likely aspired to one. In September 1556 Lasso had
acquired a steady job as a tenor at the Bavarian court in Munich, thanks to
the mediation of Johann Jakob Fugger and Bishop Antoine Perrenot de
Granvelle, to whom he had dedicated his rst collection of motets, the so-
called Antwerp Motet Book, earlier that same year.
21
Although Lassos ulti-
mate success probably resulted from his much greater ambition, this
appointment in Munich was a crucial turn of events in launching a brilliant
international career as a composer. Castro was less fortunate, probably in
part as a result of the dicult political and religious circumstances: in 1576,
ten years after the infamous iconoclastic fury, Antwerp was violently
shaken by the plundering of the Spanish soldiers (the so-called Spanish
Fury), which caused an immediate and massive ight of the citys popula-
tion.
Castro ed via Germany to Lyons, where he had friends. One of these
was Justinien Pense, a wealthy carpet-merchant, for whom in 15701, while
Pense was visiting Antwerp, Castro had composed a set of four- and ve-
voice chansons on texts by Pense himself.
22
It is worth noting that the luxu-
rious manuscript, of which unfortunately only the soprano and bass
partbooks survive, was copied by Jean Pollet, once Lassos copyist, who
among other things had succeeded in smuggling to the Low Countries a
i gnace bossuyt
164
by Philippe de Monte, a reprint of Le Roy and Ballards Paris edition of the same
year. See Vanhulst, Catalogue, pp. 21214.
21
Ignace Bossuyt, Lassos erste Jahre in Mnchen (15561559): eine cosa non
riuscita? Neue Materialen aufgrund unverentlichter Briefe von Johann Jakob
Fugger, Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle und Orlando di Lasso, Festschrift fr
Horst Leuchtmann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Stephan Hrner and Bernhold
Schmid (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1993), pp. 5567.
22
Jeanice Brooks, Jean de Castro, the Pense Partbooks and Musical Culture in
Sixteenth-Century Lyons, Early Music History, 11 (1992), pp. 91149.
copy of Lassos secret Penitential Psalms.
23
On the death (premature, it
would seem) of Pollets wife, the Delft native Sara, Castro composed a
three-voice elegy, Uxor Joannis Pollet Sara, which appeared in the 1574
collection of Latin tricinia. The circumstances of this composition suggest
that Lassos motet,Praesidium Sara, may well have been an epithalamium
for the marriage of his copyist, Jean Pollet; this would seem to draw further
together the lives of the two composers, even if they in fact never met.
24
In
any case, as composers they were very alike, chiey because Castros tricinia
were so often inspired by Lassos models. The three-voice reworkings of
Lassos compositions, written during his Antwerp period, may be seen as an
indication of Lassos popularity. First in inuence were the chansons, fol-
lowed by the motets and then the madrigals. Between 1569 and 1575 Castro
composed no fewer than thirty-one chansons on the basis of Lassos
models. Of the thirteen chansons in his 1569 debut collection, nine are
based on Lasso. The others appeared in the 1574 anthology cited above, La
Fleur des chansons trois parties, and in the Livre de chansons nouvellement
compos, troys parties, Castros Paris debut in 1575, an edition prepared by
Le Roy and Ballard. In each collection, eleven of the chansons are adapta-
tions of compositions by Lasso.
25
Although Castros three-voice chansons continued to appear regu-
larly after 1575, there were to be no more arrangements. For the three-voice
madrigals precisely the opposite is true: from the earliest works in 1569
right up to his last collection in 1591, a Venetian edition published by
Amadino, Castro held fast to the technique of reworking. Here Lasso hardly
makes an appearance; in the initial Antwerp edition of 1569, not one of the
twelve madrigals originates with Lasso, as is also the case with the Madrigali
165
23
Ignace Bossuyt, The Copyist Jan Pollet and the Theft in 1563 of Orlandus
Lassus Secret Penitential Psalms, From Ciconia to Sweelinck. Donum
Natalicium Willem Elders, ed. A. Clement and E. Jas (Amsterdam and Atlanta:
Rodopi, 1994), pp. 2617.
24
Ignace Bossuyt, Lassos Motette Praesidium Sara. Ein epithalamium fr seinen
Kopisten Jean Pollet? Musik in Bayern 54 (1997), pp. 10712.
25
Ignace Bossuyt, Jean de Castro and his Three-part Chansons Modelled on
Four- and Five-Part Chansons by Orlando di Lasso. A Comparison, Orlando di
Lasso in der Musikgeschichte. Bericht ber das Symposion der Bayerischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften Mnchen, 46 July 1994, ed. Bernhold Schmid
(Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1996), pp.
2567.
. . . a tre voci of 1588 (Antwerp, P. Phalse and J. Bellre), and Rose fresche . . .
madrigali novi . . . a tre voci of 1591 (Venice, R. Amadino). Lasso provided
the model for only two of Castros three-voice madrigals, the lone Castro
madrigal in the anthology La Fleur des Chansons of 1574 (Voi chas-
coltate) and one of the four madrigals from his Second livre de chansons
madrigals et motetz trois parties of 1580 (Paris, Le Roy and Ballard), where
he harks back to the sestina Standomi un giorno. For his madrigals,
Castro seems to have preferred as models Rore (for his 1569 debut), the
three famed Antwerp madrigal anthologies of 1583 and 1585 (Harmonia
celeste, Musica divina, and Symphonica angelica, all reected in Castros
Madrigali . . . a tre voci of 1588), and Luca Marenzio (in Rose fresche of 1591).
Very likely the personal preference of the dedicatees might also have played
a deciding role in these choices.
26
As with the French chansons, Castros borrowing of Lassos motets
was limited to the rst few collections. In his rst edition, two of the eight
motets are based on Lasso models: Veni in hortum meum and In te,
Domine, speravi. Here Castro tended to borrow compositions from an
earlier generation, with a preference for Clemens non Papa (four motets),
while Crequillon and Rore are each the source for one motet.
27
Lasso does
hold the place of honor in Castros rst collection devoted completely to
three-voice motets, the Triciniorum sacrorum . . . liber unus, a Phalse
edition of 1574. Lassos works are the models for twelve of the twenty-three
motets:
28
BenedicamDominum in omni tempore, Ubi est Abel, Tribus
miraculis, Surgens Jesus, Surrexit pastor bonus, Confundantur
superbi, Fertur in conviviis, Exaudi Domine, Angelus ad pastores,
Fulgebunt justi, Verba mea auribus percipe, and Legem pone mihi.
Clemens remains clearly in evidence with three motets, and even Josquin
i gnace bossuyt
166
26
J. Lanssens,De driestemmige madrigalen van Jean de Castro, unpublished
licentiate thesis, Leuven (1997), pp. 1517.
27
From Clemens non Papa: Venit vox de caelo, Qui consolabatur me, Pater
peccavi, and Maria Magdalena; from Crequillon: Nigra sum; from Rore:
Ad te levavi. See Ignace Bossuyt and Saskia Willaert, Jean de Castros Il Primo
Libro di Madrigali, Canzoni e Motetti, in Eugen Schreurs and Henri Vanhulst,
eds., Music Fragments and Manuscripts in the Low Countries. Alta Capella. Music
Printing in Antwerp and Europe in the 16th Century. Yearbook of the Alamire
Foundation 2 (Leuven-Peer: Alamire, 1997), pp. 33351.
28
A modern edition with an extensive introduction by Saskia Willaert and Katrien
Derde forms vol. 4 of Jean de Castro, Opera omnia. The tricinia are followed by
two four-part motets.
Desprez makes an appearance.
29
As in the later French chansons, the tech-
nique of borrowing is no longer used in the later collections of three-part
motets, the Second livre de chansons madrigals et motetz a trois parties of
1580 and the two late editions from the 1590s (Cantiones aliquot sacrae
trium vocum of 1593 and Trium vocum cantiones aliquot sacrae of 1596).
At rst it might seem surprising that Lasso emerges as the central
gure only in 1574 and not in 1569, when he had already achieved interna-
tional fame. The Castro editions suggest that Lassos motets began to enjoy
renown in the Low Countries only at the beginning of the 1570s, mainly due
to the Leuven editions of Pierre Phalse. The following oers an overview of
the editions of Lassos motets published by Phalse, the most authoritative
music publisher in the southern Netherlands from the 1560s on:
(1) In 1564 the chanson collection Quatriesme livre des chansons . . .
par Orlando di Lassus (RISM 1564d) was supplemented with four madri-
gals and three motets (the drinking song Fertur in conviviis, the moraliz-
ing Quid prodest stulto, and Pater peccavi, taken from the parable of the
Prodigal Son). Two of Lassos works were incorporated into the second
edition of the highly successful anthology Septiesme livre des chansons
quatre parties: the chanson Soyons joyeux and the motet Fertur in convi-
viis. The motets Fertur in conviviis and Pater peccavi were dropped
from the modied reprints of the Quatriesme livre, RISM 1567c and 1570g.
Neither piece would again be included in the many reprints of the Septiesme
livre which were to follow.
30
(2) In 1566 the liturgical cycle Sacrae Lectiones novem ex Propheta Job
quatuor vocum . . . autore Orlando Lasso (RISM 1566f) was published, sup-
plemented by ve motets.
31
(3) In 1569 the interest in Lasso clearly increased with the publication
167
29
From Josquin: Benedicta es; from Clemens: Videns Jacob, Rex autem
David, and Verbum iniquum. In a few sources Verbum iniquum is
attributed to Thomas Crequillon; cf. H. Lowen Marshall, The Four-Voice Motets
of Thomas Crecquillon, vol. 1, The Motets A Critical Study (Brooklyn: Institute
of Medieval Music, 1970), p. 19.
30
The rst edition of the Septiesme livre (1560) includes no pieces by Lasso. See
Vanhulst, Catalogue, pp. 824, 11416, and passim, and idem, Un succs de
ldition musicale: le Septiesme livre des chansons a quatre parties
(15601661/63), Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Muziekwetenschap/Revue Belge de
Musicologie, 323 (19789), pp. 97120.
31
These Sacrae Lectiones had been published the previous year in Venice by
Gardano and in Paris by Le Roy and Ballard.
of two collections of four-part motets (none the less shared with Cypriano
de Rore): Liber primus . . . and Liber secundus sacrarum cantionum quatuor
vocum . . . Auctoribus Orlando di Lassus. Cypriano de Rore (RISM 1569
7
and
1569
8
). Book 1 includes seven motets by Lasso and four by Rore, while Book
2 has nine by Lasso and ve by Rore.
(4) The denitive breakthrough came only in 15712, when Phalse
published three collections devoted exclusively to Lasso, all of which were
reprints of editions which had appeared in Paris in 1571: Primus liber mod-
ulorum quinis vocibus, Moduli quinis vocibus, and Secundus liber modul-
orum quinis vocibus (RISM 1571d, 1571b, and 1572e). These were also
Phalses rst editions of Lassos ve-voice motets.
(5) Starting in 1574, the year of Castros Latin tricinia, there followed
reprints of various parts of the Patrocinium Musices and an edition of
Lassos only book of three-voice motets (RISM 1575c).
32
These publica-
tions would no longer inuence Castros work.
We may conclude from this overview that before his debut in 1569 it
would have been dicult for Castro to get his hands on Lassos motets in an
edition from the Low Countries. By 1574 the situation had changed com-
pletely: Castro could draw freely from the three Phalse editions issued in
1571 and 1572 (ten of the twelve motets based on Lasso appear in these
Leuven editions; for one of the motets, Verba mea auribus percipe,
Moduli quinis vocibus is in fact the earliest source). It is very likely that these
editions were his main source, even if it is impossible to rule out his aware-
ness of other foreign editions.
33
None the less, the relatively modest pres-
ence of Lassos works as models in Castros 1569 debut suggests that the
promising composer was not yet familiar with Lassos motets. The intense
i gnace bossuyt
168
32
See Vanhulst, Catalogue, passim.
33
Possibly the Primus liber concentuum sacrorum, a 1564 Paris edition from Le Roy
and Ballard, which was sold through Christopher Plantin in Antwerp. Plantin
sold only one of a very few copies which had been ordered for certain
customers. See Henri Vanhulst, Suppliers and Clients of Christopher Plantin,
Distributor of Polyphonic Music in Antwerp (15661578), Musicology and
Archival Research. Musicologie et recherches en archives. Musicologie en
archiefonderzoek, ed. Barbara Haggh, F. Daelemans, and A. Vanrie. Archives et
Bibliothques de Belgique. Archief- en Bibliotheekwezen in Belgi.
Extranummer Numro special 46 (Brussels: Algemeen Rijksarchief Brussel/
Archives Gnrales du Royaume, Brussels, 1994), pp. 558604.
interest in Lasso in 1574 may actually have been stimulated by Castros col-
laboration with Lassos former copyist, Jean Pollet (see above).
The motet Fertur in conviviis deserves special mention. Castro may
already have known the work from Phalses Quatriesme livre andSeptiesme
livre, both from 1564. It would seem, however, that for this work too, Castro
consulted a later source: Phalses Liber secundus from 1569, one of the col-
lections with four-voice motets by Lasso and Rore. A number of textual var-
iants not found in the 1564 version but which show up in Castro seem
clearly to point to the 1569 edition.
34
It is striking that this is the only com-
position that Castro borrowed from the two 1569 LassoRore editions. It is
also the only four-voice Lasso motet that he adapted; all the rest have ve or
six voices. Moreover, he introduced his own rather major text variant into
this drinking song; the verse Et plus quam ecclesiam diligam tabernam
(And more than the church do I love the tavern) is modied to Et plus
quam rem medicam diligam tabernam(And more than healing medicines
do I love the tavern). This could be intended as an inside joke shared with
the nobleman and military gure, Charles de Melun, to whom the 1574
Latin tricinia were dedicated and who, according to a number of sources,
fell ill often and suered from gout.
35
Castros three-part adaptations of Lassos four- to six-voice motets
are no mere reductions of the originals, but intriguing works in their own
right, in which he shows evidence of a strong personal engagement as com-
poser. Generally speaking, the reworked pieces correspond to the originals
in three ways:
(1) The clefs of the tricinia match the three highest clefs from the
model; the combinations are either c1c3c4, or g2c2c3. The exceptions
are two motets in the 1569 edition, Veni in hortum meum (Lasso
c1c3c4c4f4, Castro g2c2c3) and In te, Domine, speravi (Lasso g2
g2c2c3c3f3, Castro g2c1c3).
(2) The division into partes is identical, except in Fertur in conviviis
(Lasso uses only double barlines, with no indication of partes).
(3) The mode is maintained, with the exception of Veni in hortum
169
34
See Bernhold Schmid, Lassos Fertur in conviviis: On the History of its Text
and Transmission in the present volume. My thanks to Dr. Schmid for
permitting me to consult his work prior to publication.
35
See the Introduction to Jean de Castro, Opera omnia, vol. 4, pp. 1012.
meum, which is transposed from the second to the rst mode as a result of
its higher clef combination. While Castros chansons and madrigals some-
times end on a note other than the nalis (usually the fth), this is not the
case in the motets. The only deviation is the conclusion of the prima pars of
In te, Domine, speravi (G in Lasso, C in Castro). (See Table 8.1.)
Theessentials of Castros workingmethods canbest beshownbyafew
representative examples. Literal borrowing fromthe model, in the formof
vertical citations the basic procedure in parody masses occurs rarely.
Castro takes as his point of departure a theme similar if not identical to
i gnace bossuyt
170
Table 8.1 Comparison of mode and final in Lasso motets and
Castro motets based on them
Finalis:
Lasso Castro Mode
1569
Veni in hortum meum G G Lasso: mode 2 (b-flat)
Castro: mode 1 (b-flat)
In te, Domine, speravi G C mode 6 (b-natural)
2a p. Quoniam fortitudo C C
1574
Benedicam Dominum in omni tempore D D mode 8
2a p. In Domino laudabitur G G
Gustate et videte G D mode 8
2a p. Divites eguerunt G G
Ubi est Abel G G mode 7
Tribus miraculis C C mode 6 (b-natural)
Surgens Jesus C C mode 6 (b-natural)
Surrexit pastor bonus C C mode 6 (b-natural)
Confundantur superbi D D mode 7
2a p. Fiat cor meum G G
Fertur in conviviis C
2a p. Potatores incliti G
3a p. Et plus quam rem C C mode 6 (b-natural)
Exaudi, Domine, vocem meam D D mode 2 (b-flat)
2a p. Ne avertas faciem tuam G G
Angelus ad pastores ait G G mode 2 (b-flat)
Verba mea auribus percipe D D
2a p. Quoniam ad te orabo G G mode 1 (b-flat)
Legem pone mihi C C mode 5
2a p. Da mihi intellectum F F
Lassos original, and then proceeds to construct a new musical argument.
Generally speaking, the model is clearly recognizable in the exordium,
althoughhe sometimes withholds anexplicit reference until a fewmeasures
have passed. In the initial entries of Surgens Jesus (Ex. 8.1), Surrexit
pastor bonus (Ex. 8.2), andAngelus adpastores ait (Ex. 8.3), the melodic
borrowing is abundantly clear. In contrast, the motets Gustate et videte
(Ex. 8.4) andTribus miraculis (Ex. 8.5) beginwithout a particularly strik-
ing relationship to the model, but similarities soon enough make them-
selves evident. The descending three-note motive (ged in the cantus)
on the wordGustate is borrowed directly fromthe cantus in mm. 67 of
Lassos motet; only in the second half of m. 4 does Castro take up Lassos
opening motive (gabgbd with the cadence). The similarity to
theoriginal at thebeginningofTribus miraculisis againless thanobvious,
until the entryof Lassos cantus appears inmm. 79(cefdc).
A comparison of a few clearly similar fragments, such as the openings
of Surgens Jesus,Surrexit pastor bonus, and Angelus ad pastores ait,
immediately reveals a number of striking dierences which also show up in
the other works. Castros melismatic lines are generally more jagged and
less owing than Lassos. These somewhat angular contours are partially
the result of frequent octave leaps (Ex. 8.1b, cantus, mm. 12), making these
melismas which tend to be designed to function as text expression more
exuberant and emphatic than Lassos, even if perhaps less expansive (as on
the word Surgens). Castros desire for a mode of expression even stronger
and more direct than Lassos is also evident in his transformation of syllabic
delivery into melisma (as in Surrexit pastor bonus,Ex. 8.2b).
A second striking dierence is the frequent use of accidentals in
Castros work, which often leads to cross-relations and rapid alternation
between chords with major and minor thirds. A typical example is the
opening of Angelus ad pastores ait (Ex. 8.3). In Lassos exordiumthe only
accidental, apart from the b
in the key signature, is the f
in the nal chord;

Castro uses both b
and b, as well as f and f
(the latter not only in the nal

chord).
Thirdly, Castro strives more than Lasso for simultaneous rhythmic
contrasts through the layering of extremely dierent note values, as on the
word stans in Surgens Jesus (Ex. 8.1b; compare with Lasso, Ex. 8.6).
Castro will often combine a long note and a melismatic passage. Examples
171
i gnace bossuyt
172
Example 8.1: (a) Lasso, Surgens Jesus, mm. 19; (b) Castro, Surgens
Jesus, mm. 114
&
&
&
V
?
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
1
.

Sur - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Sur - - - - - - - - -
w

gens, sur - - -
.

Sur - - - - - - - - -

gens Je - - - - - -

gens Je -
&
&
&
V
?
6

- - - sus, sur - - - -
w

gens Je - - - - - - - - - -
.

sus, sur - - - - -
.

Sur - - - - - - - - - - - -

gens Je - - - - - - -

gens
.

Sur - - - - - - - -

.

w

sus, sur - - - - -

Je - - - - -
.

gens

sus, sur - - - -

gens
.
j

w
sus,
w
Je - sus,

w
gens Je - sus,
&
&
V
2
4
2
4
2
4
1

Sur - - - - - - - -
.

Sur - - - - - - -

gens,
.

Sur - - - - - - - - -
.

gens, sur - - -
.

sur - - - - - -

w

gens, sur - - -

gens, sur -
w
.

gens, sur - -
.

- - - - -

- - - - -

- - - - -
&
&
V
6
w

gens Ie - sus
w

gens Ie sus
w
w
gens Ie -
.

Do - mi - nus,
.
Do - mi - nus
w
w
sus Do - - -
w

Do - mi -

no - - - - - - - -

mi - nus no -

w
nus no - ster,

w

W
stans

ster, stans,
w

ster, stans
&
&
V
11
W

w

stans

in me - di -

W
in
w

o, stans in
#
w

n
in me - di -
.

w
me - di - o

.
#

me - di - o

o dis - ci - pu -
(a)
(b)
8.7a (Lasso) and 8.7b (Castro) from the same motet provide a further illus-
tration of this process: in the lowest voice, Castro cites the bass from Lassos
motet on the words Pax vobis, but in contrast to his exemplar, he has the
other voices run on in melismas rather than according them similarly
drawn-out notes. Such simultaneous contrast does occur in Lasso, but on a
more modest scale, as for example on ut salvum me fac(in In te, Domine,
speravi, Ex. 8.8a). Castro (Ex. 8.8b) picks up Lassos descending third on
ut salvum, but augments the semibreves into breves and accompanies
them with an extensive melisma with octave leaps in the cantus. Similarly,
Castro will often exceed Lasso in highlighting the rhythmic contrasts
between successive fragments through diminution (Ex. 8.9, on accelerain
173
Example 8.2: (a) Lasso, Surrexit pastor bonus, mm. 17; (b) Castro,
Surrexit pastor bonus, mm. 112
&
&
&
V
?
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
1
w
w
Sur - re - -

Sur -
w
Sur -

xit pas - tor
. w

re - xit
. w

re - xit
w
w
bo - - -

pas - tor bo - - -

w
pas - tor bo -

w
nus, sur - re -

w
nus,
W
nus,

w
Sur - re - -

Sur -
w

xit pas - tor
w

w

sur - re - xit

xit pas - tor
.
w

re - xit
.

bo - - - -

pas - tor
w
w
bo - - -

w
pas - tor bo -

.

nus,
w

sur - - -
.

bo - - -
w
w
nus,
w

nus, sur -
&
&
V
2
4
2
4
2
4
1
w
.

Sur - re - - - -
w
Sur -

w

xit
.

re - - - - -

pas - - - tor

xit pas - tor
w
w
bo - nus,

Sur -
. w

bo - - - nus,

sur - re - xit
.

re - - - - -

sur - re - xit
w

pas - tor bo -

xit pas - tor
&
&
V
7
w

#
pas - tor bo -
-
.
-
w
w
bo - - - -
w

nus, sur - re -
-
w

nus, sur -

w
nus, sur - re - - -

xit pas - tor bo - - - - - - -

#

re - xit pas - tor

xit pas - tor

.

bo - - - - - -
w
w
bo - nus,
w
w
nus,
#
w
nus,
w

qui
w

.
qui a - ni -
.

a - ni- mam su -
(a)
(b)
In te, Domine, speravi) or augmentation (Ex. 8.10,quia natus est vobis,
in Angelus ad pastores ait).
Finally, Castro exceeds Lasso in his preference for short motivic units,
especially on single words. Although Lasso does often employ rhythmically
succinct syllabic motives, he tends, at least in the motets, to show a prefer-
ence for longer, more delicately balanced melodic phrases. This is evident in
the initial entry of Confundantur superbi (Ex. 8.11) and the second part
of Exaudi, Domine, vocem meam on the words Ne avertas faciem tuam a
me (Ex. 8.12). Lasso sets Confundantur superbi to a melismatic, evenly
designed theme; Castro begins by focusing all attention on the word
Confundantur,eventually followed by superbi.The approach is similar
for Ne avertas faciem tuam a me: instead of one overarching theme,
i gnace bossuyt
174
Example 8.3: (a) Lasso, Angelus ad pastores ait, mm. 18; (b) Castro,
Angelus ad pastores ait, mm. 110
&
&
V
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
1
w
An -

An -
.
w
An - ge -

ge - lus ad

w
ge - lus
.

w
lus
.
w
An - ge -
w
An -

pas - to - res
w
w
ad
w

ad
.

lus ad

w
ge - lus
.

w
a - - -
w
pas - to - res

w
pas - to -
w
pas - to - res,
w w
ad pas -
w

it, ad pas -
w
a - it, ad
w
w
- res

ad pas - - -
.

w
to - - -
w

to - res a - - - -

pas - to - - -
W
a - - - - - -
w
to - res
W
res

w
w
res a -
W
W
a - - -
W
a - - -
U
U
U
U
U
W
it:
W #
it:
W
it:
W
it:
W
it:
&
V
V
b
b
b
2
4
2
4
2
4
1
w
An - - -
.
w
An - ge -

ge - lus ad
.
n

lus ad
.
w
An - - - ge -

.

pas - to - res,
n
w
pas - to - res,
.
n

w
lus,
w

an - - -
w
an - ge -
w
an - ge -

.

ge - lus,
.

lus, an -
&
V
V
b
b
b
6
. #

w
lus
w
an - ge -

. #

- ge - lus
w

ad pas -
w

lus ad pas -
w

ad pas -

w
to - res a - - -

to - res a - it :

w
to - res a - - -
W
it :
#

w
W
it :
U
U
U
W
W
W
(a)
(b)
Castro splits the text into three separate fragments (Ne avertas faciem
tuam a me), clearly delineated by the text repetitions.
The result of these dierences is a more nervous and very dynamic
musical narrative, which adds a Baroque avor to Lassos models and which
clearly accords with some contemporary madrigal writing (for example,
the generous use of accidentals recalls Rore). Castro was unquestionably
attempting to overcome and in a sense leave behind the limitations, both
harmonic and contrapuntal, dictated by a three-voiced texture. At the same
time, we may characterize Castro as developing to the full Lassos composi-
tional processes (melodic progression, rhythm, harmony, etc.) in order to
surpass the original, since imitatio went hand-in-hand with emulatio:
admiration for the imitated model was matched by a certain urge to
compete. This was without a doubt a major challenge for Castro, consider-
ing that he was only at the beginning of his career and, moreover, was
becoming a specialist in the tricinium. He seems to have seen the Antwerp
period of 156976 as a sort of apprenticeship, aording him the chance
to master French, Italian, and Latin tricinia as arrangements of more
175
Example 8.4: (a) Lasso, Gustate et videte, mm. 17; (b) Castro, Gustate et
videte, mm. 18
&
&
V
V
?
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
1
W
Gus -
w
Gus - - -
w

ta - te et
w
w
ta - -

#
vi - de - - -

te et vi - de - - -
w w
te, et
W
Gus - - -

te,
w
w
vi - de - - -
w
Gus - - - -
w

ta - te et

w
gus - ta -

te,
w
w
ta -

#
vi - de - - -

te et vi -

et vi - de -
w
te et vi -

w
te, gus - ta -
w
Gus -
&
V
V
2
4
2
4
2
4
1
W
Gus -
w
Gus - - -
w
w
ta - te
w
w
ta -

et vi - de - - - - - - -
w
w
te, gus - - -

W
Gus - - -
w
w
ta -
.
#

w
w
ta - te,

te et vi - de - - -

.

te, gus - ta - - - -
W
gus - - -

te,

w
te,
w

ta - te et

w
gus - ta -
w
gus -
w
w
vi - de -
(a)
(b)
i gnace bossuyt
176
Example 8.5: (a) Lasso, Tribus miraculis, mm. 16; (b) Castro, Tribus
miraculis, mm. 19
&
&
&
V
?
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
1
W
Tri -
w
Tri - -
w
Tri - -
. w

bus mi -
w
w
bus
w
w
bus

ra - - - - - - -
w .

mi - ra - - - - - - - - -
w
w b
mi - ra - - - - - - - - -

cu -
w
w
lis or -

cu - lis or -

w
cu - lis

or -
w
or -

na - tum di - -

na - tum

or -

w
na - tum di - -

na - tum di - -
&
&
V
2
4
2
4
2
4
1
w

Tri - bus
w
Tri - - -
W
Tri - - - - - -
.

mi - ra - cu - lis,
w
bus mi -
w
w
bus
w

tri - bus

w
ra - cu - lis

w
mi - ra - - -
w

mi - ra - cu -
w
w
or - na -

w
cu - lis

lis or - na - tum
.
b

tum di -
w b

or - - na - tum
&
&
V
6
.

w
di - - - - - - -

w
- - - em,
w

di - - - em,
w

em, tri -
w

tri - bus
W
. w

bus mi -
w

mi - - - ra - - -

tri - bus mi -
.

w
ra - cu - lis

cu - lis or -
.
b

ra - cu - lis or -
(a)
(b)
Example 8.6: Lasso, Surgens Jesus, mm. 226
&
&
&
V
?
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
22
W
stans
W
ster,
W
ster,
w w
ster, stans
w

ster,

in me - - -
w
stans in me - - -
W
stans
w

W
stans
w
di - o
w
di - o
W
in
w
in me - di -
w
in me - di -
w

dis - - - ci - pu -
w

dis - - - ci - pu -
.

me - di - o dis -
w

o dis - - - ci - - -

o dis - ci - pu -

lo - rum su - o -
#
w
lo - rum su - -
. w

ci - - - pu -

w
pu - lo - -

#

lo - rum su - o -
Example 8.7: (a) Lasso, Surgens Jesus, mm. 314; (b) Castro, Surgens
Jesus, mm. 214
&
&
&
V
?
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
31
w
Pax
W
Pax
W
Pax
W
Pax
W
Pax
w
w
vo - - - - - -
W
W
.
w

vo - - - bis,
W
vo - - - - - - - - - -
w
w
bis,
w
w
vo - - - - - - - - - - - -
w
w
vo - - - - -
w
pax vo - -
W
w
al - - -

w
W
bis,
w

bis al -
W
bis,
&
&
V
2
4
2
4
2
4
21

Pax

Pax,
W
Pax

vo - - - - - - - -
w

pax
W
vo - - - - - - - - - - -
#
.
#

.

w
vo - - - - - -
W

bis, al - le - - -

bis, al - le - - -
w

bis,
(a)
(b)
Example 8.8: (a) Lasso, In te, Domine, speravi, mm. 669; (b) Castro, In
te, Domine, speravi, mm. 4550
&
&
&
V
V
?
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
66
w
w
ut sal - - -

mum re - fu - gi -
w

re - - - fu - gi -
w

re - - - fu - gi -

mum re - fu - gi -
w
w
ut sal - - -

vum me fa - - - - -

w
i, ut sal - - -
w
w
i, ut
w

i,
w

i,

w
vum,

ci - as,

vum me fa - ci -
w
w
sal - - - vum

ut
w
ut
w
ut
w

as,
w

me fa - ci -
w

sal - vum
w
w
sal - vum
&
&
V
2
4
2
4
2
4
45
-

ci - as, ut
-
#

ci - as, ut
.

w
fa - ci - as,
#
w

sal - vum me

sal - vum
w
ut

me fa - ci - as,
w
w
sal - - - -

w
w
w
vum

.

fa - ci -
w

ut sal -

.

me fa - ci -

as, ut sal - vum,

vum, ut sal - vum,
w

as, ut
(a)
(b)
extensive settings. In his later collections, he ceased to apply imitatio in his
chansons and motets and started to compose original works, thereby
hoping to lend a higher status to the tricinium. This is apparent from the
monumental character of his later tricinia. Most of the motets from the
Cantiones aliquot sacrae trium vocum of 1593 comprise at least three sec-
i gnace bossuyt
178
Example 8.9: (a) Lasso, In te, Domine, speravi, mm. 4453; (b) Castro, In
te, Domine, speravi, mm. 2631
&
&
&
V
V
?
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
44

in - cli - na

#

- am, in -
w

ad me au -

ad me au - rem

au - rem tu - am
#

ad me au - rem
w
in - -

w
cli - na ad
w

rem tu - am,
w

tu - am, ad

in - cli - na
W
tu - - - -

#

cli - na ad me
w

me au -

ad me au -

w
me
w

ad me au -
W
am

w
au - rem tu - - - -
w
rem tu - - - -

rem tu - - - - -

w
au - rem tu - - - -

.

rem tu - - - -
w
ac -
w

am, ac -
w

am, ac -

#
w
am,
w
w
am,
w
w
am,
&
&
&
V
V
?
49
.

ce - le - ra ut
.

ce - le - ra ut
.

ce - le - ra ut

e - - - - ru -

e - - - - -

e - ru - as

as

w
ru - as

ac -
w

me, ac -
w

me, ac -
w

me, ac -
.

ac - ce - le -
.
w
ce - le - ra

.
ac - ce - le -
.
w
ce - le- ra:
. w
ce - le- ra:
.

ce - le- ra: ut
w
w
ra ut
w
ut e -
w
w
ra ut
&
&
V
2
4
2
4
2
4
26

rem tu - am, in -

w
rem tu - am,

in -
w

cli - na ad
w
in - cli -
w

cli - na ad

me au - rem tu - - -

na ad me au -

me au - rem tu -

am, ac -

w
rem tu - am,
w

.
j
am, ac - ce - le -
.
J

.
J

ce - le- ra, ac - ce - le- ra

ac - ce - le - ra ut

.
J

ra, ac - ce - le- ra

ut e - ru - as me.
.

e - ru - as me.

ut e - ru - as me.
(a)
(b)
tions, some having four or six parts, and one no fewer than ten (Cum sero
esset). The 1596 tricinia (Trium vocum cantiones aliquot sacrae) are again
almost all sizeable compositions in four to six parts. The same evolution
towards monumentality may be seen in the French chanson. Moreover,
Castro conrmed his very original contribution to the French tricinium by
the fact that he himself probably supplied texts for some of the works.
36
It
179
36
See Hubert Daschner, Die gedruckten mehrstimmigen Chansons von
15001600. Literarische Quellen und Bibliographie, Ph.D. dissertation,
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitt, Philosophische Fakultt, Bonn
(1962), pp. lxviilxviii.
Example 8.10: (a) Lasso, Angelus ad pastores ait, mm. 239; (b) Castro,
Angelus ad pastores ait, mm. 2330
&
&
V
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
23
w
num,
W
mag - - -
w

qui - a na -
w
num,

qui - a na -
w
qui -
w

num,

b

tus est

w
tus est
w

a na - tus
W
qui - - -

w
no - bis

.

no - bis ho - di -

w
est no - bis
w

a na - tus
. w

ho - di -
w
qui -
W
e,
.
w
ho - di -

.

est no - bis,
W
e,
n
w

n
a na - tus
.

w
e
w

qui - a na -

w
est no - bis
w

qui - a na -
w

#

qui - a na -

tus est no -
w

b
ho - di -

tus est no -
&
V
V
b
b
b
2
4
2
4
2
4
23
w
#

est, qui -
W
qui - - - - - - -
w

qui -

a na - tus est
w
w
a
#

n
a na - tus est

.

vo - - -
w
w
na - - -

.

- - - - -

w
- tus est
w
w
vo - - -
&
V
V
b
b
b
27
#
#
w
- bis,
w

n

vo - bis,
w

bis, qui -
W
qui - - - - - -
w

qui - - -

a na -
w
w
a na - - - -
#
.
a na - tus

tus est, qui - - -

w
tus est,
w

est, qui - - - a
#

a na - tus
(a)
(b)
i gnace bossuyt
180
Example 8.11: (a) Lasso, Confundantur superbi, mm. 110; (b) Castro,
Confundantur superbi, mm. 17
&
&
&
V
?
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
1
w

Con - fun - dan - - -

tur su -
w


per - - - - - - - - - - -

tur su - - - - -

per - - - - -

bi, su -
w
Con -
&
&
&
V
?
6
-
w

per - bi,

- - - - - - - -

fun - dan - - - - - - -
w
con - fun -
.

bi,
#

tur
w


dan - - - tur

con -

su - per - - - - - - - -

tur su -
w

w
.

su - per - - - - -

fun - dan - - - - -

per - - - bi,

tur su -

bi, con -

tur su -
w

bi, con -
w
con - fun -

per - - - bi,
&
&
V
2
4
2
4
2
4
1
w

Con - - - fun -
w

Con - - - fun - dan - - - -
w

Con - - - fun - dan - - - -

dan - - - - tur,

w
tur,

tur, con - - -

con - fun - - - - - - -
w

con -
w

fun - - - dan -
w
#
dan -

fun - dan - - - -
&
&
V
5

tur

tur su - per - - - - - - - - -

tur su - per - - - - - - - - - -

su - per - - - - - - - - -

bi, con - fun - dan -

bi, con - fun - dan -

bi, con - fun -
#

#
w
tur su - per - bi,

tur su - per - bi, con -
(a)
(b)
may be that in the madrigal he felt less need to be original, since at the end of
the century the three-part madrigal continued to hold an established place
in the repertory and required no further legitimation. This might explain
his tendency to remain true to the process of arrangement in this genre,
whereby compositions by masters such as Luca Marenzio could become
available in lively and highly idiosyncratic versions for three voices. In this
sense, Castros tricinia, which were clearly intended as intimate household
music for the bourgeoisie and nobility (especially in Antwerp), functioned
as a kind of publicity for the composers on whose compositions they were
based. One would expect that in this context it would be next to impossible
to ignore Lasso. And yet Castros oeuvre seems to suggest that in the
181
Example 8.12: (a) Lasso, Exaudi, Domine, vocem meam, mm. 6773; (b)
Castro, Exaudi, Domine, vocem meam, mm. 4255
&
&
V
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
2
4
67
.
w

Ne a -
w
w
ver - tas

Ne
.

fa - ci - em tu - - - - - - -

w
a - ver -

w
.

tas
w

Ne a -
w .

am

fa -
w
w
ver - tas

Ne
w

a

w
ci - em
w

fa - ci - em

w
a - ver -
W
me

w
tu - am a
w

Ne a -
.

.

tu - - -
.

tas fa - ci - em
&
V
V
b
b
b
2
4
2
4
2
4
42
.
w
Ne a -
w
.

ver - tas,
w
Ne
w

ne a -

w
a - ver -
w

Ne a -
#

ver - tas, ne
w

tas,
W
ver - - -
.
w

a - ver -
w

ne a -
w

tas, ne

w
- tas,
w

ver - tas, ne

w
a - ver -
w
ne

w
a - ver -
&
V
V
b
b
b
49
.

tas fa - ci- em

w
a - ver -
w

tas,

tu - am, ne
w
.

tas fa - ci -
w

ne a -

w
a - ver -

em tu - am, ne
w
w
ver - tas
w

tas

a - ver - tas
.

fa - ci- em tu -
.

fa - ci- em tu -

fa - ci - em

w
am a
.

am a

w
tu - am a
W
w

me, ne

#
me, ne de - cli -
w
me,
(a)
(b)
southern Netherlands, with Antwerp as the economic and cultural center
and Leuven as the music publishing center, Lasso enjoyed his greatest fame
as a composer of chansons, and that his motets began to be noticed only
starting in the 1570s, while almost no attention was paid to his madrigals.
Castros tricinia thus turn out to be not unimportant puzzle pieces in the
documentation of the reception of the work by the most celebrated com-
poser of the late Renaissance, while they are also fascinating music in their
own right, the intrinsic musical qualities of which deserve, in my opinion,
greater attention.
Translated by Stratton Bull
i gnace bossuyt
182
9 The madrigal book of Jean Turnhout (1589) and
its relationship to Lasso
james haar
In the course of preparing a study of Lassos Libro Quarto of ve-voice
madrigals (1567),
1
my attention was drawn to the Libro Primo de Madrigali
a 6 voci of Giovan [Jean, Jan] Turnhout, published in Antwerp in 1589, in
which a large number of pieces half the contents of the book are settings
of texts used by Lasso. One Netherlandish composer turning to the work of
an older and more famous compatriot, to be sure. That is easily said; but six-
teenth-century musicians did not have access to the resources of modern
libraries, and the whole question of how madrigalists came upon the texts
they set is a far from simple one. Turnhout was not, to judge from this
volume, a serious student of Lassos music; his madrigals are far closer in
style to the canzonetta of the 1570s and 1580s than they are to Lasso. A few
eeting allusions tell us none the less that he did see not only the texts but
the music of the older composer, and indeed music prints must have been
an important source for composers in search of texts to set, even if their
purpose was not musical parody. Is there some reason for Turnhout to have
seen volumes of Lasso madrigals and to have chosen, or have recommended
to him, the texts he set?
An inventory (see the Appendix) of Turnhouts volume shows that he
chose for the most part texts appearing in Lassos Libro Terzo (1563) and
Libro Quarto (1567); he did not know or was not attracted by the early
books or by Lassos later madrigal collections. The inventory also points
toward acquaintance with the work of Monte and Rore, again illustrious
Netherlanders, as well as Palestrina (in a relatively obscure early collection)
and, understandably for the period, Marenzio. For some of Turnhouts
madrigals his precise source is not easy to pin down, and there are a few
183
1
Le Muse in Germania: Lassos Fourth Book of Madrigals, Orlandus Lassus and
his Time, pp. 4972.
pieces for which no other setting is known. That Lassos works were a source
for Turnhout is clear; the reasons behind Turnhouts choice are the subject
of this inquiry.
2
Jean, or Jan, Turnhout is an example of a Netherlandish composer
who apparently never left his native land. He held positions of importance
inMalines andBrussels, but he seems during a long life tohave beena singer
andchapelmaster rst, a composer only secondarily. His life is not well doc-
umented; information about himgathered by Van der Straeten and inter-
preted by Van Doorslaer is repeated without change in modern lexicons.
3
His name appears to have beenJanJacobs; he and his brother Grard, also a
composer, were natives of Turnhout, a town some twenty-ve miles north-
east of Antwerp. He would seemto have been born c. 15451550 and was
still alive in 1618. Nothing is known of his musical training, but Antwerp
seems the most logical place for it (later, in all probability, than Lassos
Antwerp stay of 15546). His older brother Grard became choirmaster at
the Church of Our Lady (Ons-Lieve-Vrouw; from 1559 the cathedral) in
Antwerp in 1562, making it likely that Jean Turnhout would have been
there as a singer. If he was in Antwerp he may also have known Sverin
Cornet, who succeeded Grard Turnhout as cathedral choirmaster in
1572.
4
In 1577 Jean Turnhout, said to be bruxellensis, clericus conjugatus,
was named choirmaster at the Cathedral of St. Rombaut in Malines; if he
had been a singer in Antwerp he had evidently moved at some point to
james haar
184
2
Lassos Libro Terzo, published by Antonio Barr in Rome in 1563, was reprinted
in Venice in that year and in editions of 1564, 1566, 1567, 1570, 1573, and 1586;
Libro Quarto (Venice, 1567) was reissued in 1570, 1584, and 1593. For reasons
that this study should make clear I assume that the two books reached the
Netherlands in the 1560s. One text used by Turnhout, Occhi piangete, was in
Lassos Primo Libro a 4 of 1560; it had already appeared in his op. 1 Antwerp
print of 1555.
3
Edmond van der Straeten, La Musique aux Pays-Bas avant le xix
e
sicle, 8 vols.
(Brussels, 186788; repr. New York, 1969), vol. 1, pp. 23748 et passim; G. van
Doorslaer, Jean van Turnhout, compositeur, matre de chapelle, Malines et
Bruxelles, 1545? aprs 1618, Musica Sacra, 42 (1935), pp. 21849. The
biographical information on Turnhout given here is taken from those two
sources unless otherwise specied.
4
See Kristine K. Forney, Music, Ritual and Patronage at the Church of Our Lady,
Antwerp, Early Music History, 7 (1987), p. 38. Jean Turnhout could have been in
Antwerp before 1562 as a boy singer.
Brussels, perhaps as a member of the chapel of Margaret of Austria, regent
of the Netherlands from 1559 to 1567, or her successors the Duke of Alva
(156773), Don Luis Requesens (15736), and Don Juan of Austria
(15768).
5
Malines, though newly created as a diocese, was now the prima-
tial see of the Netherlands; its archbishop was Antoine Perrenot de
Granvelle, a powerful diplomat and art patron to whom we will return.
Turnhout had evidently acquired a reputation, especially if it is true that
Granvelle took the appointment of a choirmaster as seriously as that of a
suragan bishop.
6
Ferocious religious war disrupted life at Malines completely;
Turnhout probably left the city about 1580. Once again his whereabouts are
unknown for a time, until 1586 when he became choirmaster at the Brussels
chapel of Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma and governor-general of the
Netherlands, son of Ottavio Farnese and Margaret of Austria. Here he
remained until his death, sometime after 1618.
Turnhouts surviving music consists of the six-voice madrigal book
of 1589, a volume of motets published in 1594, and a few scattered individ-
ual pieces, including a six-voice madrigal published in the Antwerp anthol-
ogy Melodia Olympica (RISM 1591
10
).
7
A volume of ve-voice madrigals,
cited by Gerber and nineteenth-century scholars as published in Douai in
1559 [=1595], is not extant though its existence does not seem improb-
able.
8
Turnhout remained as chapelmaster in Brussels after the death of
the madri gal book of j ean turnhout
1589
185
5
It is worth noting that Sverin Cornet was a choirmaster at Malines from 1564
to 1572. See New Grove s.v., Cornet, by Donna Cardamone.
6
This is said by Maurice Piquard in Le Cardinal de Granvelle, les artistes et les
crivains, Revue belge darchologie et dhistoire de lart, 17 (19478), pp. 1389.
No source is given, but Piquards article is based on study of Granvelle papers
and letters in the municipal library of Besanon.
7
The madrigal, Vorria parlare e dire, uses a text set by Marenzio (Libro Primo
delle villanelle a 3, Venice, 1584). See the Appendix, no. 9.
8
E. L. Gerber, Historisch-Biographisches Lexikon der Tonknstler (18121814), ed.
Othmar Wesseley [along with the earlier version of the work], 4 vols. (Graz:
Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 196679), vol. 2, p. 119. F.-J. Ftis,
Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie gnrale de la musique, 2nd
ed., 8 vols. (Paris, 187380; repr. Brussels, 1972), vol. 8, p. 275, corrects Gerbers
date for the ve-voice book and says it is to be found in Munich; Alphonse
Goovaerts, Histoire et bibliographie de la typographie musicale dans les Pays-Bas
(Antwerp, 1880), p. 225, follows Ftis. The volume is apparently not to be found
today at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.
Alessandro Farnese (1592); he wrote a mass for the entry of Archduke Ernst
into Antwerp in 1594, and was still in the chapel, sharing duties (because of
advanced age?) with Gry Ghersem in his later years.
9
Our cast of characters, Jean Turnhout and several of his patrons, has
now been assembled. A closer look at these patrons and at Lassos relation-
ship to them is now in order. Most prominent in the list is Antoine Perrenot
de Granvelle (151786), Archdeacon of Besanon, Bishop of Arras (1538),
Cardinal-Archbishop of Malines (156182), and a lifelong servant of the
Habsburgs, rst Charles V and then Philip II.
10
Granvelle, whose father was
a trusted counsellor of Charles V, began his ecclesiastical career early,
becoming a bishop at the age of twenty-one; throughout his life he sought
ecclesiastic preferment as a means of furthering a career hampered by his
lack of noble birth.
11
Students of his career dier about his personality and
sometimes about his motives, but his very considerable intelligence and
diplomatic talents are universally admired. He served Charles V more or
less in his fathers place; by the time of Charless abdication in 1555
Granvelle had become the leading representative, regent in all but name, of
the Habsburgs in the Netherlands.
With increasing power came increasing wealth. Granvelle built a
splendid house in Brussels and acquired villas outside that city and near
Antwerp.
12
He commissioned paintings and other works of art, and it is
said that at least a hundred literary works were dedicated to him. He was
james haar
186
9
Van Doorslaer, Jean van Turnhout, pp. 2278. On Ghersem, a prolic
composer most of whose music is lost, see New Grove s.v. Ghersem, by Mary A.
Ferrard.
10
The fullest treatment of Granvelles career is Maurice van Durme, Antoon
Perrenot, Bisschop van Atrecht, Kardinaal van Granvelle, Minister van Karel V en
van Filips II (15171586) (Brussels: Paleis der Academin, 1953), which
unfortunately pays scant attention to Granvelles patronage of artists. The article
of Alphonse Wauters on Granvelle in Acadmie royale des sciences, des lettres et
des beaux-arts de Belgique. Biographie nationale, 27 vols. (Brussels, 18661938),
vol. 7, cols. 197237, is still informative. See also the study of Piquard cited
above, note 6. Boetticher, Lasso, pp. 37, 125, et passim, speaks of some of
Granvelles connections with Lasso. Boetticher mentions some of Turnhouts
pieces on Lasso texts (pp. 92, 309) but appears to confuse Grard and Jean
Turnhout.
11
His father having bought the castle of Granvelle (near Besanon), the family
adopted this name; but Antoine Perrenot was never truly accepted as a
nobleman.
12
Piquard, Le Cardinal de Granvelle, pp. 1367.
clearly interested in music as well.
13
Tielman Susato dedicated his motet
series Liber . . . ecclesiasticarum cantionum of 1553 to Granvelle;
Manchicourts Liber Quintus (1554) of motets is also dedicated to him.
Even at the end of his career music prints were still addressed to him; an
example is Conversis Libro primo de madrigali a 6 (1584). For us the most
signicant volume of music addressed to Granvelle is Lassos Primo libro de
motetti, published in Antwerp in 1556. Lassos dedicatory letter, in Italian
like the title of the book, says that he is emboldened to write because the
gravissime orecchieof Granvelle dilettino de la mia musica; he is grate-
ful for the molti benecij, e segnalati favori that he has received tutto il
giorno from his patron. After allowances are made for the owery (and
hopeful?) dedicatory prose, it would seem that this letter is evidence of a
more than casual relationship.
14
A suggestion of something like real friend-
ship is the report that Granvelle learned of the theft of a manuscript of
Lassos music and concerned himself with its recovery.
15
At the end of his letter Lasso asks Granvelle to read the Latin text of the
opening motet, written in his honor. The motet text contains the phrase
musarum famulum ne despice, sustine Lassum, a punning reference to
the composers name heightened in the music by a single occurrence of the
la-sol solmization gure.
16
Lasso probably knew that Manchicourts motet
volume of 1554 also begins with a text, O decus o patriae lux, honoring
Granvelle. Other composers wrote pieces for him; both Adrian Willaert and
Cipriano de Rore composed motets, on the same text, O socii neque
enim/Per varios casus, in praise of Granvelle and referring in the cantus
1589
187
13
See above, and note 6.
14
The letter is given in Lasso, SW, vol. 3, p. vi. A facsimile of it may be seen in
Orlandus Lassus en Antwerpen, 15541556, exhibition catalogue (Antwerp: Stad
Antwerpen, 1994), p. 58, in CM, vol. 1, plate 2 (with English translation), and in
the facsimile edition of the entire motet book (Peer: Alamire, 1992).
15
Piquard, Le Cardinal de Granvelle, p. 139. It would be interesting to know
more about this anecdote.
16
The motet is printed in SW, vol. 11, p. 81, and in CM, vol. 1, p. 3. On this motet
volume see Edward E. Lowinsky, Die Antwerpener Motettenbuch Orlando di
Lassos und seine Beziehungen zum Motettenschaen der niederlndischen
Zeitgenossen (The Hague: Nijho, 1937), reprinted in English translation in
Lowinsky, Music in the Culture of the Renaissance and Other Essays, ed. Bonnie J.
Blackburn, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), vol. 1, pp.
385431.
rmus to his Vergilian motto Durate. Though not published until 1566
(after both composers deaths) the works were clearly written earlier,
perhaps at the time of Granvelles appointment to the see of Malines and
elevation to the cardinalate (1561).
17
EvidencepresentedbyIgnaceBossuyt showsthatGranvelledidindeed
take more than a passing interest in Lasso.
18
He may, in conjunction with
Hans Jakob Fugger, have been instrumental in getting Lasso appointed as
singer at the Bavarianducal court inthe fall of 1556; twoletters fromFugger
toGranvellespeakof Lassos journeytoandarrival inMunich.
19
InMarchof
1558 Granvelle wrote to Lasso, acknowledging receipt of some music and
asking for more fromthe composer. Anewly discoveredletter fromLassoto
Granvelle(April 1559), inwhichseveral pieces of musicwereenclosed, hints
strongly that Lassowouldconsider moving toa newplace. Granvelles reply
(May1559)counselsprudencethecomposer, hesays, hadagoodpost, after
all.
20
If Lasso was interested in the newly available position at the Spanish
court inMadridit was toolate; thejobwent toManchicourt.AndinOctober
1559, Pierre du Hotz was named director of the chapel of Margaret of
Austria, the new regent of the Netherlands; this is another position Lasso
might well have considered.
21
Granvelle hadmany people toplease. In1560
Lasso made a trip to the Netherlands looking for singers to engage for the
chapel inMunich.WhetherhesawGranvellewedonot know,but heheardby
letterfromtheregent (withGranvellebehindher?)that Lassowastoremem-
ber that the interests of PhilipII inFlemishmusicians must be servedrst.
22
ThecomposerreturnedtoMunichwithout havingrecruitedanysingers.
james haar
188
17
The cantus-rmus text, the single word Durate, is taken from a device of
Granvelle. Rores motet has the subtitle Illustrissimi et Reverendissimi
Cardinalis Granvellani Emblema. It uses as cantus rmus the soggetto cavato ut-
fa-re. Both Rores and Willaerts motets were published in Rores Libro Quinto of
1566 (RISM 1566
17
); that of Rore may be found in Rores Opera Omnia, ed.
Bernhard Meier ([Rome]: American Institute of Musicology, 195977), vol. 5,
pp. 110.
18
Ignace Bossuyt, Lassos erste Jahre in Mnchen (15561559): eine cosa non
riuscita? Neue Materiale aufgrund unverentlicher Briefe von Johann Jakob
Fugger, Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle und Orlando di Lasso, Festschrift fr
Horst Leuchtmann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Stephan Hrner and Bernhold
Schmid (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1993), pp. 5567.
19
Ibid., pp. 568.
20
Ibid., pp. 615.
21
Van der Straeten, La Musique aux Pays-Bas, vol. 7, p. 503. On Hotz see ibid., vol.
3, pp. 30725.
22
Leuchtmann, Leben, p. 117.
One other connection, possibly an important one, between Granvelle
and Lasso may be mentioned. In his letter of May 1559 to the composer
Granvelle mentions a Signor Polites as if he were a friend of Lasso.
Joachim Polites [=Burgher] (d. 1569) was a Fleming who studied at Padua
(as did Granvelle); he later turned up in Antwerp, where with the active
support of Granvelle he was appointed to head the chancery, a position he
held from 1541 until 1565.
23
Polites looked out for Granvelles interests, and
had a room at his disposal in the latters Brussels house. He himself lived
lavishly in Antwerp, and was an amateur poet and musician who patronized
many local artists.
24
Polites could well have been a useful friend to Lasso
during the composers Antwerp years, and could have made him known to
Granvelle. Both must subsequently have received copies of Lassos music in
manuscript and in print.
In the spring of 1564 Granvelle, who had incurred much enmity in the
Netherlands and who had Philip IIs support but not that of his Spanish
advisors, was asked by the king to leave Brussels; he did so, never to return
despite his never-ending wishes to do so (he left most of his valuable
belongings, including his library, behind in his Brussels house when he
departed
25
). This should mean that there could be no connection between
Granvelle and Jean Turnhout. But Granvelle surely knew of Grard
Turnhout, choirmaster at Antwerp Cathedral from 1562 to 1572 and then
director of Philip IIs chapel in Madrid. And though he could not visit his
episcopal seat in Malines (indeed he rarely did so even before 1564) he was
kept apprised of all that went on there by his friend the Vicar General of the
diocese, Maximilian Morillon.
26
Granvelle remained in name Archbishop
1589
189
23
See Biographie nationale, s.v. Joachim Polites, by Fernand Donnet; Piquard, Le
Cardinal de Granvelle, p. 141; Bossuyt, Lassos erste Jahre, pp. 646.
24
Biographie nationale, vol. 17, col. 910, where it is said that plusieurs artistes,
not specied, dedicated compositions to Polites. An instance of Polites dealing
with the printer Plantin on Granvelles behalf is cited by van Durme, Antoon
Perrenot, p. 254.
25
Biographie nationale, vol. 7, col. 223. The house was later looted and its
remaining contents then sold at auction in 1578, Granvelle and his brothers and
friends being considered at the time as ennemys du pays. See Maurice Piquard,
Le Cardinal de Granvelle, amateur de tapisseries, Revue belge darchologie et
dhistoire dart, 19 (1950), p. 126. But at least part of Granvelles library survived
and is still extant; see the illustrations in van Durme, Antoon Perrenot.
26
Piquard, Le Cardinal de Granvelle, les artistes, p. 134.
of Malines until 1582.
27
He must therefore have approved Jean Turnhouts
appointment as choirmaster in 1577, and must have learned something
about him then if he had not known him earlier. Turnhout was styled
bruxellensis at the time of his appointment; if he had been in Brussels
before 1564 he could have met Granvelle there, perhaps even have been
engaged by him.
The other gures of interest to us as patrons of musicians are Ottavio
Farnese, Duke of Parma; his wife Margaret of Austria (natural daughter of
Charles V) and their son Alessandro. Margaret (152286) had a Flemish
mother and spent her childhood at the Habsburg court in the Netherlands.
She was accustomed to musical tributes from an early age; a madrigal in
Arcadelts Primo libro (1538/9) addresses her, probably at the time of her
betrothal (1533) or marriage (1536) to Alessandro de Medici.
28
Another, in
Arcadelts Quinto libro of 1544, mentions her and Ottavio, presumably in
celebration of her second marriage in 1538.
29
Cipriano de Rore is the most illustrious composer to have been con-
nected with the Farnese couple. On his departure from Ferrara in the
summer of 1559 Rore returned to the Netherlands, where Margaret had
become regent. A madrigal in her honor, Alma real se come de stella,
published in 1565, may date from this period.
30
It is a birthday piece, refer-
ring to the approach of the Three Kings (Margarets birthday was celebrated
on 28 December); the end of the text,preso non sdegno / Mio stato humile
poi che vostro sono / E per elettione e per destino, suggests that Rore may
have been asking directly for a position in Margarets service. If so the piece
could be dated December 1559.
31
james haar
190
27
Biographie nationale, vol. 7, col. 226.
28
Iain Fenlon and James Haar, The Italian Madrigal in the Early Sixteenth Century:
Sources and Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988),
p. 65. The madrigal is Giovanetta regal pur innocente.
29
Ibid., p. 65.
30
See Alfred Einstein, The Italian Madrigal, 3 vols. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1949), vol. 1, p. 356. The madrigal is published in Rore, Opera
omnia, vol. 5, pp. 83.
31
Meier (Rore, Opera omnia, vol. 5, p. xiii) thinks that the text also refers to Rores
beginnings as a musician and some contact with Margaret at that point. This
seems unlikely to me. Margaret did stop in Malines, Rores probable home, in
1533 as she prepared to leave for Italy. But at the time she was eleven years old,
Rore seventeen. When Rore left the Netherlands for Parma late in 1560 his
Rores motet addressed to Granvelle, mentioned above, was probably
written at this time or shortly after his departure for Parma to assume his
new duties as ducal choirmaster there (November 1560). Another dedica-
tory piece, Mentre lumi maggior del secol nostro, its extravagant text
lavish in praise of Ottavio and Margarita (addressed as Apollo and Delia
[Diana]), was written at this time, probably for Ottavios visit to Brussels in
AugustSeptember 1560, by or at which time Rore was surely engaged for
Parma.
32
This work appeared in Rores posthumous Quinto libro of 1566,
dedicated by the printer Antonio Gardano to Ottavio in a letter famous for
its claim that Rores music unites all that is best in the music of Josquin,
Mouton, and Willaert.
33
The last work of Rore to celebrate the Farnese is the ve-voice madri-
gal Vieni dolce Hymeneo,addressed to Alessandro and his bride, Maria of
Portugal, who were married in November 1565. The marriage had been
decided upon in late 1564, by which time Rore had returned from Venice to
Parma. Rore died in September 1565; Duke Ottavio was then on his way
from Parma to Brussels for the wedding, perhaps with the commissioned
piece, clearly one of Rores last works, in his possession.
34
Here Lasso re-enters the picture, for he also wrote a setting of Vieni
dolce Hymeneo.
35
Rores madrigal was doubtless commissioned by
Ottavio Farnese. It seems unlikely that another setting of the same text
would have been wanted for the wedding ceremonies; yet the poem seems
1589
191
expenses were paid by a Farnese agent in Antwerp, suggesting that the composer
may have been there rather than at the court in Brussels. See Jessie Ann Owens,
Cipriano de Rore a Parma (15601565). Nuovi documenti, Rivista italiana di
musicologia, 11 (1976), p. 10.
32
See Louis Nuernberger, The Five-Voice Madrigals of Cipriano de Rore, 2 vols.,
Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan (1963) vol. 1, p. 28.
33
The dedication is reproduced in facsimile in Rore, Opera omnia, vol. 5, p. xix.
34
On Rores death date see Owens, Cipriano de Rore, p. 18. Vieni dolce
Hymeneo is published in Rore, Opera omnia, vol. 5, pp. 123. On p. xvi of that
volume Meier suggests convincingly, given its peculiar text, that the madrigal
Ne laria in questi d (published posthumously in RISM 1568
13
, reprinted in
1575
15
) was written to accompany a reworks display mounted as part of
Alessandro Farneses wedding festivities.
35
Printed in SW, vol. 8, pp. 69. It rst appeared in RISM 1570
6
, Second livre des
chansons a 4 et 5 parties composes par Orlando di Lassus, Cyprian de Rore, &
Philippe de Mons, published by Phalse in Louvain. Rores setting was printed in
1570
5
, the Premier livre of the same series.
too explicit to have been useful for anything else.
36
Granvelle, who had left
Brussels early in 1564, does not seem a probable source for a commission,
nor is there any apparent reason for Rore to have communicated the text to
Lasso. The latter may have received it from friends in the Netherlands.
37
He
appears to have known Rores music as well; although there is no percepti-
ble common material in the two settings, they are similar in style and Lasso
like Rore repeats the opening three lines of the poem at the end, using as
does Rore the music with which he opened the piece. Lassos setting is
divided into two parts and is a bit longer than Rores, but it is scored for four
voices instead of Rores ve (a gesture of modesty on the part of the younger
composer?). Both pieces were published in Louvain/Antwerp in 1570; curi-
ously, one is in each of a pair of matched volumes devoted to chansons and
madrigals by the two composers.
38
Lassos version was, then, known in the
Netherlands.
If both settings were used at the wedding of 1565, there is no mystery
here. If Lassos was not, could it have been written after the fact? The
obvious reason for this would be Lassos desire to remind the Farnese of his
existence and just possibly of his availability for the position in Parma
vacated by Rores death. Some appointments for the chapel in Parma were
quickly made, among them that of the organist Jean Terrier dArras (once a
client of Granvelle).
39
It is not clear to me, however, who Rores successor as
maestro di cappella was.
40
Lasso may no longer have been actively interested
in moving, but his Libro Quarto of 1567, dedicated to Alfonso II of Ferrara,
james haar
192
36
Boetticher, Lasso, p. 305, Sandberger in SW, vol. 8, p. xi, and Meier in Rore,
Opera omnia, vol. 5, p. xv, all assume that Lassos piece was written for the
wedding. Sandberger also suggests that Lassos Quando a mai quel giorno,
which mentions a Maria in its text, may have been intended for the wedding;
but the verbal context hardly seems appropriate.
37
The suggestion that Lasso visited the Netherlands in 1564 (Boetticher, Lasso,
p. 166) has no factual basis; see Leuchtmann, Leben, p. 136.
38
See note 35 above.
39
On Jean dArras see New Grove s.v. Arras, by Lavern Wagner. For his
connection to Granvelle see Piquard, Le Cardinal de Granvelle, les artistes,
p. 135.
40
The detailed study of N. Pelicelli, Musicisti in Parma nei secoli xv-xvi, Note
darchivio per la storia musicale, 8 (1931), pp. 13042, 196215, 27890; 9
(1932), pp. 4152, 11229, does not list Rores successor at the ducal chapel. In
1566 P. P. Ragazzoni became choirmaster at the Cathedral (ibid., vol. 8, p. 201).
shows evidence both external and internal that he wanted to be reckoned in
Italy as among the leading madrigalists of the day.
41
Other musicians were certainly interested in Parma. G. F. Alcarottos
Secondo Libro di Madrigali a 5 et a 6 (1569) is dedicated to Margarita
(perhaps written upon her return to Parma in 1567) and contains madri-
gals in honor of her, of the ducal pair, and a third,A la man vincitrice a lalte
e sole,referring to Alessandro as well. Its seconda parte sets this text:
Queste de le celesti anime duono
Che cedon vinte a vostri eterni lumi
Humil servo con sacro lumi e di note
Volgete a lor quelle superne ruote
Mentre in aur a voi beati sono
Ottavio et Alessandro invitti numi.
42
To this list of madrigals honoring the Farnese, doubtless not com-
plete, may be added the sonnet opening Turnhouts madrigal book of 1589.
The volume, described as the composers primo frutto, is dedicated to
Alessandro (154592), governor of the Netherlands since 1578 and (absen-
tee) Duke of Parma since 1586, the year Turnhout joined his service in
Brussels. The dedication is dated 20 December 1588. It could hardly have
come at a worse time. Alessandro was indeed one of the greatest military
commanders of his day; he managed to reconquer for Philip II all of the
southern Netherlands (essentially present-day Belgium).
43
But during the
ill-fated Armada expedition of 1588 his role was an ambiguous one. He
assembled an army at Dunkirk, planning an invasion of England; but a
combination of factors prevented him from disembarking from the port
made so famous in our century for a successful evacuation.
44
There was
1589
193
41
See the article referred to above, note 1.
42
For this print see Emil Vogel, Alfred Einstein, Franois Lesure, and Claudio
Sartori, Bibliograa della musica italiana vocale profana dal 1500 al 1700, 3 vols.
(Pomezia: Staderini-Minko, 1977) [= Il Nuovo Vogel], vol. 1, p. 29. On
Alcarotto see New Grove s.v.Alcarotto, by Glenn Watkins.
43
See Lon van der Essen, Alexandre Farnse, Prince de Parme, Gouverneur gnrale
des Pays-Bas (15451592), 5 vols. (Brussels: Librairie nationale dart et
dhistoire, 19337), passim. Van der Essens magisterial biography is almost
exclusively concerned with Alessandros military campaigns.
44
Garrett Mattingly, The Armada (Boston: Houghton-Miin, 1959; reprint 1987),
pp. 31425.
plenty of blame to be shared for the failure of the Armada; but Alessandro
received a great deal of personal criticism, and was forced to defend himself
to Philip II and others through the fall even to December of 1588.
45
If he
heard Turnhouts opening madrigal, or read the dedicatory sonnet it sets,
he must have had mixed feelings:
Sotto linsegno in van de Duci suoi
Contra il Belga lIberia arm le schiere
Che genti debellar tante e si ere
Palma fatal sol de Romani Heroi.
Tal pria Cesar le vinse, e Druso puoi.
Hor tu Signor le domi e de laltere
Citt, Provincie, e squadre lor guerriere
Ergi al ciel trionfante I Gigli tuoi.
O famoso Alessandro o de la gloria
De tuoi forti Quiriti emula prole
O Magno piu di lui donde tappelli
Vinse e gli anzi fug popoli imbelli
Ai trofei non avezzi hai tu vittoria
Di chi vincer talhor pugnando suole.
Alessandro, who patronized artists and literary men for propaganda
purposes if for no other reason, was used to being hailed as a new Alexander,
a new Hercules; Turnhout was simply unlucky in his timing.
46
Alessandro
had retained his mothers choirmaster, Pierre du Hotz; it is not clear
whether Turnhout, who may have returned to Brussels during the early
1580s when his post at Malines became impossible because of religious
strife, succeeded him directly, but in a document of 1596 he says that he had
been in his post for ten years.
47
He was certainly not well known as a com-
poser, but he must have had a reputation for competence. There is little to
suggest that Alessandro, almost constantly with his army, had time or incli-
nation for music. During his youthful years in Spain (155965) Alessandro,
who is said never to have been interested in studious pursuits, was none the
james haar
194
45
Colin Martin and Georey Parker, The Spanish Armada (London: Norton,
1988), pp. 2656, 290.
46
Felipe Fernndez-Armesto, The Spanish Armada: The Experience of War in 1588
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 84, 100.
47
Van der Straeten, La Musique aux Pays-Bas, vol. 3, p. 322.
less put on a regime of study, together with Don Juan of Austria and the ill-
fated Don Carlos of Spain (what a bundle for a tutor to handle!), which
included one hour a day for a leon de chant et de musique.
48
Whether
this was enough to make him a discerning musical patron may be doubted,
but like all educated aristocrats of the time he knew something of the art.
The contents of Turnhouts volume are described in the Appendix to
this study. Enough has been said to showthat the music of Lasso must have
been readily accessible to him; but did the name of Lasso have special
meaning inthe Brussels of the 1580s? Surely it must have. Lassowas by then
the most famous musicianof his day, as Rore hadbeenof his. Andbothwere
fromthe south, Catholic Netherlands; bothhadhadclose connections with
gures of power andeminence inthe region. It seems pardonable exaggera-
tiontosaythat theymayhaveformedpart of apantheonof local composers,
just as theywere todofor Ftis andKiesewetter nearlythree centuries later.
Of the twenty madrigals in the volume, ten set texts used by Lasso,
several chosen by him alone or by a very small number of composers.
Turnhout, by inclination a composer of canzonetta-madrigals, did not
attempt an approach to Lassos style; but here and there he acknowledged
his debt to Lasso by a quick allusion to the latters music, as Examples 9.14
show. Turnhout begins several of his pieces with reference to Lassos
exordia. In Example 9.1 Lassos altus, which starts alone, is echoed by
Turnhouts sexta, starting by itself and continuing with a melody aping the
contours of Lassos line. Example 9.2 shows Turnhout reproducing not only
the signature la-sol but the solmization of the whole of Lassos opening
phrase. Turnhouts imitation of Lasso in Example 9.3 is less exact, but he
recognizes and rather ineectively copies the older composers vivid setting
of the opening words, in which the melodic line seems to peer into the dis-
tance (Ben veggio di lontano). In Example 9.4 Lassos majestic voicing of
the opening words of Petrarchs Canzoniere is clearly imitated by Turnhout,
who nevertheless lowers the tone of simple grandeur in his model by con-
tinuing in Marenzio-ish chromatic fashion, here rather out of place. Only a
musician of the time (or an allusion-happy twentieth-century musicolo-
gist?) would recognize these, but they may have meaning all the same, a
modest bow to the divin Orlande. One wonders if Lasso was given a copy
of this volume.
1589
195
48
Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnse, vol. 1, pp. 25, 69.
james haar
196
Example 9.1: O belt rara (a) Turnhout; (b) Lasso
6
C
A
&
&
V
1
w

O bel - ta

O bel - ta ra - - - - - -

O bel - - - - - -
.
J

ra - - - - - ra
.

ra

ta ra - - - ra
(T, 5, B tacent)
C
A
5
T
&
&
&
V
C
C
C
C
w
O
w
w
O bel - - -
w
O
w
O

w
bel - ta ra -

w
ta ra -

w
bel - ta ra -

w
bel - ta ra -
w
ra
w
ra
w
ra
w
ra
(B tacet)
(a)
(b)
Example 9.2: Questi son lasso, questi (a) Turnhout, sexta vox;
(b) Lasso, cantus
&
c

Que - sti son

las - so, que - sti,
&
b C
.

Que - sti son las -

w
so, que -
w
sti,
Ex. 9.2b
(a)
(b)
Example 9.3: Ben veggio di lontano (a) Turnhout, cantus;
(b) Lasso, cantus
&
.

Ben veg - gio di lon - tan'

il dol - ce lu - me
&
w
Ben

veg - gio di lon - ta -
w

no il

dol - ce lu - me
Ex. 9.3a
Ex. 9.3b
(a)
(b)
For the remainder of the volume Turnhouts sources are less clear.
Philippe de Monte, another Flemish composer of international fame and
one in Habsburg service, set Dolce mio caro e pretioso albergo,a sonnet of
which Turnhout composed the octet (no. 20). Rore is less well represented
than one might expect, and there is some overlap of texts set by him and by
Lasso. But the surprising appearance of an ottava stanza,Misero stato degli
amanti in queste(no. 19), of which there is only one other setting, part of a
cycle by Palestrina, called in its printed source Giannetto whom
Turnhout may not have recognized as the famous Roman composer can
be explained by the fact that this cycle, Da fuoco s bella nasce il mio ardore,
appeared in Rores Secondo libro a 4 (1557, 1569, 1571).
49
1589
197
49
Il Nuovo Vogel, vol. 2, pp. 150406, nos. 242931. On Palestrinas cycle see James
Haar, Pace non trovo: A Study in Literary and Musical Parody, Musica
Disciplina, 10 (1966), pp. 95149.
Example 9.4: Voi chascoltate in rime sparse il suono (a) Turnhout;
(b) Lasso
Cantus
6a
Altus
&
&
&
c
c
c
1

Voi, voi ch'a - - -
#

Voi, voi ch'a - -

Voi, voi ch'a - -

#
scol - tat' in
#
#

scol - tat' in

scol - tat' in
(T, 5a, B tacent)
Cantus
Altus
5a
Tenor
Bassus
&
&
&
V
?
C
C
C
C
C
w
Voi
w
Voi
w
Voi
w
Voi
Voi
w
w
ch'a - - - -
w
w
ch'a - - - -
w
ch'a - scol -
w

ch'a - - -
w
ch'a - - - -

scol - ta - - -

scol - ta - - -
w w
ta - - - te

w
scol - ta - - -
(a)
(b)
Given Marenzios popularity in the Netherlands in the 1580s,
Turnhouts choice of three texts (nos. 9, 13, and a piece appearing in an
Antwerp anthology of 1591) is not surprising. If Guglielmo Textoris was a
Flemish musician (resident in Italy) Turnhouts selection of a sonnet (no.
18) set by him may be explainable. Textoriss Libro primo a 5 (1566) is dedi-
cated to Jacopo Pinsonio A Steinhueisen, probably a member of a well-
known and Habsburg-connected Flemish family.
50
There remain four
pieces to be accounted for, other than the opening dedicatory piece, clearly
of local origin. No. 2, a Petrarch sonnet popular with composers from
Verdelot through the late sixteenth century, could also have been available
from Petrarchs Canzoniere, a copy of which was surely ready at hand to any
madrigalist. There are three unica, nos. 11, 16, and 17. These may have been
set in madrigal volumes no longer extant, or have been the work, like the
opening dedicatory sonnet, of someone active as a madrigal poet in circles
close to Turnhout.
In sum, Turnhouts madrigal book stands as evidence of a kind of
national cultural awareness in late sixteenth-century Franco-Flemish
society, something that must have been very precious during this turbulent
period in Netherlandish history. And chief among the musical heroes in
this society was Orlando di Lasso, or Roland de Lassus, of Mons and
Antwerp.
james haar
198
50
A Guillaume de Steenhuys (15581638), son of a prominent ocial, was a
lawyer and councillor in Malines and Brussels. See Biographie nationale, vol. 23,
cols. 7568.
Appendix
Giovan Turnhout, Il Primo Libro de Madrigali a Sei Voci (Antwerp: Pietro
Phalesio and Giovanni Bellero, 1589)
No. Capoverso Poet Remarks
1, fol. 2 Sotto lingegno in anon. sonnet Dedicatory sonnet addressed
van de Duci suoi; 2
a
: to Alessandro Farnese
O famoso Alessandro
2, fol. 3 Quando Amor i begl Petrarch, octet Frequently set by composers
occhi a terra inchina of sonnet beginning with Verdelot
(CLXVII) (1533) and including
Fogliano (1547), Micheli
(1564), Vinci (1567), and
Corona (1574).
3, fol. 3
v
O belt rara o santi anon. madrigal Only Lasso (1567) and
modi adorni Andrea Gabrieli (1566) are
known to have set this text.
Their settings, of which
Lassos is probably the
earlier, are related.
Turnhouts sexta, which
opens the piece, seems drawn
from Lassos altus, which also
begins alone.
4, fol. 4 Questi son lasso, anon. madrigal Lassos ve-voice setting
questi (1563) is the only other use
of this text known to me.
Boettichers reference to a
setting by F. Viola (Lasso,
309) is in error. Once again
Turnhout seems to refer to
Lassos opening gesture in his
sexta vox.
5, fol. 4
v
Amor che vedi ogni Petrarch, octet Five-voice settings exist by
pensieri aperti of sonnet Lasso (1563) as well as by
(CXLIII) Monte (1570, 1574) and
Rore (1542). Turnhouts
version seems unrelated to
any of these.
1589
199
6, fol. 5 Ben veggio di lontan Petrarch, sestet Turnhout does not indicate
il dolce lume of preceding this as a seconda parte;
sonnet neither do Lasso (1563) or
Monte (1570); in Rore it is so
marked. Lassos opening
gesture seems to be imitated
by Turnhout.
7, fol. 5
v
Bella guerriera mia Bembo, sonnet, Set for ve voices by Lasso
perche s spesso octet [Bembos (1563), by Perissone Cambio
authorship is for four (1554). Turnhout
pointed out by uses the same cleng as
Leuchtmann, Lasso but the settings seem
SW2, vol. 4, unrelated. Boetticher, Lasso,
p. xxx.] 309, sees a weak imitation
of Lasso by Turnhout in the
closing phrase of the piece.
8, fol. 6 Come val mondo Petrarch, octet Not an especially popular
hor mi dilett e of sonnet text among musicians, this
piace (CCXC) sonnet was set by Lasso
(1567); there are also settings
by Rossetti (1566), Merlo
(1567), and Balbi (1570), all
of the complete sonnet in
two parts.
9, fol. 6
v
Lasso quandhavran anon. A setting of this text is in
n tanti sospiri canzonetta Marenzios Libro primo delle
villanelle a 3 (1584), a source
used twice in Turnhouts
book (see no. 13) and again
for the six-voice Vorria
parlare e dire printed in
Phalses Melodia Olympica
(RISM 1591
10
). Whether
Turnhout cites Marenzios
opening, or both composers
used the la-sol gure as a
matter of course is hard to
determine.
james haar
200
10, fol. 7 Quel dolce suon per anon. sonnet Set by C. Ameyden in Lassos
cui chiaro sintende octet Terzo Libro of 1563; no other
settings are known to me.
Could Lasso have known
Ameyden, a papal singer who
studied in Antwerp about the
time of Lassos residence
there? On Ameyden see New
Grove s.v. Ameyden, by
Lavern J. Wagner.
11, fol. 7
v
Udite i miei lamenti anon. No other setting of this text
canzonetta is known to me. Madrigals,
by Guarini and others,
beginning Udite amanti
were popular in the late
sixteenth century.
12, fol. 8 Il tempo passa e Petrarch, Set by Rampollini as part of
lhore son s pronte canzone stanza a cycle. Otherwise Lassos
(second stanza version (1567) is the only
of XXXVII, one known.
Si debile il lo)
13, fol. 8
v
Se il dolce sguardo anon. Not the Petrarchan sonnet
del divin tuo volto canzonetta (CLXXXIII) popular with
several generations of
madrigalists. Other settings
of the text used by Turnhout
include one by Castro
(1594), Ferretti (1567), and
Marenzio (1584), the latter
Turnhouts most likely
source.
14, fol. 9 Voi chascoltate in Petrarch, octet Set by a number of
rime spars il suono of sonnet (I) composers. Lassos version
(1567) seems to be echoed by
Turnhout at the beginning of
his setting.
1589
201
15, fol. 9
v
Occhi piangete Petrarch, octet A text popular with
accompagnate il core of sonnet madrigalists throughout the
(LXXIV) century. Lassos four-voice
setting (1555) opens with a
falling motive, as does that of
Turnhout; but the latters
three-voice beginning is
much closer in spirit to the
villanella. The setting of S.
Cornet (1581), which I have
not seen, might be relevant
here.
16, fol. 10 O fortuna crudel di anon. ottava No other settings of this text
me ti satia stanza are known to me.
17, fol. 10
v
Poi che madonn il anon. sonnet Another unicum.
mio martir non crede octet
18, fol. 11 Dove fuggi crudele anon. sonnet This text was set by
ahi che fuggendo octet G. Textoris (1566). He may
have been a Fleming; his
print (Libro primo a 5) is
dedicated to Jacopo Pinsonio
A Steinhueisen and some of
its contents are said to have
been written for him.
19, fol. 11
v
Misero stato degli Virginia Salvi, The only other setting of this
amanti in quante ottava stanza text, of which no printed
(the twelfth in sixteenth-century edition is
a fourteen- known, is that of Palestrina,
stanza cycle) part of his cycle Da fuoco cos
bel nasce il mio ardore,
published in RISM 1557
24
.
20, fol. 12 Dolce mio caro D. Veniero, This sonnet is set entire in
e pretioso albergo sonnet octet Montes Quarto libro a 4
(1581), a copy of which is
today in the Bibl. Royale in
Brussels.
james haar
202
10 Modal ordering within Orlando di Lassos
publications
peter bergquist
In recent years a number of scholars have devoted increasing atten-
tion to the structure of music prints in the sixteenth century. The reasons
why composers or publishers decided on the order of the individual items
in a collection are not always obvious. A set of Magnicats would of course
appear in the order of the eight reciting tones that served as their cantus
rmi, and some collections of motets were organized according to liturgical
considerations, but the texts themselves, either Latin or vernacular, did not
often imply a specic order when they were grouped in a publication.
Harold Powers has articulated most clearly how traits of the music itself
came to be used as an organizing factor.
1
He observed that early sixteenth-
century collections such as those of Petrucci have no discernible musical
basis for their arrangement, while later in the century compositions came
to be grouped according to three criteria: (1) whether cantus durus or
cantus mollis governed, that is, whether the signature contained no at or
one; (2) whether the range was relatively lower or higher as shown by one of
the two standard combinations of clefs, the so-called chiavette or high
clefs and the normal or lowclefs; (3) the nal, expressed as the lowest note
in the last sonority (or in modern terms, the root of the closing triad).
2
A
203
1
Harold Powers, Tonal Types and Modal Categories in Renaissance Polyphony,
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 34 (1981), pp. 42870, is his most
fundamental study that bears on the subject of this paper. His other works that
treat the same material include Modal Representation in Polyphonic
Oertories, Early Music History, 2 (1982), pp. 4386; Is Mode Real? Pietro
Aron, the Octenary System, and Polyphony, Basler Jahrbuch fr historische
Musikpraxis, 16 (1992), pp. 952; and Anomalous Modalities, Orlando di Lasso
in der Musikgeschichte. Bericht ber das Symposion der Bayerischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, Mnchen, 4.6. July 1994 (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1996), pp. 22142.
2
Powers, Tonal Types, pp. 4367.
collection might group its contents according to any of these criteria, singly
or in combination.
The three criteria of clef, signature, and nal in their various combi-
nations were taken by Siegfried Hermelink to distinguish Tonartentypen or
as Powers puts it, tonal types.
3
Since the nals were in practice almost
always conned to the six pitches of the natural hexachord, a total of
twenty-four tonal types could in principle exist, of which the two with a at
signature and E as nal were never used. Hermelink attempted to show that
musical behavior of the individual tonal types was so diverse that they
could not be subsumed under a system of either eight or twelve modes.
Powers demonstrated, however, that composers and publishers in the later
sixteenth century increasingly used the tonal types to represent eight or
twelve modes in numerical order within a publication or other group of
compositions. This is not to say that the pieces were composed in a mode,
but that they can represent a mode when placed in a suitable context. How a
polyphonic composition may be in or express a mode is a completely
dierent subject than how it may represent a mode. The latter can be
accomplished simply through the combination of clef, signature, and nal,
whereas the musical behavior that might cause a piece to express a mode is a
larger issue. The possibility of modal representation does not mean that
every piece of sixteenth-century polyphony is in or represents or was com-
posed in a mode.
4
It is well known that Lasso held to the traditional system of eight
modes rather than adapting the twelve-mode system propounded by
Glareanus and Zarlino. Powers described several publications of Lasso that
are modally ordered, assigning the tonal types to represent members of the
eight-mode system;
5
this study follows his lead and explores contemporary
publications of Lassos music as thoroughly as possible. The emphasis is on
publications over which Lasso had some control, that is, those by publishers
with whom he dealt directly. Only motets and settings of vernacular texts
are considered, since a collection of masses would not usually include
enough pieces to be modally ordered (the necessary minimum would be
peter bergqui st
204
3
Siegfried Hermelink, Dispositiones modorum (Tutzing: Schneider, 1960); Powers,
Tonal Types, p. 439.
4
See especially Powers, Anomalous Modalities, p. 226, on this point.
5
Tonal Types, passim, and Anomalous Modalities, passim.
around sixteen), and Magnicats and other liturgical music would be
ordered on dierent principles.
Table 10.1 lists the tonal types used by Lasso in modally ordered col-
lections and the modes that they represent. The table is based on the
ndings of Powers and Bernhard Meier, which are taken as axiomatic for
this study.
6
Lassos usage is essentially similar to that of his contemporaries,
diering mainly in how he treats pieces with C or A as nal. He does not use
every possible tonal type in his modally ordered collections, though some
others appear elsewhere in his output. The two clef combinations referred
to in Table 10.1 are standard for the period, with the low or normalclefs of
c1 c3 c4 f 4 for the basic SATB group and the high clefs or chiavette of g2 c2 c3
f 3 (or c4). When there are more than four voices, the added parts normally
duplicate the range and clef of one of the basic four. The high and low clefs
typically distinguish authentic from plagal modes respectively, based in the
rst place on the ambitus of the tenor, which continued to be considered the
leading voice for purposes of determining the mode. A signature of one at
was sometimes used to cause a transpositionof one of the normal nals of
modal theory, e.g., mode 1 or 2 transposed from nal on D to nal on G, a
perfect fourth higher.
Mode 1 then may be represented both by a nal on D and no at in the
signature (though occasionally the at is used) and by a nal on G with one
at. Mode 2 was almost never used untransposed, since it would have to be
notated lower than normal singing ranges. It frequently appeared trans-
posed to G with one at, distinguished from mode 1 by the low clefs. Mode 2
might also be notated in high clefs and no at with nal on D (hereafter rep-
resented as H/0/D). Since mode 1 in D used the low clefs, this led to the para-
doxical result that the authentic mode used the low clefs and the plagal
mode the high, which is contrary to the normal expectation. Modes 3 and 4
were rarely distinguished from each other in polyphony, either in theory or
practice, and Lasso used the combination L/0/E to represent this composite
mode 3/4, which could also be represented transposed as H/1/A. A few
examples represent mode 4 by unusually low clefs, c2 c4 f 3 f 5. For Lasso as
for most other sixteenth-century composers, pieces in F almost by
modal orderi ng wi thi n lasso
s publi cati ons

205
6
Powers, Tonal Types and other works cited above; Bernhard Meier, The Modes
of Classical Vocal Polyphony, trans. Ellen Beebe (New York: Broude, 1988;
original German edition, Utrecht: Oosthoek, Scheltema & Holkema, 1974).
denition used a at in the signature, and he like many others used them to
represent modes 5 and 6. His system included no ionian modes. Mode 6
was also represented transposed a fth higher by H/0/C. Modes 7 and 8 were
represented at their standard pitch levels by H/0/G and L/0/G respectively.
Mode 8 was also transposed a fourth higher to H/1/C. Some theorists
classed H/0/C and L/0/C as mode 7 and 8 respectively, but Lasso usually
associated such pieces with mode 6; they never represent mode 7 or 8 in his
modally ordered publications.
Pieces in H/0/A or L/0/A are included in a number of Lassos modally
ordered publications. In sixteenth-century theory and practice these pieces
were sometimes classed as mode 3 (especially L/0/A) or mode 1 or 2 (espe-
cially H/0/A). Powers showed that although Palestrina at least once used
peter bergqui st
206
Table 10.1 Tonal types used by Lasso in modally ordered
collections and the modes they represent, based on Harold Powers,
Tonal Types
Final: Lowest
Clefs: High=g2 tone of the last Mode: The mode that
c2 c3 f3 (or c4); Signature: 1=one chord in a given each combination
Low=c1 c3 c4 f4 flat; 0=no flats composition represents
Low 0 (occasionally 1) D 1
High 1 G 1 transposed a 4th up
Low 1 G 2 transposed a 4th up
High 0 D 2 transposed an 8ve up
Low 0 E 3/4 (authenticplagal
distinction not often
made)
c2 c4 f3 f5 0 E 4 (rare)
High (or Low 1 A 3/4 transposed a 4th up
infrequent)
High 1 (rarely 0) F 5
Low 1 (rarely 0) F 6
High 0 C 6 transposed a 5th up
High 0 G 7
Low(onlyoneex.) 0 C 7transposeda5thdown
Low 0 G 8
High 1 C 8 transposed a 4th up
High 0 A A (authentic?)
Low 0 A A (plagal?)
H/0/A to represent mode 1 in a modally ordered collection, Lassos usage in
such collections is anomalous.
7
Powers cited only two Lasso collections in
which H/0/A was used, but the present study has uncovered several more,
and this more complete information lls out the picture considerably. At
the end of this paper I will summarize the information and place it in con-
junction with my recent study of all of Lassos pieces in H/0/A and L/0/A.
8
Another basic question that the present study must address is Lassos inten-
tions regarding modal collections. How much does modal ordering reect
his own wishes as distinct from decisions made by his publisher or editor?
The best approach is to consider both place and time, to examine the prac-
tice of Lassos publishers in various parts of Europe and how that practice
changed in time if at all.
Italy
We know of no Italian publications devoted exclusively to Lassos
music that are modally ordered. Powers mentions several Italian prints that
show such ordering, but none of them is of Lassos music. His madrigal
books published in Italy do not consider clef, signature, and nal all
together as factors in their organization. Some of them show a tendency to
group by clef, with all the pieces in low clefs separated from those in high
clefs, as in Lassos earliest Italian publication, his rst book of ve-voice
madrigals (Venice: Gardano, RISM 1555c). In this book the rst fteen
pieces are in low clefs, nos. 1620 are in high clefs, and nos. 212 in low
clefs.
9
Perhaps the two nal pieces were given their position so as to group
them with nos. 1920, with which they share the nal of F and signature of
one at. The collection is clearly ordered on the basis of musical character-
istics rather than the texts, with each tonal type segregated from the others.
Another option was to group all the pieces in cantus durus separately from
those in cantus mollis, as in the third book of ve-voice madrigals (Rome:
Barr, RISM 1563c). Ordering is once again on the basis of musical traits,
s publi cati ons

207
7
Powers, Tonal Types, pp. 44950.
8
Peter Bergquist, The Modality of Orlando di Lassos Compositions in A
Minor, Orlando di Lasso in der Musikgeschichte, pp. 718.
9
The ordering of all of Lassos madrigal books may easily be observed in SWand
SW2, vols. 2, 4, and 6, which publish the madrigal books in their original orders.
with each of the two major groups further subdivided on the basis of clefs
and nals. No modal ordering results, in part because the modes that could
be represented are conned to modes 14.
10
Lassos Italian motet publications follow similar patterns. Powers
noted that none of the Lasso motet books of Antonio Gardano, Lassos
principal Italian publisher, is modally ordered.
11
They may be grouped in
other ways, as he observes of Gardanos 1562 re-edition of the motets rst
published by Montanus and Neuber in Nuremberg in the same year (RISM
1562c and 1562a respectively). The Nuremberg edition is modally ordered,
but Gardano rearranges the pieces in a way that only partially retains the
original grouping and removes the pieces from any possible modal order-
ing. Powers notes that Gardanos Book IV (RISM 1566e) seems to be
ordered primarily by nal, subdivided by cleng;
12
liturgical order may
also play a role at the beginning of the book.
13
Netherlands
Lassos principal publishers in the Netherlands were Jean Laet and
Tielman Susato in Antwerp and Pierre Phalse in Louvain (later Antwerp).
Laets most notable publication of Lassos music was his rst motet book
(RISM 1556a), in which the individual tonal types are grouped together but
not ordered throughout by clef, signature, nor nal. Susato published a
large number of anthologies from 1544 on that Powers showed to be
modally ordered, some within a single publication, others in a series of
publications in which all pieces within a book were stated to be in a single
mode.
14
Most of Susatos publications were anthologies, and his only publi-
cation exclusively devoted to Lasso was a collection of chansons, RISM
1564c (see Table 10.2). The contents of this book are in perfect modal order,
except for two pieces in mode 3/4 that are separated from their fellows, as is
the nal chanson in mode 8. The single chanson in L/0/A follows the main
peter bergqui st
208
10
Book V (SWand SW2, vol. 6; RISM 1585e), published in Germany, holds to the
same principle, with all the pieces in cantus mollis at its head, followed by all
those in cantus durus. The publisher of Book V, Katharina Gerlach in
Nuremberg, issued a number of modally ordered Lasso prints in other genres;
these are discussed below.
11
Powers, Tonal Types, p. 461.
12
Ibid.
13
CM, vol. 5, p. xiii.
14
Powers, Tonal Types, pp. 4435, 4689.
group of pieces in mode 8, in other words, after the completion of the modal
cycle.
Pierre Phalse the elder published many collections of Lassos music,
and his son Pierre the younger continued to do so, sometimes in association
with Jean Bellre in Antwerp, to which city the Phalse press eventually
moved. Most of Phalses Lasso publications are reprints of collections pre-
viously published in France and Germany, so any modal ordering they may
present is of no signicance in determining Lassos own intentions, except
as it duplicates modal ordering that Lasso may have established in the rst
edition. The only other Phalse collection that appears to be modally
ordered proclaims itself as such in its title: La Fleur des chansons dOrlande
de Lassus . . . toutes mises en ordre convenable selon leur tons (Antwerp: Pierre
Phalse & Jean Bellre, RISM 1592b). It is a publishers compilation, dedi-
cated to the master of ceremonies of Mecheln Cathedral, and for that reason
the original texts of several chansons were replaced by bowdlerized contra-
facta.
15
In this publication the four- and ve-voice chansons appear in suc-
cession, and each group is modally ordered (see Table 10.3). The ordering of
the ve-voice chansons is not perfect, since representatives of mode 5 are
s publi cati ons

209
15
Helmut Hell and Horst Leuchtmann, Orlando di Lasso: Musik der Renaissance
am Mnchner Frstenhof. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Ausstellungskataloge 26
(Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1982), p. 216.
Table 10.2 RISM 1564c, Le premier livre de chansons quatre
parties (Antwerp, Susato)
Number Clefs/Signature/Final Mode represented
215 H/1/G 1 tr
216 L/1/G 2 tr
278 H/0/D 2 tr 8ve
2912 L/0/E 3/4
1315 H/1/F 5
1617 H/0/C 6 tr
1821 H/0/G 7
22 L/0/E 3/4
234, 27 L/0/G 8
25 L/0/A A
26 L/0/E 3/4
lacking altogether (only two examples of the tonal type H/1/F exist among
all of Lassos ve-voice chansons), and the chansons that represent mode 8
appear among those in mode 6.
France
The rm of Adrian Le Roy and Robert Ballard in Paris was one of
Lassos most important publishers through his lifetime and even after-
wards. Lasso had a close personal relationship with Le Roy, with whom he
stayed during his 1571 visit to Paris. Le Roys letter of 14 January 1574 trans-
mitted the oer of Charles IX to Lasso to become the royal court com-
peter bergqui st
210
Table 10.3 RISM 1592b, La Fleur des chansons dOrlande de Lassus
. . .toutes mises en ordre convenable selon leur tons (Antwerp, Phalse
& Bellre)
Chansons a4
218 H/1/G 1 tr
29 L/0/D 1
1012 H/0/D 2 tr 8ve
1316 L/1/G 2 tr
[1722 Moresche first printed in 1555]
235 L/0/E 3/4
2631 H/1/F 5
325 H/0/C 6 tr
369 H/0/G 7
401 L/0/G 8
423 L/0/A A
Chansons a5
4450 H/1/G 1 tr
512 L/0/D 1
537 L/1/G 2 tr
5860 H/0/D 2 tr 8ve
612 L/0/E 3/4
635 L/1/F 6
668 L/0/G 8
69 H/0/C 6 tr
70 H/0/G 7
poser.
16
Le Roy and Ballard published numerous editions of Lassos music
in all genres except the polyphonic lied, many of them rst editions or
authorized reprints, sometimes in large retrospective compilations. Many
of the chansons rst appeared in the publishers numbered series of
chanson books, which were small collections of sixteen folios each; Lassos
music rst appears in these books in 1559. Most of the books were origi-
nally anthologies containing works by several composers, but as they were
reissued over and over again in the course of as many as twenty or thirty
years, their contents gradually changed in order to reect the publishers
sense of what was most popular and salable. In this way many of the books
became devoted exclusively to Lasso.
17
Each of the books would contain
from sixteen to twenty chansons, which were not always sucient for
modal ordering, especially when several composers were represented. But
when Book XVII, for instance, turned into an exclusively Lasso print in
1576, its four-voice chansons were placed in modal order, although the
series is incomplete (see Table 10.4).
Le Roy and Ballards larger collections of Lassos chansons are almost
invariably modally ordered. Their rst such collection was the Mellange
(RISM 1570d), a retrospective compilation of almost all of Lassos previ-
ously published chansons with quite a number of new works added. The
collection also included madrigals as well as several Latin motets with
secular texts. RISM 1570d is substantially modally ordered (see Table 10.5).
The four-voice chansons show some disorder at the beginning of the series,
with modes 1 and 2 intermixed and one piece in mode 3/4 transposed
included among them. The ve-voice chansons are largely in modal order
at rst, though with no representatives of mode 7, since its tonal type
(H/0/G) is rare among the ve-voice chansons. When the Latin pieces begin
to appear, however, the ordering largely breaks down. The four-voice chan-
sons in L/0/A appear at the beginning of the book, the one for ve voices in
H/0/A between pieces in mode 2 and modes 3/4.
In 1576 an expanded reissue appeared under the title Les meslanges
s publi cati ons

211
16
The letter is reproduced in facsimile and diplomatic transcription in F. Lesure
and G. Thibault, Bibliographie des ditions dAdrian le Roy et Robert Ballard
(15511598) (Paris: Heugel et c
ie
, 1955), pp. 367. A diplomatic transcription
also appears in Leuchtmann, Leben, pp. 31112.
17
This process is documented in detail in Leuchtmanns preface to SW2, vol. 12.
(RISM 1576i); the title indicates that Lasso supervised this edition. The
four- and ve-voice chansons are both completely modally ordered, with
only one exception, and the Latin and Italian pieces are separated from the
chansons (see Table 10.6). The anomalously positioned chanson is no. 73,
Un mesnagier viellard,which is in L/I/F but is placed among the represen-
tatives of mode 2 rather than mode 6.
18
Mode 7 is again unrepresented in
the ve-voice pieces, and a single representative of mode 4 with its charac-
teristic unusually low clefs appears as no. 91. The four-voice pieces in L/0/A
precede mode 1, while nos. 923 in H/0/A follow the ve-voice chansons
that represent mode 8. The Latin settings in ve voices, nos. 10014,
observe modal order only imperfectly. Ten years later Le Roy and Ballard
reissued Les meslanges (RISM 1586g) with the same contents but with a
slightly changed ordering. The largest dierence is that in the four-voice
chansons the pieces in L/0/E and H/1/A that represent mode 3/4 are
inserted between the pieces in L/0/A and the representatives of mode 1.
Apart from this, the modal ordering of RISM 1576i is retained in RISM
1586g, despite a few other small adjustments.
Le Roy and Ballards Livre de chansons nouvelles for ve and eight
voices (RISM 1571f) was never incorporated into either printing of Les
meslanges. Though it contains only sixteen ve-voice chansons, they are in
perfect modal order, with the single chanson in H/0/A at the end of the
series following mode 8 (see Table 10.7). The Continvation du meslanges
peter bergqui st
212
18
This chanson had been placed among the Latin pieces in RISM 1570d. Perhaps
in the process of reorganizing the chansons for RISM 1576i it was inadvertently
moved to the wrong position.
Table 10.4 RISM 1576n, Dixsetieme livre de chansons quatre &
cinq parties (Paris, Le Roy & Ballard)
Chansons a4
213 H/1/G 1 tr
245 L/1/G 2 tr
2611 L/0/E 3/4
12 H/1/F 5
1316 Chansons a5
(RISM 1584f) includes more settings of Italian than French texts, many of
the former reprinted. Only the ve-voice madrigals are numerous enough
to be modally ordered, and they do not clearly exhibit any such ordering.
Le Roy and Ballard seemingly found Lassos motets to be as popular as
his chansons, and they frequently put out motet books devoted exclusively
to Lasso, beginning in 1564. Many of these books closely followed similar
publications of the same motets in Germany, probably with Lassos
s publi cati ons

213
Table 10.5 RISM 1570d, Mellange dOrlande de Lassus (Le Roy &
Ballard)
Number Clefs/Signature/Final Mode
Chansons a4
213 L/0/A A
24 H/0/D 2 tr 8ve
25 H/1/A 3/4 tr
267 H/1/G 1 tr
28 L/0/D 1
2910 H/0/D 2 tr 8ve
1115 (15=L) L/1/G 2 tr
1621 H/1/G 1 tr
228 L/0/E 3/4
2935 H/1/F 5
367, 39L H/0/C 6 tr
38, 402 H/0/G 7
434 L/0/G 8
Chansons a5
458 H/1/G 1 tr
4950 L/0/D 1
51, 535 L/1/G 2 tr
52 H/1/G 1 tr
567 H/0/D 2 tr 8ve
58 H/0/A A
5961 L/0/E 3/4
62 H/1/A 3/4 tr
63 H/1/F 5
646 L/1/F 6
67 H/0/C 6 tr
6870, 71L L/0/G 8
Note:
7291 mostly L, a few I and Fr; modal ordering not maintained
(L = Latin text; I = Italian text)
consent. With few exceptions Le Roy and Ballards motet books are modally
ordered. The earliest of their collections, Primus liber concentuum sacrorum
for ve and six voices (RISM 1564b), gathered together the contents of
Lassos two earliest motet books, RISM 1556a and 1562a, the latter modally
ordered in its original edition. All the ve-voice motets in RISM 1564b were
put into modal order, with one piece in H/0/A at the end of the series. The
peter bergqui st
214
Table 10.6 RISM 1576i, Les meslanges...revevz par lvy, et avgmentez
(Le Roy & Ballard)
Chansons a4 (SW, vol. 12)
215 L/0/A A
2614 H/1/G 1 tr
1516 L/0/D 1
1720 L/1/G 2 tr
214 H/0/D 2 tr 8ve
25, 2736 L/0/E 3/4
26 H/1/A 3/4 tr
3743 H/1/F 5
448 H/0/C 6 tr
4952 H/0/G 7
536 L/0/G 8
579 Vers latins a4
Chansons a5 (SW, vol. 14)
601 L/0/D 1
627 H/1/G 1 tr
6872 L/1/G 2 tr
73 [ending out L/1/F 6? 2?
of mode?]
745 L/1/G 2
767 H/0/D 2 tr 8ve
7880 L/0/E 3/4
81 H/1/A 3/4 tr
82 H/1/F 5
834, 86 L/1/F 6
85, 87 H/0/C 6 tr
8890 L/0/G 8
91 c2f 5/0/E 4
923 H/0/A A
Note:
949 Vers italiens a5; 10014 Vers latins a5; 11517 Vers latins a6;
1206 Dialogues a8; 127 Dialogue a10
six-voice motets were too few to put in modal order, and this was perhaps
true throughout Le Roy and Ballards next book of Lassos motets,
Modulorum secundum volumen (RISM 1565a) for four to ten voices, in
which no group is modally ordered.
19
Between 1571 and 1573 Le Roy and Ballard published six books of
Lasso motets. They include a signicant number of new pieces that Lasso
may have composed during and after his visit to Paris, as well as motets that
had been published in Italy and Germany but not yet in France. All six are in
almost perfect modal ordering. The one book that consisted entirely of rst
editions, Moduli quinis vocibus (RISM 1571a), may serve as an example (see
Table 10.8). The only motet apparently out of modal order is no. 7,Si bona
suscepimus, which according to its tonal type should represent mode 3/4,
but is placed within the mode 2 group. In the six motet books of 15713 two
pieces in H/0/A appear, following the representatives of mode 3/4 and
mode 8 respectively.
In a large motet book a few years later, Moduli quatuor 5.6.7.8. et
novem vocum(RISM 1577e), eleven of its fty-ve pieces are rst editions.
Only the six-voice motets (nos. 2150) are suciently numerous to be
modally ordered, though somewhat imperfectly (see Table 10.9). Four rep-
s publi cati ons

215
19
Further on these collections see CM, vol. 4, which includes all the motets from
these two books that were rst editions. The contents of both books are listed
ibid., pp. xiixiii.
Table 10.7 RISM 1571f, Livre de chansons nouvelles a5 & a8 (Le
Roy & Ballard)
Chansons a5
214 H/1/G 1 tr
256 L/1/G 2 tr
257 H/0/D 2 tr 8ve
289 L/0/E 3/4
1011 H/1/F 5
1213 L/1/F 6
14 H/0/G 7
15 L/0/G 8
16 H/0/A A
1718 Chansons a8
resentatives of mode 8 begin the group, which then continues with only
minor disorder within modes 1 and 2 and no representatives of mode 7. No.
41, in H/0/A, appears between the representatives of modes 2 and 3/4.
Le Roy and Ballard published four more large books of Lasso motets
in 15878, which are modally ordered to a degree, though less strictly than
peter bergqui st
216
Table 10.8 RISM 1571a, Moduli quinis vocibus (Le Roy & Ballard)
214 H/1/G 1 tr
256 L/1/G 2 tr
257 L/1/A 3/4 tr
258 L/1/G 2 tr
2911 L/0/E 3/4
1213 H/1/F 5
1415 L/1/F 6
1617 H/0/G 7
1819 L/0/G 8
Table 10.9 RISM 1577e, Moduli quatuor 5.6.7.8. et novem vocum
(Le Roy & Ballard)
112 Motets a4; 1320 Motets a5
Motets a6
214 L/0/G 8
25, 28 H/1/G 1 tr
26, 27, 29 L/0/D 1
30 L/1/G 2 tr
31 H/0/D 2 tr 8ve
32 L/0/D 1
3340 L/1/G 2 tr
41 H/0/A A
42, 44 L/0/E 3/4
43 H/1/A 3/4 tr
456 H/1/F 5
47 L/1/F 6
48 L/0/F 6
4950 L/0/G 8
513 a7; 54 a8; 55 a9
those of 15713. The Sacrarum cantionum moduli for four voices (RISM
1587d) is an especially interesting example, since much of it had previously
appeared two times with dierent methods of organization.
20
The earliest
source for most of these motets is Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek,
Mus. Ms. 2744, which contains a cycle of Lassos four- and ve-voice set-
tings of oertories for Advent and Lent, arranged in calendrical order. The
manuscript bears dates between 1581 and 1583. In 1585 Lasso published
many of the four-voice oertories and a few other motets in Sacrae can-
tiones quatuor vocum(Munich: Adam Berg, RISM 1585a); in this collection
the pieces were grouped by tonal type, with signature and cleng as the
primary factors. Only the subgroups of these categories were sorted
according to nal, so that modal ordering did not result. Le Roy and Ballard
in RISM 1587d placed the motets in modal order, also adding a few more
four-voice settings of oertory texts that had not appeared in RISM 1585a
(see Table 10.10). The ordering was not perfect, since mode 6 preceded
mode 5 and mode 8 preceded mode 7. Two pieces in H/0/A follow the repre-
s publi cati ons

217
20
A more detailed account of these sources and their relationships may be found
in Powers, Modal Representation. See also David Crooks preface to CM, vol.
14, which publishes the contents of RISM 1585a.
Table 10.10 RISM 1587d, Sacrarum cantionum moduli a4 (Le Roy
& Ballard)
213 H/0/G 1 tr
245 L/0/D 1
269, 12 L/1/G 2 tr
1011 H/0/A A
1317 L/0/E 3/4
18 L/1/A 3/4
1922, 245 L/1/F 6
23, 26 H/0/C 6 tr
279 H/1/F 5
308, 41 L/0/C 8
3940 H/0/G 7
42 L/1/G 2
43 (a8 alternatim)
sentatives of mode 2.
21
The three motet books of 1588 (RISM 1588c, d, and
e) are in similarly imperfect modal order, with the plagal representatives
several times preceding the authentic. In the four-voice motets of 1588c one
in H/0/A appears following mode 8 and preceding mode 3/4, which is out of
sequence; in 1588d three in H/0/A follow mode 2 and precede mode 1; and
in 1588e three in H/0/A follow those in mode 6 and precede mode 3/4,
which is out of sequence.
It is clear that modal ordering was a fundamental principle in Le Roy
and Ballards publications of Lassos music. To what extent this is true in
their other publications is a question that merits further investigation.
Germany
In the German realms Lasso had two principal publishers, Adam Berg
in Munich and the rm of Montanus and Neuber, with its successors
Theodor Gerlach and his widow Katharina Gerlach, in Nuremberg. Both
houses issued a number of modally ordered publications by Lasso, though
this principle was by no means so pervasive as with Le Roy and Ballard in
Paris.
Even before any of his music was printed in Germany, Lasso around
1560 composed his earliest modally ordered collection of any sort, the
famous Seven Penitential Psalms with the psalm-motet Laudate
Dominum de caelis. Many other modally ordered collections were prob-
ably assembled in that order after composition, but in this case modal
ordering was clearly a pre-compositional decision on Lassos part. He chose
to represent modes 17 in the Seven Penitential Psalms, which had existed
for centuries as a liturgical unit, then added the psalm-motet to them to
represent mode 8. In this cycle modes 3 and 4 are clearly dierentiated, con-
trary to the usual practice, with mode 4 represented by an unusually low
combination of clefs.
22
Powers has discussed several of Lassos German motet books that are
peter bergqui st
218
21
Powers, Modal Representation, p. 57, Table 4, indicates that these pieces
represent mode 3, while pieces in L/0/E represent mode 4. This is contrary to
Lassos usual practice and to that of Le Roy and Ballard.
22
Powers discusses this cycle in Tonal Types, pp. 4468, and Anomalous
Modalities, passim.
modally ordered, notably the ve-voice Sacrae cantiones of RISM 1562a
(Nuremberg: Montanus & Neuber), two complementary books from Berg
in 1569 and 1570 (Cantiones aliquot quinque vocum [RISM 1569a] and
Cantionum sacrarum sex vocum fasciculus [RISM 1570c]), the Cantiones ad
duas vocum (Berg, RISM 1577c), a large collection of reprints from Gerlach
(RISM 1582c), and Lassos last motet book, Cantiones sacrae sex vocum
(Graz: Georg Widmanstetter, RISM 1594a).
23
His last composition,
Lagrime di San Pietro (Berg, RISM 1595a), a cycle of spiritual madrigals, is
also modally ordered. This cycle corresponds to the Penitential Psalms at
the beginning of Lassos career in that both set a pre-existing cycle of texts,
thus the modal ordering was a compositional choice. Lasso selected twenty
poems from the larger poetic cycle by Luigi Tansillo, leaving the poems in
the order established by Tansillo, then set successive groups so as to repre-
sent modes 17.
24
Where mode 8 would be expected to appear, the nal
piece in the cycle, the Latin motet Vide homo, is rather in H/0/A. Powers
argues persuasively that the modal cycle is broken for reasons of religious
symbolism, to do both with the poems and Lassos own impending death.
25
In the Graz motet book, RISM 1594a, the position of mode 7 is lled by two
motets in H/0/A. David Crook suggests that this tonal type that had a long-
standing association . . . with tone-seven Magnicatswas used to represent
mode 7 in the Graz motet book.
26
These are the only appearances of the
tonal type H/0/A in German modally ordered collections of Lassos motets.
Some editions of Lassos lieder for ve voices were also modally
ordered. Book I (Munich: Adam Berg, RISM 1567l) is in perfect modal
order, with one piece, Frlich zu sein, seemingly in L/0/A appearing
between the representatives of modes 7 and 8 (see Table 10.11). However, it
has been argued that this piece ends out of modefor expressive purposes,
and that it should be understood as a representative of mode 8.
27
Book II of
s publi cati ons

219
23
Powers, Tonal Types, pp. 4512, 4625; Anomalous Modalities, pp. 23842.
Further on these collections see the appropriate volumes of CM.
24
On Lassos sources for the text of this cycle, see Fritz Jensch, Orlando di Lassos
Lagrime di San Pietro und ihr Text, Musik in Bayern, 32 (1986), pp. 4362, and
the introduction to his edition of the Lagrime in SWNR, vol. 20.
25
Powers, Tonal Types, p. 449.
26
Munich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 1424.
27
Bergquist, Compositions in A Minor, p. 14 (with further references).
the lieder (Berg, RISM 1572g) is not modally ordered, and Book III (Berg,
RISM 1576r) is only partially so. However, Katharina Gerlachs
Gesamtausgabe of all of the ve-voice lieder in RISM 1583b, published
with the authors consent,rearranges the three earlier books substantially
in modal order (see Table 10.12). The nine pieces with religious texts appear
rst and include no representatives of modes 7 and 8. The thirty-two set-
tings of secular texts are in precise modal order, except for two pieces that
seem to end out of mode, Nos. 22 (Meine Fraw Hilgart) and 39 (Frlich
zu sein). The two pieces in H/0/A are placed between modes 2 and 3/4.
One German publication remains to be discussed, the posthumous
collected edition of Lassos motets, Magnum Opus Musicum (Munich:
Nicholas Heinrich, RISM 1604a). In this collection Lassos sons Ferdinand
and Rudolph published all of their fathers motets known to them, a total of
516. Only eleven motets escaped their notice, the authenticity of at least two
of which is debatable.
28
In MOM the basic organizing principle was the
number of voice-parts; the collection begins with two-voice motets and
continues in ascending order of voices until it ends with two motets for
twelve voices each. Only recently has Horst Leuchtmann shown the next
level of organization.
29
Each group of motets for a given number of voices is
peter bergqui st
220
28
These eleven motets are published in SWNR, vol. 1, including the 1989
supplement. In CM, vol. 5, pp. xvixix, I detail the reasons why I believe that
Lasso did not compose Zachaee, festinans descende and Gloria Patri.
29
Leuchtmann, Zum Ordnungsprinzip in Lassos Magnum Opus Musicum,
Musik in Bayern, 40 (1990), pp. 4672.
Table 10.11 RISM 1567l, Neue Tetsche Liedlein mit Fnff Stimmen
(Munich, Berg; SWvol. 18, 1ff.)
21, 2, 46 H/1/G 1 tr
23 L/0/D 1
278 L/1/G 2 tr
2910 L/0/E 3/4
11 H/1/F 5
12 L/1/F 6
13 H/0/G 7
14 [ending out of mode?] L/0/A A? 8?
15 L/0/G 8
subdivided into four categories that appear in the following order: (1) cele-
bratory motets, for the Bavarian rulers and other individuals and families;
(2) sacred texts in the order of the church year; (3) motets on texts from the
book of Psalms; (4) religious and secular poetry. This division does not
apply to the two-voice motets of RISM 1577c, which appear in their original
order in MOM, and small groups such as the motets for seven, nine, and ten
voices do not include representatives of each of the four categories.
Leuchtmann observed that consecutive motets, sometimes in substantial
numbers, were in the same mode (he spoke only of dorian, phrygian,
lydian, and mixolydian), but that no systematic ordering according to
mode seemed to govern the collection. Whenever a series might seem to
appear, foreign elements intervened.
30
s publi cati ons

221
30
Ibid., pp. 467.
Table 10.12 RISM 1583b, Teutsche Lieder mit fnff Stimmen, zuvor
unterschiedlich, jetzund aber mit des Herrn Authoris bewilligung inn
ein Opus zusammen getruckt (Nuremberg, Gerlach)
Religious texts
12 H/1/G 1 tr
3 L/1/G 2 tr
4 H/1/G 1 tr
5 L/0/E 3/4
6 H/1/F 5
78 L/1/F 6
9 H/0/C 6 tr
Secular texts
10, 1216 H/1/G 1 tr
11 L/0/D 1
1721 L/1/G 2 tr
22 [ending out of mode?] L/1/A 3/4? 2?
23 H/0/D 2 tr 8ve
245 H/0/A A
2630 L/0/E 3/4
312 H/1/F 5
334 L/1/F 6
358 H/0/G 7
39 [ending out of mode?] L/0/A A? 8?
40 L/0/G 8
41 H/1/C 8 tr
However, Leuchtmanns establishment of the four fundamental cate-
gories within the motets for each number of voices, in conjunction with
Lassos usage of tonal types to represent modes, allows us to see that large
segments of MOM, namely the settings of psalms and psalm verses, are
modally ordered. As shown in Table 10.13, the psalm-motets for four, ve,
and six voices in MOMare modally ordered, most perfectly so in the ve-
voice group, nearly so in the four-voice group, and somewhat less clearly in
the six-voice group. Motets in other subject categories sometimes show an
incipient modal ordering that is not pursued consistently. The ve-voice
psalm-motets have only two pieces out of order, no. 271, Si bona suscepi-
mus,in L/1/A, which should represent mode 3/4 transposed and be placed
near the L/0/E motets that represent mode 3/4 untransposed, and no. 282,
in H/0/A, which appears between modes 7 and 8 rather than with its com-
panion, no. 265. In the four-voice psalm-motets the pieces in H/0/A
separate the representatives of mode 3/4 transposed and untransposed
respectively, pieces in modes 5 and 6 are intermixed, and nos. 1256 separ-
ate the representatives of mode 8 transposed and untransposed. In the six-
voice psalm-motets modal ordering seems to be present, but it is frequently
interrupted, not only by motets in H/0/A but other tonal types displaced
from what would be their proper place in a modally ordered collection.
These observations about MOMappear signicant in that they suggest that
modal ordering was a principle known to Lassos sons and that they most
probably learned it from their father, whether by direct instruction or
simply by observation. It is true that the ordering in MOMcould have been
decided by the publisher, who was Adam Bergs successor; in that case
modal ordering would appear to have been derived from Lasso through
Berg to Heinrich, even though that principle was by no means applied uni-
versally in Bergs publications.
Conclusions
Modal ordering clearly prevailed in a large number of publications of
Orlando di Lassos music, including many with which he was closely asso-
ciated. One of the most fundamental questions about this phenomenon is,
was the modal ordering Lassos intention or that of his publishers? It
appears that many of these publications do indeed represent Lassos own
peter bergqui st
222
s publi cati ons

Table 10.13 Psalm-motets and psalm verse settings in MOM
Settings a4
825 L/0/D 1
8692 H/1/G 1 tr
93100 L/1/G 2 tr
101 L/1/A 3/4 tr
1024 H/0/A A
1059 L/0/E 3/4
11011 H/1/F 5
11218 L/1/F 6
119 H/1/F 5
1201 H/0/C 6 tr
1223 H/0/G 7
124 H/1/C 8 tr
125 H/1/F 5
126 H/0/A A
12737 L/0/G 8
Settings a5
23944 H/1/G 1 tr
24554 L/1/G 2 tr
255 H/0/D 2 tr 8ve
25664 L/0/E 3/4
265 H/0/A A
26670 H/1/F 5
271 (Si bona suscepimus) L/1/A 3/4 tr
27280 L/1/F 6
281, 2834 H/0/G 7
282 H/0/A A
2857 L/0/G 8
Settings a6
416 H/0/G (7)
41720 H/1/G 1 tr
4214 L/0/D 1
42530 L/1/G 2 tr
4316 L/0/E 3/4
437 H/1/C (8 tr)
438 L/0/F 6
439, 442 H/1/F 5
4401 H/0/C 6 tr
443, 4467 L/1/F 6
448, 450, 452 H/0/A (A)
449 H/0/C 6 tr
451 H/0/G 7
453 H/0/D (2 tr 8ve)
454 H/0/G 7
455 H/0/C (6 tr)
456 H/0/A (A)
4579, 4612 L/0/G 8
460 L/0/E (3/4)
preference. A rst observation would be that at the beginning and end of his
time in Munich the Penitential Psalms and the Lagrime di San Pietro were
composed to texts that had a predetermined order. Lassos settings are in the
order of the modes and undoubtedly composed with the intention of repre-
senting the modes. The uniformity of aect through both of these collec-
tions also casts strong doubt on any possibility that the individual modes
had specic and invariable expressive connotations. Lasso may more than
once have used a given tonal type to convey a specic aect, but it can hardly
be elevated to a consistent practice.
Most of the collections discussed in this study were probably put in
order for publication after the individual pieces were composed and assem-
bled. Since the texts themselves were too varied to provide a basis for order-
ing their settings, musical criteria would be the logical alternative. This
would be especially true of the large collected editions like the various
Meslanges, the lieder of RISM 1583b, and the motets of RISM 1582c. Lasso is
said to have consented to or overseen all of these publications, and it is
dicult to escape the conclusion that the ordering also represents his inten-
tions. Boettichers statement that Lasso could hardly have authorized the
reorderings in the 1583 lieder is without foundation.
31
The original edi-
tions were already modally ordered in part, and the collected edition
retained and extended that ordering when the three books were combined.
The three issues of the Meslanges are especially instructive about Lassos
intentions. The rst edition, RISM 1570d, was fairly well modally ordered,
and 1576d, issued after Lassos visit to Paris and with his own supervision
and revision, is almost perfectly ordered. RISM 1586g, issued after Lasso
had given up any thought of moving to Paris and was perhaps less directly
involved with the details of the edition, disturbs the clear ordering of
1576d. The modal ordering seems to have been most rigorous when Lasso
was in most direct contact with Le Roy and Ballard and in closest control of
their issues of his music. The same comparison seems to be true of the
peter bergqui st
224
31
Boetticher, Lasso, p. 323. His suggestion that the phrase mit des Herrn Authoris
bewilligung in the title of RISM 1583b is not to be taken at face value is
supported only by reference to his comments on Gerlachs large motet
compilation, the Selectissimae cantiones of RISM 1568a and b. The validity of
Boettichers comments on 1568a and b is debatable, and their application to
another collection fteen years later even more so.
motet books of 15713 as against those of 1587 and 1588. It appears that
Lassos control was tightest near the time of his Paris visit, and that the
earlier books with their careful modal ordering represent his intentions
most fully.
It is also reasonable to assume that the German prints usually repre-
sent Lassos own intentions. Several of them cite his participation or
approval on their title pages, and many of the others contain his own dedi-
catory prefaces. Modal ordering is found in quite a number of these prints,
as has been seen, though by no means did Berg and Gerlach order each of
their Lasso publications on that basis. In the 1580s, in fact, Berg ordered
several motet books primarily on the basis of clef and signature, as was
noted with regard to RISM 1585a. Bergs Sacrae cantiones quinque vocum
(RISM 1582d), Motetta sex vocum (RISM 1582e), and Cantica sacra sex et
octo vocum (RISM 1585b) all group the motets in cantus mollis rst, fol-
lowed by those in cantus durus.
32
Within these two groups the compositions
in high clefs precede those in low clefs. In all three books dierent nals are
intermixed within the four subgroups, so that ordering by tonal type does
not result. This was clearly an alternate method of ordering for Berg and
presumably for Lasso also. It was not used simply because potential repre-
sentatives of all eight modes were not available. In these three books and
also in RISM 1585a, only RISM 1585b would be unable to represent all eight
modes, since it includes no motets that could stand for modes 5 and 8.
Another conclusion to be drawn from this investigation has to do
with pieces in H/0/A or L/0/A. How did Lasso regard them with respect to
the system of eight modes? Powers suggested that for Lasso they were
anomalous, and he mentioned only two modally ordered collections that
contain such pieces, the Graz motets (RISM 1594a) and the Lagrime di San
Pietro, in which pieces in A appear in place of mode 7 or mode 8.
33
With
more publications to consider, the picture is perhaps clearer. Table 10.14
summarizes the placement of pieces in H/0/A or L/0/A in Lassos modally
ordered publications. The most frequent placement of these pieces is after
mode 8, after the cycle has been completed. The next most frequent place-
ment is before mode 1, before the cycle begins. There is also some associa-
tion with mode 3/4, an association that had always been observed in theory
s publi cati ons

225
32
Powers, Tonal Types, Table 13, p. 465, shows the organization of RISM 1582d
and 1582e.
33
Powers, Tonal Types, pp. 449 and 464 with Tables 4 and 14.
and practice. However, Lassos practice in his compositions in the H/0/A
and L/0/A tonal types tends to relate them more closely to modes 1/2 than to
3/4, thus placement before mode 3/4 might equally well be considered to be
placement after modes 1/2, to which the music itself more often bears some
anity.
34
Placement outside the modal system is by far most frequent,
however, and that seems to me to sum up Lassos attitude towards these
tonal types. Unlike their counterparts in C with no signature, which can be
used to represent one of the eight modes with relatively little diculty, they
simply do not t comfortably into his modal system.
peter bergqui st
226
34
My study of Lassos pieces in A, Compositions in A minor, shows a variety of
behaviors in the music itself, as exhibited in cadence points and melodic
structure. I concluded that most of Lassos pieces in A fall somewhere on a
continuum from a clear and unequivocal A at one extreme through increasing
emphasis on D, and nally to the other extreme, where D is stronger than A
(p. 9). A few use b-at so often that they suggest mode 3/4.
Table 10.14 Placement of pieces in A in Lassos modally ordered
publications
French and Netherlandish publications German publications
Before mode 14
Between mode 1 and 21
Between 1/2 and 3/43 Between 1/2 and 3/41
Between 2 and 5 (3/4 before 2)1 After 3/42
After 6 and before 3/41
After 86 After 7 or 81
No pieces in A4 No pieces in A7
11 Correct and incorrect accentuation in Lassos
music: on the implied dependence on the text in
classical vocal polyphony
horst leuchtmann
The title of this essay could awaken the impression that there are
correctandincorrectstresses onthewords inthevocal polyphonyof the
sixteenthcentury, includingthe works of Orlandodi Lasso. This is of course
not so, otherwiseLassoandPalestrinaandmanyothers wouldnot havebeen
elevated to the ranks of great masters in music. None the less there is some-
thing in that formulation. Thecorrecttext stresses are the usual ones that
are arranged in accordance with the musical meter. The so-called incor-
rect stresses are incorrect in their relationship to the meter and thus
achievemuchstrongereectsthanthecorrectones.Forthisreason,infact,
the metricallyincorrectstresses are muchless commonthanthecorrect
ones, but theyarefoundinall kindsof worksfromeveryperiodandcontinue
tobe reservedfor special emphasis. If they were mistakes, one wouldexpect
that the masters would gradually have improved themand removed them
fromuse. This is not the case. One whowishes tolearnabout this distinction
may discover it throughout Lassos work, fromthe Prophetiae Sibyllarumto
the Lagrime di San Pietro, and not in his music alone. That one generally
knows nothingof suchadistinction, andthat oneis usuallynot awareof it, is
connected with the circumstance that our mass-music culture transfers its
preference for the soft, full, blendedsoundof the mixedchorus toall music,
eventheoldandtheoldest, andthediculties inherent intheserenements
gobythewayside. But wemust explorefurther.
The composition of sixteenth-century vocal polyphony is the art of
consonance, and is subject principally to four important rules, which
should not be ignored in theory or in practice:
(1) Simultaneities or chords consist largely of consonances.
Dissonances require special handling.
227
(2) Consonances consist of triads, whose roots are almost always the
lowest tones in any given chord. The period also knew what we call six-three
and six-four chords, but used them in insignicantly small numbers.
(3) Metric organization in duple mensurations calls for stress on
beats 1 and 3, in triple mensurations only on 1. The other beats are consid-
ered weaker. What we designate today as an accenting pulse, which we ques-
tionably brought into the performance practice of sixteenth-century
polyphony from later music, is in reality a rule also for that polyphony, a
rule that eventually came into appearance in the regulated use of dissonant
passing tones, of dissonance in general, and the suspension in particular.
With regard to interval successions Pietro Pontio (153295) spoke in 1588
of the dierence between the metric positions nel principio and nel ne,
between depositione and elevatione;
1
other theorists dierentiate between
thesis andarsis, between goodand badtime (beat or part of the measure,
as we say today). This phenomenon of the unequal parts of the measure is
clearly brought to light in the frequent rejoicing passages in triple propor-
tion,
2
whose impetus pulls the texts along with it and sometimes actually
forces a falsely accentuated delivery. The cadences also in any case the
discant clausulas are metrically determined and sometimes develop a
similar pull.
(4) Vocal polyphony means texts sung by singers; texts are the occa-
sion for and content of vocal music and precede its composition. The deliv-
ery of words is the main purpose of vocal music.
horst leuchtmann
228
1
Pietro Pontio, Ragionamento di Musica (Parma, 1588; reprint Kassel:
Brenreiter, 1959).
2
Lucie Balmer, Orlando di Lassos Motetten (Bern and Leipzig: Paul Haupt, 1938),
p. 68: Melismas are especially rich in the Gregorian repertory, where for
example the Alleluia had been sung only melismatically from the beginning on.
For Augustine such song freed from the word had an expression of greatest joy:
Qui jubilat, non verba dicit, sed sonus quidem est laetitiae sine verbis: vox est
enim animi diusi laetitia, quantum potest exprimentis aectum non sensum
comprehendentis. Gaudens homo in exultatione sua ex verbis quibusdam, quae
non possunt dici et intelligi, erumpit in vocem quandam exultationis sine
verbis; ita ut appareat, eum ipsa voce gaudere quidem, sed quasi repletum nimio
gaudio, non posse verbis explicare quod gaudet. Cited from Peter Wagner,
Einfhrung in die gregorianischen Melodien (Freiburg: Veith, 1895), vol. 1, p. 37,
after Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina (Paris: Garnier,
18441903), vol. 37, p. 1272.
The many manuscript and printed music treatises, especially those of
the sixteenth century, are not at all what we understand today as textbooks
and composition methods. They list many but not all of the important con-
siderations in composing, and basically they convey only the main outlines
of instruction that was traditionally conveyed in more detail orally. They
present the precepts of interval progressions, but they touch little if at all on
the relationships among the main conditions mentioned in the four points
above. On into the present century one has thus understood counterpoint
to be an abstract theory of intervals, forgetting the treatment of the text in
relation to the meter, since counterpoint, which was originally vocal, has for
a long time been comprehended and manipulated as purely instrumental.
Counterpoint is still understood as the system of several simultaneous and
above all equal, independent (!) lines. Reginald O. Morris (18861948) was
perhaps the rst to bring back into recognition the insuciency, indeed the
falsity, of such an outlook.
3
It is especially striking that stresses derived
from the text, so important for composition as well as performance, have
received and continue to receive so little attention in writing as well as in
performance. Insecurity in connection with the musical stress on words
and the displacement of that musical stress may be seen very clearly in
Gustave Reeses valuable book on Renaissance music.
4
The precisely infor-
mative index notes almost two dozen passages that are concerned with
questions of accentuation of the words, and even so the questions are not
answered, but rather obscured through the enigmatic listing of three
forms of dislocation of the stress.
5
On page 159 and elsewhere Reese ascribes rhythmic nicety and
correct accentuationto the frottolists. About Josquin on the other hand he
is obliged to say: Latin accents are not infrequently mishandled, even in his
latest works, although, inconsistently, at other times great care seems to be
exercised in this matter (p. 245).
6
Even more clearly: Humanistic
correct and incorrect accentuation in lasso
s music
229
3
Reginald O. Morris, Contrapuntal Technique in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1922; 7th ed. 1958).
4
Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance (New York: Norton, 1954; rev. ed. 1959).
5
Ibid., p. 354. All page references are the same in the revised edition of 1959.
6
In the revised edition this sentence reads: When one examines his treatment of
Latin texts, one quite often nds this French composer inuenced by his native
language rather than by the humanistic concept of the proper handling of Latin
accent.
inuence, however, does not induce the composer [Josquin] to observe syl-
labic quantities [!] strictly, though he and his contemporaries oend less in
the handling of Latin quantity than had their predecessors (p. 253). Here
we see the mixture and confusion of accentual stress and syllabic quan-
titythat often appears elsewhere and results only in confusion. Willaert by
contrast is praised without reservation: Willaerts three main contribu-
tions to sacred polyphony in Italy the last two apparently made solely . . .
through his motets, etc. were (1) the establishment of Franco-
Netherlandish technique as a part of the musical language of church music
there; (2) the development of choral antiphony; and (3) the cultivation of a
modern style emphasizing faultless declamation of the text (p. 372).
Indeed, his concern for correct declamation extends to voices that treat
words free of dramatic import(p. 374). In view of the strict regulation in
Palestrina style of what may or may not be done on the rst and third beats
or on the second and fourth, one tends to feel that those investigators take
an exaggerated position who claim that there was no regular accentuation
in Renaissance polyphony(p. 461). That is certainly correct, although in a
broader sense than Reese may have realized. To be sure, he mentions the
phenomenon of a stress contrary to the metrical pattern (p. 461), but he
says nothing about its musical justication or meaning or the practicalities
of how it should be performed. As we intend to show, it is not only a long or
high note standing on a weak beat that displaces the regular stress for a short
time, and mainly in one voice only. The question arises whether such occa-
sional oenses against the accentual ow are acceptable or intended and, if
the latter, why.
The extent to which counterpoint instruction has lost sight of its
original subject, a subject that found its strongest development in the six-
teenth century, and has indeed denied it expressis verbis, is shown not only
in instructional works that no longer know about text setting but also in the
instructions that actually lead students away from the subject. I cite at
random a representative text long famous in its time, Luigi Cherubinis
Cours de contrepoint et de fugue.
7
The book already shows in its
horst leuchtmann
230
7
Luigi Cherubini, Cours de contrepoint et de fugue (Paris, 1835), cited from
Theorie des Kontrapunktes und der Fuge in neuer bersetzung. Bearbeitet, mit
Anmerkungen und einem Anhang ber die Alten Kirchentonarten versehen von
Gustav Jensen (Cologne and Leipzig: vom Ende, 1896), p. 3. The foreword to the
Introductory Fundamental Principles that counterpoint is now to be
understood ideally as instrumental counterpoint:
In all the species of counterpoint that we will encounter, as well as in fugue,
the student should take to heart that he is writing for voices and not for
instruments. He must therefore conform to the natural range of the voices
in their various registers. In that way he will learn, not to his disadvantage,
to produce beautiful tonal eects with voices alone. To be sure, this is a not
entirely easy discipline and one also that is all too neglected, but later on
the student will less often encounter diculties when he composes for
instruments and is no longer obliged to subject himself to the constraints
that the limited range of the voices impose.
From this perspective only vocal music is limited to the range of the voices
alone, which cannot do full justice to the art of counterpoint.
The framework of individual sonorities in free composition can be
quickly set out. The foundation is the lowest tone at any given moment, the
upper voice is the most important in the sonorous realm (the tenor has
already lost its primacy, as is well known), and the middle voices, alto and
tenor,ll inthe sonority. They may sometimes distinguish between major
and minor, but otherwise have only a single, narrowly proscribed freedom,
that of rhythm. Morris states it in more detail:
For three hundred years or so we have been slaves of the bar line, and our
conception of rhythmhas become purely metrical. We learn, probably, to
distinguish betweensecondary rhythm, which places a strong accent at the
beginning of each bar and admits a certain variety of gure in between those
accents, and primary rhythmwhich measures out the bars themselves into
neat regular groups, usually of two, four, and eight. . . . Of the wider
implications of the termrhythm and of its true nature, we have suered
ourselves to remain in complacent ignorance. . . . In that period [the
sixteenth century] there is no confusion between rhythmand metre. The
rhythmical accentuation of each part is free, but, independently of the actual
rhythmic accents, there is an imaginary metrical accentuation which imposes
a regular alternation of strong and weak beats to which the harmony of the
s music
231
German edition states on p. iii that the musical examples are for the most part
by Cherubini himself, partly by Johann Josef Fux [16601741] and Friedrich
Wilhelm Marpurg [17181795]. The text is not by Cherubini but probably by
Jacques Halvy.
composition has to conform, although the melody of each voice pursues its
own way untrammelled. As soon as a student begins the study of sixteenth-
century music, this is the rst fact to force itself on his notice; he nds out
that in order to write in the idiomof Morley or Orlando Lasso or Vittoria, he
has to slough all his old preconceptions, and ask himself, perhaps for the rst
time, what rhythmreally is. This, as was said, is by far the most valuable
lesson a composer has to learn, at the moment, froma study of this period.
One might add, too, that it is possible to search diligently through all the
text-books, English and foreign, of the last three hundred years, and never
nd so much as a hint of it, to put the student on the right track . . . the
rhythmic principle the only principle that really matters.
8
Thus meter within the tactus acts as a principle of order behind all
that is done and becomes perceptible through its manifestations: conso-
nance, dissonance, suspension, passing tone, stress, and absence of stress.
The individual (melodic) voices move against this (sonorous) background
within the bounds of their compositional possibilities. Morris states that
the rhythmical accentuation of each individual part is free, that is to say, the
accents do not occur at strictly regular intervals, whereas the composition
as a whole does conform to a xed metrical scheme in which strong and
weak accents succeed one another in a pre-determined order. . . . In the
rhythm of poetry there is a precisely similar duality, as any one may quickly
convince himself. . . . Too much coincidence means monotony; too much
at-oddness means chaos.
9
Regarding Example 38 of his book
10
(see Ex. 11.1), Morris explains
that the performer nds his stresses according to the length of the notes, for
which he gives the following rules:
(1) Accents should be neither too many nor too few. There must be enough
of them to hold the melody rmly together and prevent it, so to speak, from
sagging, but they should not be so close together as to detract from each
others importance.
(2) The rhythm of a phrase is frequently (some would say always)
anacrusic; that is to say, the accented note is not necessarily the rst note of
the phrase, but may be preceded by an unaccented note or series of notes
an up-beat as we should call it today.
horst leuchtmann
232
8
Morris, Contrapuntal Technique, pp. 34.
9
Ibid., p. 17.
10
Ibid., Appendix, p. 6
Morriss Example 38 is written without barlines and provides for
stresses with longer or shorter note values. Here it emerges that Morris
means something altogether dierent from the present essay. Morris seem-
ingly proceeds from the debatable hypothesis that the composer adds a text
s music
233
Example 11.1: Reginald O. Morris, Contrapuntal Technique in the Sixteenth
Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922; 7th ed. 1958), Examples, pp. 67,
nos. 3841
&

w

.

w
#

&
?
C
C
w
w
w
w
Sta - bat
w #
w
w
w
>
w
w

ma - ter do -
w

w

>
w b

w
lo - ro -

w
w w
w w
sa, jux -
# w
w w
w N
>
w
w
w
ta cru -
w
w
w
w
w
w

cem la - cri -
w

>
w b
&c.
w
w
w
mo - sa
. w
#
w
w
& 2
6
2
4
2
6
2
4
w
w
Sta - bat
w w
ma - ter do - lo -
w b
w
ro - sa,
w
w n
jux - ta
w w
cru - cem la - cri -
w b
&c.
w
mo - sa
&
?
1
3
1
3
w
w
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w
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w
Fac ut te -
w #
w
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w
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w
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. w
w .
w #
cum lu - ge -
w
. w
w
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w
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am, fac ut
w # w
w
w w
w
. w w
.
w w
ar - de - at
.
w w
.
w w
w

w

cor me -
w

w

w # w
w
w w
w #
um, in a -
w w
w
w w
w
&
?
.
w w
.
w w
man - do Chris -
. w w
. w w
w w
w
w

tum De -
w

w

w w
w
w #
w w
um, ut si -
w
w #
w
w
w
w
w
w
bi com -
.
w #

w
.
w

w
w a
w
pla - ce -
w .
w
w
w w
&c.
am
#
& 4
4
4
5
4
4
4
5
4
4
2
3

Fac ut te- cum
.
J

lu - ge- am, fac ut
.
J

ar - de- at cor
#

me - um, in a -
.
J

man - do Chris- tum
& 2
3
4
5
2
4

De - um, ut si - bi

#
com- pla - ce -
am
3
2
w
>
4
2
ma - nus tu -

>
3
2
ae fe - ce -

&c.
w
runt me
Ex. 39. Palestrina, Stabat Mater
Ex. 40a (The note-values reduced for the purpose of illustration to their approximate modern equivalent).
Ex. 41 Morales, Officium Defunctorum, Lectio III
Ex. 38
Ex. 39a
Ex. 40. Ibidem.
to his already completed composition; in any case he refers in the later
course of his presentation to the compositional technique of the fteenth
century, with its melismatic compositions that are provided only with hints
of the text. It also does not seem entirely correct to ignore completely the
inuence of the mensuration: It has already been said more than once that
the time-signature at the beginning of a sixteenth-century composition is
of purely metrical signicance, exercising an important inuence on the
harmonic structure of the composition, but having nothing to do with the
rhythmical structure of the parts taken individually.
11
His own Examples
39A, 40, and 40A contradict this conclusion, since a ternary mensuration
exercises such force that the word stresses are set aside as almost without
eect, a circumstance that may be observed in almost all triple time. Here
the rhythm of the words reects only the meter and not the textual
stress.
12
On the other hand, Morriss comments about the stress marks in
his Example 41 are correct:It must be remembered that the stress marks do
not indicate anything in the nature of a violent sforzando, but are there
merely to show that the rhythmic accents do not necessarily coincide with
the metrical accents.
13
The presumed diculties in fact there are none
lie elsewhere. It is, to be sure, important for performance to caution
against Morriss advice, which is based on modern conducting technique:
A slight increase in dynamic stress for which the choirmaster can be
trusted is all that is needed to make its rhythmical importance unmistak-
able.One must add that metric stress, contrary to Morriss statement, is in
no way imaginary. Quite the contrary: all of the harmony is determined
by it, and only with this background is the rhythmic freedom of the individ-
ual voices possible, perceptible, and eective. Morris states correctly:
Above all, they [the sixteenth-century composers] loved to make the
rhythmical accents of each part cross and clash with those of every other
part. In this connection, however, a few more cautions are needed, as will
be shown.
Let us linger further with Morris. His Example 38 (only one voice!)
illustrates the breathtakingly complicated, on the whole unconductable,
polyrhythm, that with the help of language and its declamation is hidden
behind the simple notation. And yet such (polyphonic!) passages run their
horst leuchtmann
234
11
Ibid., pp. 201.
12
Ibid., p. 21.
13
Ibid.
course by themselves if only the tempo for all voices is held steady. What
seems very complicated or even confused in Morris when it is taken apart
rhythmically and interpreted, comes to pass of its own accord in a perfor-
mance with correct text declamation, provided that the singers understand
what they are singing.
The persistence with which the question of textual stress is continu-
ally brought up in theoretical writings should arouse attention. The ter-
minological uncertainty with which the claim is raised from time to time
that a longsyllable must be made prominent with a long tone proves that
in this instance vestiges of classical versication must have been progeni-
tors. However, the classical meters had long since become only a play-
ground for humanists, who turned out their artful Latin verses following
rened metrical patterns whose vocabulary consisted of quantities, with
syllables either considered to be short or established as long. To form these
into structures that only the connoisseur could appreciate, not only by
counting syllables but also following artistic rules about syllables consid-
ered as short, made the composer into a master, whether he wrote the verse
or only set it. In any case, the number of antique odes and verses that were
composed mercilessly betrays that an archaic genre had been embraced
here. The list of Lassos works includes a handful of such antiquarian
aectations, which as is well known were awakened once again during
Lassos lifetime to a short articial life in the works of the French school of
poets known as the Pliade.
14
Apart from this the poetic art of the modern
vernacular languages, which had worked for a long time with tonic accent
and/or syllable counting, prevailed. These new parameters do not play an
important role, so far as I can see, either in scholarly music literature or in
present-day performances of older music.
However, a tonic accent may very well be meant when careless
mention is made of quantity.All this is praised and marveled at in Lasso,
but also censured in part (for instance, his fondness for text expression); the
censure arises of course only in hindsight. But the coordination of accentu-
ation of pitch and word stress in his works has nowhere as yet been exam-
ined thoroughly. Musicology has little if any interest in these fundamental
s music
235
14
For example, Sidus ex claro, Nuptias claras, O decus celsi, Flemus
extremos, Heu quis armorum, Nuntium vobis fero, Alma Venus, Une
puce, and others.
questions, and in performance practice these subtleties are lost through
modern conducting technique. In this respect, which is signicant for an
art that intends to translate words into tones, there is also no dierence
between Lasso and his contemporaries. He too sometimes stresses falsely,
as a supercial examination may seem to demonstrate.
15
In fact this fault
is an uncommonly rened possibility for creating liveliness and impres-
siveness in music through the simplest means.
One may compare these discussions with those in the collected
edition of Cipriano de Rore. In his discussion of ascriptions the editor lists
stylistic details that speak for or against Rores authorship. Among the neg-
ative indications he lists Barbarismus.
Other traits that speak against Rores authorship are the omission of the
subsemitonium of the cadence . . . and the occurrence of barbarisms like
virtut, resrrectionis, or verbm [in the motet Virtute magna Repleti
quidem]. These peculiarities, it is true, are frequent in masters like
Gombert or Clemens non Papa and those inuenced by them; but it was
Willaert who turned away from these practices about 1540,
16
and Rore,
horst leuchtmann
236
15
This is not the proper place to go into the reception of Lasso. It should be noted
none the less how severely the great Lasso scholar Adolf Sandberger distorted
matters when he spoke unintentionally against presumed mistaken accents in
Lassos settings: Orlando stresses mostly following the verbal accent, in the
most frequent cases exactly as it must be stressed in accented verse, as may be
seen similarly in Palestrina. But then we see the composer uncounted times
displace the tone on which he comes to rest, following neither the accent of the
word nor the metric accent, a procedure hardly to be approved, and one which
is pursued to the distortion of word forms. On the other hand, the eort to do
justice to the penultimate syllable is unmistakable (SW, vol. 2, p. xxiii). Balmer,
Lassos Motetten, p. 100, is no dierent, and Horst-Willi Gross, Klangliche
Struktur und Klangverhltnis in Messen und lateinischen Motetten Orlando di
Lassos (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1977), p. 74, note 24, in his discussion of
Lassos motet, Memento peccati tui, SW, vol. 7, p. 60, comments, Note the
unusual (!) stress in the musical structure on the words ne despres. Franz
Xaver Haberl, Sandbergers collaborator in the so-called old Lasso collected
edition (SW), even took up his pen now and then against unusual stresses and
made corrections according to his own judgment. See SW, vol. 5, pp. 131 and
150, the latter a barbarism that Haberl should have let stand as typical of the
time.
16
This is not correct. One might consider at random even the rst motet in
Willaerts Musica nova, Domine quid multiplicati sunt Ego dormivi. Among
the large number of lengthened stresses, a few stresses on weak beats, without
lengthening, occur even so. The following list is not intended to be complete:
together with the other Italianized Netherlanders, faithfully followed his
example.
17
Meier continues:Already in the sixteenth century correct text declamation
was considered the main characteristic of the new Netherlandish-Italian
style, clearly visible for the rst time in the late works of Willaert. See E.
Lowinsky, A treatise on text underlay by a German disciple of Francisco
Salinas, Festschrift Heinrich Besseler zum 60. Geburtstag (Leipzig: VEB
Deutscher Verlag fr Musik, 1962, p. 231).
18
On the other hand, one might
note the same editors unquestioning ascription of Expectans expectavi
to Rore despite the following censured barbarisms: cantus, mm. 212,
expectav; tenor, mm. 38 and 45,precs; Secunda pars: tenor, mm. 789,
mem; altus, mm. 967, carmn; quintus, m. 97, De. These however
are not peculiarities but rather commonplaces, normal usages of the
time, the masters employment of which showed his scorn for dilettantes.
And no singer would ever have sung virtut, resrrectionis, or
verbm, expectav, precs, mem, or carmn, even if it had
appeared thus in the score, if he wished to retain his position as a profes-
sional. Moreover, one must naturally be aware of deviations in stress that
arose in the Middle Ages.
19
s music
237
Prima pars: altus, m. 10, ml-ti; m. 23, d-cunt; tenor, m. 10, ml-ti; m. 14, ml-
ti; bassus, m. 9, ml-ti. Secunda pars: altus, m. 119, circum-dn-tis; m. 136, sl-
vum; bassus, m. 109, ml-lia.
17
Cipriano da Rore, Opera omnia, ed. Bernhard Meier (Rome: American Institute
of Musicology, 1959 ), vol. 14, p. xiii.
18
Ibid., note 18. This argumentation strongly recalls what Ambros reported about
Artusi (Geschichte der Musik. Dritte verbesserte und mit Nachtrgen versehene
Auage von Otto Kade [Leipzig: F. E. C. Leuckart, 1893], vol. 3, p. 531): Artusi
praised in Cipriano his good, that is correctly, accented declamation of the
words: il Signore Cipriano stato il primo che havesse incominciato ad
accomodare bene le parole e con bell ordine . . . essendo da suoi antecessori et le
parole et nel medesimo tempo molti in uso il fare de barbarismi (della Imperf.
Fol. 20), a praise that Baini (Vita ed op. die [!] Pierl. da Palestr. I: 108) properly
wished to limit, in that he calls attention to the circumstance that careful text
underlay was found much earlier in motets and that in this perspective only
masses were less carefully handled (and even here, we must add, primarily only
in the Kyries, etc., but not in the Gloria and Credo). Lowinskys essay has been
reprinted in his Music in the Culture of the Renaissance and Other Essays
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), vol. 2, pp. 86883.
19
Such departures from the rules, which had already appeared in antiquity,
continued in part in the Middle Ages. In English-speaking areas one may
Herbert K. Andrews (190465) adopts a great deal from Morris and in
part goes very much further, for example, in the question of barlines, which
he wishes to consider only as marks of orientation. He names ve factors
governing accent in the normal vocal line: (1) the relative length of a tone
with respect to smaller values that precede or follow it; (2) a prominent high
pitch; (3) an approach to a note by a leap upward; (4) the position of a note
in a melodic phrase (the beginning tones of a melodic phrase tend to have
the character of an upbeat and thus are relatively unaccented); and (5) the
text underlay.
20
Andrews then gives a musical example from Palestrina (see
Ex. 11.2), which he chooses at random. His rhythmic analysis proceeds
from the score and takes account of the ve factors he names. Without a
doubt nothing may be adduced against the results of his eorts, but rather
against his methods, the rules for which do not hold water with their vexa-
tious imagination of stresses in, for example, unnecessary or unconvincing
melodic motions. Andrews prefers not to understand irregular word
accents as stresses but rather works to excuse them on compositional
grounds, for reasons of voice-leading: Yet the eect of the whole gives an
unmistakable feeling of the four pulse metrical rhythm; there is at least one
stress rhythm accent on the rst pulse of every measure and on the third
pulse of all save the second.
21
The present essay is concerned with the
mastery of the composers of Lassos time in breaking through the inexible
meter by means of an abundance of unexpected, enlightening accents on
weak beats; it is not to place the meter in question, but to remove its special
privilege. Andrews defends (Palestrina); here we should admire (Lasso).
The rhythm of the individual voices against the background of the
meter may be perceived and recognized in a much simpler manner than
Andrews indicates. The hypothesis is the fundamental rule that in tempus
imperfectum the four minims are not equivalent in their metric quality, but
rather, as the rules of dissonance indicate, they are dierentiated into
strongbeats (1 and 3) and weakbeats (2 and 4), as was discussed above.
horst leuchtmann
238
observe even today a general tendency to accent the penultimate syllable in
Latin words, for example carmna instead of crmina and quaertis rather
than queritis. See Lexicon des Mittelalters, vols. 16 (Munich and Zrich:
Artemis, 1980); vol. 7 (Munich: Lexma Verlag, 199598), s.v. Barbarismus.
20
H[erbert] K. Andrews, An Introduction to the Technique of Palestrina (London:
Novello, 1958), pp. 289.
21
Ibid., p. 31.
As Example 11.2 shows, the individual voices against this harmonic, accen-
tuated background can enliven the musical fabric remarkably strongly
through the stresses made possible by rhythm. Basically, three possibilities
of accentuation (according to verbal stress!) are available:
(1) The text accent agrees with the musical accent. This is the basic rule,
which one can observe without at the same time falling into Morriss feared
tedium. The larger part of the music discussed here runs its course
according to this pattern.
(2) The word accent conicts with this rule and stresses weak beats.
Lengthening of this beat helps to achieve this, through dotting or doubling
s music
239
Example 11.2: H. K. Andrews, An Introduction to the Technique of Palestrina
(London: Novello, 1958), Example 10, pp. 2930
Cantus
Altus
Tenor
Bassus
&
B
B
?
b
b
b
b
C
C
C
C
In
1
w

In
w

>

In glo - ri -
>

>
glo - ri - a De -
2
>

>
glo - ri - a De -
.
>

>
a De - i Pa - - -

>

i Pa - tris,
3
w
>

i Pa - tris,
w
In
( )
w
>
tris,
w
>

>
A - men, A -
&
B
B
?
b
b
b
b
4

w
>
n
A -
>

w
glo - ri - a

in
-

>

5
w

men,
w
>

De - - i, in
>

glo - ri - a

>

men, in glo - ri -
6

>
(a)
in glo - ri -

>

glo - ri - a
>

>

De - i Pa - tris,

>

(tris
>
a De - i Pa -
of the duration, a seeming syncopation, or a dissolution into passagework.
This is the usual form of the consciously oending o-beat stresses con-
trary to the meter in the individual parts (indicated by v in Ex. 11.3).
(3) The real,unvarnished oense against the metric rules, presumably in
awareness of thelanguage: Theverbal stress falls ontheweakbeats 2and4,
without lengtheningwithinthecontext, without anygraphicor contrapun-
tal stress (indicated by in Ex. 11.3). One depends on a singer who under-
stands languages. The word being delivered must remain understandable;
the wordinits recognizable formhas precedence over rhythmically exible
delivery. If method no. 2 in performance practice misleads one to syncopa-
tion, as we still recognize today, similarly method no. 3 is for us an
unheard oense, because we are used to considering such undesignated
displaced accents as errors, as incompetence on the composers part, or
mostly froma lackof knowledge of languages we simply ignore them, that
is, withhold them in their rhythmic quality from the listener. Not so the
ancients.
This freedom of word stress and thereby musical stress, or, better yet,
rhythmicization of the individual parts, nds its limits however in two
contexts:
(A) The discant clausula (see above) does not tolerate this freedom. A com-
poser that transgresses against its domination usually gives no pleasure.
(B) Triple mensuration (see above) governs word stress irresistibly.
In both cases the meter must be complied with.
The stresses in an individual voice-part that result from situations
described under no. 2 above (voices may be combined together in such
errorsif the composer wishes) this method of incorrect stress contrary
to the meter is the only intrinsic one. Considered thus, Example 11.2 is
much simpler if we understand it only with regard to word stress:
Cantus: m. 1: The Inis indeed placed on a weak beat, but it is the entrance
of the upper voice, which does not however encroach on the main
accent on beat 1 of m. 2. De- in m. 2, beat 4, is one such intrinsic
special rhythm of the voice-part, without preparation or support. In
m. 3 the shift of stress from beat 1 to beat 2 is so clear that it needs no
further discussion. In m. 4 the discant cadence governs the stress in
the usual manner. In m. 6 as in m. 1 the repetition receives a similar
subordinate stress through the entrance of the voice.
horst leuchtmann
240
Altus: In m. 3 the stress is normal, also in mm. 4 and 5. In m. 6 the so-called
intrinsicshift of stress occurs.
Tenor: In m. 2 the shift of stress to beat 2 is reinforced through lengthening
(in this case through a dot). The same occurs in mm. 23 on Pa-; a
discant clausula follows. In m. 4 a subordinate stress occurs with the
voice entry. In m. 5 the stress on beat 2 is brought about in the simplest
manner through lengthening (in this case dotting). In m. 6 the
stresses are regularly metric.
Bassus: In m. 1, beat 4 has an intrinsicshift of stress. A similar shift occurs
on beat 2 of m. 2. The intrinsic shift in m. 3, beat 4, is further rein-
forced through the octave leap upwards (stress through a sudden rise
in pitch, often to the limits of the range of an individual part, which
calls attention to itself ). M. 5, beat 2, is similarly made prominent by
the high note but causes no weakening of the metric stress on beat 3.
M. 6 contains an intrinsic shift to beats 2 and 4 (presumably, since
Andrews does not give the continuation).
For the sake of completeness it must be mentioned that unstressed
syllables or tones must naturally correspond to those that are stressed. It is
understandable that unstressed syllables on strong beats result from
stressed syllables on weak beats. A schematic representation of the stresses
in Andrewss example (which is representative of many others) is as follows
(measure numbers are in italics, beats within each measure follow them;
stressed syllables are shown by +):
1 1 2 3 4 2 1 2 3 4 3 1 2 3 4 4 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 6 1 2 3 4
C + + + + + + +
A + + + +
T + + + + + + + +
B + + + + + + + + +
The result is a continuous onslaught of stresses in the individual voices,
through which a robust liveliness results that cannot be accommodated
into modern conducting patterns; one can understand why the old manner
of conducting only according to the tactus allowed the singers the necessary
freedom for verbal stresses.
In general criticism of Andrews one should observe that Palestrina
s music
241
did not add the text after composing the music, but rather he also began by
setting a pre-existing text to music. The rhythm of the words was in princi-
ple tted to the meter, and only where the composer wished to bring some-
thing out, music or text or both, or where he was unsatised with the
important word accents within the bounds of the 1234 meter, did
something happen to the text declamation. The same is true here. The inge-
nuity of these possibilities of musical notation that have long since been
given up without a replacement, indeed on the contrary turned upside
down and scorned as barbarisms,lies in the fact that this method of shift-
ing metric stress needs no special indication or method for the singer to
perform it as a foregone conclusion. The notation of that time knew no sfor-
zato, only notes, nothing but notes and rests, without auxiliary symbols.
And in this the artfulness of the old notation can be seen: the singer has no
score before him, in contrast to present practice; he basically does not know
how his part ts into the whole. But the solution is as simple as it is surpris-
ing (for us): the singer must know the language in which he sings, and when
he has the words before him, that is sucient to bring out the correct accent
in the musicalized speech, the music, in the most natural way.
22
The leader
of the choir governs the tactus and thus the tempo and can perhaps for less
well-trained singers help here and there with entrance cues so far as pos-
sible and necessary. (With good choral groups that was certainly not neces-
sary, and in any case the director had no score.) Thus it is as awkward as it is
unnecessary to work individual voices with changes or shifts of beats in
specic places, as many modern choral conductors try to do. The eect
occurs of its own accord. It is exactly this simplicity, however, that brings us
diculties, because we no longer have grown up with this departed musical
horst leuchtmann
242
22
This had already struck Johann Nicolaus Forkel (Allgemeine Geschichte der
Musik [Leipzig: Schwickert, 1801, reprint 1967] vol. 2, p. 698), who found fault
with bad text underlay in older music that occurred even in the mother tongue
of the composer: Since this occurred in the native language, it is hardly
surprising that it happened far more often in compositions with Latin texts that
very few composers understood. Johann Mouton in any case certainly did not
understand the Latin language, for he had to communicate with Glarean
through an interpreter. This incorrect and unnatural treatment of the text was
probably a main reason why a few learned men of earlier centuries who
understood the language well enough and heard it so often disgured in the
mouths of singers ultimately found no pleasure in the new styles of
composition (cited after Balmer, Lassos Motetten, pp. 1001).
culture, and old music in misapprehension of its greatness is often enough
considered to be a decient early form of our own music. Our conductors
paint and decorate the meter in the air instead of letting the singers quietly
unfold it. It is sucient to organize the meter in relation to the tempo,
which should not remain sti and unvarying, and bring the singers to the
point that they declaim their texts correctly. As stated, this presupposes in
any case a knowledge of languages for Lasso Latin, French, Italian, and
German that is rather uncommon today. Perhaps it would work wonders
if choral rehearsals were to begin with spoken mastery of the text to be sung.
It may be seen again that old instruments and costumes of the past are not
sucient to bring old music to life again, but it is rather a matter of funda-
mental assumptions of verbal-musical performance. And it is exactly here
that one may see the great diculty of coming from vocal music and simple
instrumental music (because it doubles the voices that lead) to the inde-
pendence of instrumental music. In the beginning instrumental music fun-
damentally could not exist without text (except for dance music). For a long
time it was conned only to a colla parte supporting role, exclusively deco-
rative, in the service of the great vocal art.
Thus far we have been speaking of Rore and Palestrina. It is hardly
thinkable that Lasso should escape unscathed from the errorswhich con-
temporary and later criticism although cautiously certainly harped on
(see note 6 above). For that reason I have cited in Example 11.3 a fourteen-
measure excerpt (mm. 3043) from his eight-voice polychoral motet Tui
sunt coeli,
23
which shows especially clearly with what mastery Lasso
managed the enlivening possibilities of stresses in the eight voices and how
he still required lively vigor in the structure of a setting for double chorus,
which would already be inherently stimulating. These verbal o-beat
structures which are our subject belong fundamentally to the category of
emphasis on portions of the text, comparable to repetition or to the
employment of extremely high or low registers. This is how they were
intended and this also is how they operate. No singer of that time would
have considered singing even once such a shift of stress as seds or
praeparato,which the metrically organized score would suggest only to a
thoroughly unmusical person. And to wish to reproach Lasso and all the
s music
243
23
SW, vol. 21, p. 7 (MOM494).
important composers of his time that they had set a great number of falsely
accented words and sent them into the world such a crazy reproach would
itself be worthy of real amusoi, ignoti, or vorchtern der music, as
Joachim a Burck describes them.
24
When Burck summarizes the style char-
acteristics of the idolized Lasso, his description seems coined for the imagi-
native involvement of Lasso (and others) with text accents: . . . princeps in
hoc nostro seculo Orlandus Dilassus . . . vere scit aectus exprimere, . . . et
quod elegantissimum est, textum ita ordinare, ne accentibus iniuriam
faciat(the prince of our age, Orlando di Lasso, truly knows how to express
the aect, and what is most elegant, to organize the text so that he does no
horst leuchtmann
244
24
Joachim [Johannes] a Burck, Decades IIII (Mhlhausen, 1567), as cited by
Ambros, Geschichte der Musik, vol. 3, p. 369, and Boetticher, Lasso, p. 839.
Example 11.3: Orlando di Lasso, Tui sunt coeli, mm. 3043, from SW,
vol. 21, p. 7
&
&
V
?
&
V
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
30
w n
a,
w

a,
w

a,
w

a,
w
et ju -
w
w b
et ju -
et ju- di -
et ju- di -

et
w
et

et

et
.

w #
di - ci- um,

w
di - ci - um,

w
ci - um,
b
w
ci - um,

.

ju- di - ci -
w

ju - dici -

w

ju- di - ci -

w

ju- di - ci -
w #

um
w

um
w

um
w

um
<et ju- di - - -
<et ju- di -
w

<et ju -
<et ju - - -
.

prae - pa -

prae -

ci -
w
ci - um>
.

di - ci-um> prae -
w
.

di - ci -

w
ra - ti - o,
.

b
prae-pa - ra -

pa- ra - ti - o
.
b
prae - pa - ra - ti -
w

um> prae -
w

b

pa - ra - ti -
w

um>
.
<prae-pa-
b

ti - o,
w
se- dis
w

o,

b

pa - ra - ti - o
.

b
prae-pa- ra -
w

o se -
.
b
prae - pa - ra- ti -
injury to the accents). The fact that all composers of the sixteenth century
made use of these natural changes of stress can only strengthen the view
advocated here that an important means of contrapuntal writing has been
brought to light again and rehabilitated, in theory as in practice.
A nal question really contains its own answer: what purpose does
this shift of accent serve, especially when it occurs in such large numbers?
The answer: it provides an additional solidication of the musical struc-
ture. In its eect and meaning it stands between the repetition and
intensication gures of counterpoint and is closely related to stretto of
which it is in any case a virtuoso form one might almost say a form of dra-
matic intensication of the musical statement. And it is thus an indispens-
able technique of vocal polyphony that later celebrated a meaningful
s music
245
&
&
V
?
&
V
V
?
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
b
37
b
w
ra- ti - o,>
.

<prae-pa-ra - ti -
w w
tu - ae,

<prae -

se-dis tu -
A

ti - o se -
-

dis tu- ae,
w

o,
.

prae - pa -
o>
prae - pa- ra -

pa- ra- ti - o,>
w

ae,
dis tu -

prae -
.

<prae - pa-ra - ti -

w
ra - ti- o,
se- dis tu -

ti - o
prae- pa-ra -
.

prae - pa-ra - ti -
w

ae, prae -

parati - o
w
.
o,> prae - pa -
.
b
<prae- pa- ra- ti -
w b

ae, <prae -
se- dis tu -
w
ti - o se -
w
.
o, <prae-pa -

b

pa- ra - ti- o,

w
se - dis tu -
b
w
ra - ti - o,
w
.

o,> prae- pa -

pa- ra- ti - o>
w

ae, prae -
dis

w
ra - ti-o,>
<prae-pa-ra -
w
w
ae,
.

<prae-pa-ra - ti -
w
ra - ti- o
se-dis tu -

pa-ra-ti - o
w
w
tu - ae,
w

prae -

ti - o,>
prae- pa-ra -
w
.
o,> prae- pa -
w

se- dis
ae, <prae-pa-ra -

b
se- dis
.
<prae - pa-

pa- ra- ti - o
.

prae - pa-ra - ti -
ti - o se -

w b
ra - ti - o
revival in instrumental music in the area of motivic work. To close with R.
O. Morris, who recognized this dramatic element very well: This constant
rhythmical conict is the most vital and suggestive feature in the whole of
the sixteenth-century technique.
25
Translated by Peter Bergquist
horst leuchtmann
246
25
Morris, Contrapuntal Technique, p. 23.
accentuation
metric and verbal compared, 2334
quantitative, 235
three possibilities of, 23940
vocal lines, 238
Albrecht V, Duke of Bavaria, vii, 21, 43,
47, 4951, 69n.18
Alcarotto, Giovanni Francesco, 193
Altoviti, Antonio, 137
Ameyden, Christian, 201
Andrews, Herbert K., 23841 (Ex. 11.2)
Anerio, Felice, 143
Animuccia, Giovanni, 92, 93, 137, 144,
150
Missa Christe redemptor, 148 (Ex. 7.4)
Missarum liber primus (1567), 144
Pater noster, 149
Animuccia, Paolo, 141
Antwerp, vii, 647, 1602, 1646
Arcadelt, Jacques, 93, 190
Archpoet
Confession of Golias, 1246
Arie napolitane, 79
dArras, Jean Terrier, 192
Augsburg, Staats- und Stadtbibliothek
Ms. 25, 41n.3
Balbi, Lodovico, 200
Barr, Antonio, 75, 789, 812, 879,
912, 93, 1401, 207
Baston, Josquin, 141
Beethoven, Ludwig van
Ritterballet, WoO 1, 127
Bente, Martin, 47
Berchem, Jachet
A la dolcombra de la belle frondi, 92
Berg, Adam, 21819, 222
Berg, Johann see Montanus
Bischo, Bernhard, 1247
Boetticher, Wolfgang, viii, 41, 549, 128,
138, 149, 186n.10, 192n.36 and 37,
199, 200
Bonagiunta, Giulio, 76
Borren, Charles van den, viii
Bossuyt, Ignace, 120n.7
Breviarium Romanum(1568), 428
Bruno, Giovanbattista, 746, 79
Bruto, Gian Michele, 65
Burck, Joachim a, 244
Byrd, William, 14
Cambio, Perissone, 200
Canis, Cornelius, 160
canzone, 91115
composers before 1560, 93
musical structure, 945
poets of musical settings, 93
Carafa da Stigliano, Giovan Francesco, 82
Caro, Annibal, 71
Castro, Jean de, 120n.7, 15882, 201
Ad te levavi oculos meos, 160
Angelus ad pastores ait, 171, 174
(Ex. 8.3), 179 (Ex. 8.10)
Confundantur superbi, 174, 180
(Ex. 8.11)
Exaudi, Domine, vocem meam, 1745,
181 (Ex. 8.12)
Gustate et videte, 171, 175 (Ex. 8.4)
In te, Domine, speravi, 1734, 1778
(Exx. 8.8., 8.9)
Surgens Jesus, 1712 (Ex. 8.1), 173, 177
(Ex. 8.7)
Surrexit pastor bonus, 171, 173
(Ex. 8.2)
Tribus miraculis, 171, 176 (Ex. 8.5)
Uxor Joannis Pollet Sara, 165
247
General index
Cherubini, Luigi
Cours de contrepoint et de fugue, 2301
Clement, Jacob (Clemens non Papa), 141,
161, 166
Epitaphiumfor, 120, 1223, 128
Magnicats, 6, 19
masses, 20
composition, instruction in, 229
consonance, 2278
contrafacta, 1203, 12730, 159
Copenhagen Chansonnier, 89
Cornet, Sverin, 184
Corona, Giovanni, 199
counterpoint
abstract or instrumental compared to
vocal, 229, 2301
instruction in, 2301
Crequillon, Thomas, 1601
Crook, David, 1, 5n.8, 13n.15, 47
Daser, Ludwig
masses, 20
Dentice, Don Luigi and Fabrizio, 80, 88
Desprez, Josquin, 167
accentuation of text, 22930
Benedicta es caelorum Regina, 139,
167n.29
Doni, Antonfrancesco, Dialogo della
musica, 92
Dorico, Valerico, 678, 74, 78
Duprac, Etienne, 501
Erb, James, viii
Este, Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara, 192
Este, Ippolito II, Archbishop of Milan, 70
Eton Choirbook, 14
Farnese, Alessandro, 1856, 1901, 1935
Farnese, Ottavio, 185, 1901
Ferrero, Pier Francesco, 756
Ferretti, Giovanni, 201
Fiesco, Giovanni Giacomo, 161
Flori, Franz, 201
Flori, Johannes, 20, 5262
Fogliano, Giacomo, 199
Forkel, Johann Nicolaus, 242n.22
Freising, Diocese of
Breviarium Frisingense (1516), 4447
Scamnalia secundum ritum et ordinem
ecclesiae et diocesis Frisingensis
(1520), 47
Fugger, Johann (Hans) Jakob, 164, 188
Gabrieli, Andrea, 203
Missa super Pater peccavi, 2939
(Exx. 2.8, 2.1012)
Missa super Vexilla regis prodeunt, 29
Pater peccavi, 2830, 334,
(Exx. 2.7, 2.9)
Sacrae cantiones I (1565), 21
Gardano, Antonio, 76, 92, 2078
Gentile, Stefano, 645, 162
Gerlach, Theodor and Katharina, 218,
2201
Gleason, Elizabeth G., 489
Gllner, Marie Louise, 42
Gombert, Nicolas, 6, 19
Gosswin, Anton, 20
Granvelle, see Perrenot
Gregory XIII, Pope, 139
Grimaldi, Giovanni, 162
Gross, Horst-Willi, 236n.15
Guidobono, Giovan Francesco II, 6872,
7980
Guise, Cardinal Louis I de, 77
Haar, James, viii, 5, 99
Haberl, Franz Xaver, 5, 236n.15
Heinrich, Nicholas, 220, 222
Hermelink, Siegfried, 204
Hotz, Pierre du, 188, 194
Houtermann, Mark, 140
imitatio, 1589, 175, 178
see also parody
Josquin, see Desprez
Kerle, Jacobus de, 139, 145
Kirsch, Winfried, 8
Laet, Jean, 161, 208
general i ndex
248
Lasso, Rudolf di, 15
Le Crec, Olivier, 8890
Le Roy, Adrian, and Robert Ballard, 118,
119, 165, 21018
Lechner, Leonhard, 119
Lerma, Hernando, 141
Leuchtmann, Horst, viii
Lockenburg, Johannes, 20
Lockwood, Lewis, 22
Lowinsky, Edward, 138
Lupacchino, Bernardino, 93
Lupi, Johannes, 141
Luther, Martin
Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu Dir, 24
Macque, Giovanni da, 151
madrigal, multi-stanza, 925
Magnicat tones, 13 (Ex. 1.1)
Maier, Julius Joseph, 41
Maillard, Jean, 141
Maio, Giovan Thomaso di, 70
Manchicourt, Pierre de, 187
Marenzio, Luca, 149, 166, 183, 198, 200,
201
Margaret of Austria, 185, 188, 190
McGinness, Frederick J., 49, 51
Meier, Bernhard, 190n.31, 191n.34, 205,
2367
Merlo, Alessandro, 200
meter, compared to rhythm, 2312
Micheli, Domenico, 199
modes
aect of individual, 95, 224
expressive or structural function,
10115
representation of, 20326
Mola, Francesco De La, 812
Montanus [Berg], Johann, and Ulrich
Neuber, 21819
Monte, Philippe de, 74, 162, 183, 199, 202
Dolce mio caro e pretioso albergo, 197
Morales, Cristbal de, 6, 19
moresche, 828
Tiche toche, 836 (Ex. 4.2)
Morris, Reginald O., 229, 2315,
(Ex. 11.1), 246
Munich, vii
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Mus. Mss.,
201, 23, 41, 458
Dom zu Unserer lieben Frau: Mss.,
42n.5
Nanino, Giovanni Maria, 153
Nasco, Jan, 93
Neefe, Christof Gottlob, 127
Nola, Gian Domenico da, 88
Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da, vii,
1323, 141, 144, 150, 151, 183, 202,
233 (Ex. 11.1)
Contebor tibi, 1523 (Ex. 7.5)
Crucem sanctam subiit, 147 (Ex. 7.3)
Da fuoco si bella nasce il mio ardore,
197
Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, 149
Magnicats, 5, 6, 19
masses, 20
Misero stato degli amanti in questi, 202
Missa Benedicta es, 139
Missa Papae Marcelli, 144
Missa Petra sancta, 152
Motecta festorum totius anni (1569),
144
musicians provided for processions in
Rome, 1336
Primo libro dei mottetti a 5, 6, e 7 voci
(1569), 144
Susanna ab improbiis, 153
Palmarts, Gottfried, 20
parody (imitation), 2040, 1525, 160
Magnicats, 13, 1718
masses, choice of models, 22
Pense, Justinien, 164
Perrenot de Granvelle, Antoine, 164, 185,
18690
Petrarch, Francesco
Standomi un giorno, 959
Phalse, Pierre, 11719, 1603, 1669,
20810
Phinot, Domenico, 150
Pius V, Pope, bull Quod a nobis, 434
Plantin, Christopher, 161
general i ndex
249
Polites, Joachim, 189
Pollet, Jean, 1645
polychoral music in Rome, 14852
Pontio, Pietro, 12n.14, 228
Porta, Costanzo, 93
Portinaro, Francesco, 93
Powers, Harold, 2037, 225
Pressauer, Franz, 21
printing and editing of music, Rome,
759, 144
psalm tone 4, 25 (Ex. 2.2)
Rampollini, Matteo, 923
Rasmussen, Niels Krogh, 501
Reese, Gustave, 8, 22930
Reggio, LHoste da
Io vo cangiar lusato, 92
Roche, Jerome, viii
Rome, 667, 71, 7490, 13257
Rore, Cipriano de, 93, 141, 166, 183,
1902, 199, 2367
Alma real se come de stella, 190
Expectans exspectavi, 237
masses, 20
Mentre lume maggior del secolo
nostro, 191
O socii neque enim, 187
Vieni dolce Hymeneo, 1912
Virtute magna, 236
Rossetti [Rossetto], Stefano, 200
Ruo, Vincenzo, 93
Saen, Elisabeth, 161
Salerno, Prince of 7980, 8990
Sandberger, Adolf, viii, 236n.15
Sen, Ludwig
hymns, 42, 468
Magnicats, 6, 19
Susato, Tielman, 64, 161, 187, 2089
Textoris, Guglielmo, 198, 202
tonal type, 20326
Toraldo, Neapolitan family, 812
Tracetti, Francesco, 768
Trent, Council of, 424, 489, 140, 144,
147, 155
Truchsess von Waldburg, Cardinal Otto,
1389, 147
Tumler, Walram, 623
Turnhout, Grard Van, 160, 184, 189
Turnhout, Jean, 183202
biography, 1845, 189
madrigals:
Ben veggio di lontano, 1956
(Ex. 9.3)
O belt rara, 1956 (Ex. 9.1)
Questi son lasso, questi, 1956
(Ex. 9.2)
Voi chascoltate in rime, 1957
(Ex. 9.4)
Vorria parlare e dire, 185n.7
Utendal, Alexander, 1589
Valent, Adrian, 141
Vento, Ivo de, 20, 23, 27, 159
Verdelot, Philippe, 199
Victoria, Toms Luis de, 140, 150
Vigili, Cavalier Honofrio, 756, 78
villanelle, 678, 704, 79, 89
Vinci, Pietro, 199
Waelrant, Hubert, 160
Wearing, Clive, 52
Wilhelm V, Duke of Bavaria, 423, 48,
512, 623, 69n.18
Willaert, Adrian
accentuation of text, 230
Domine quid multiplicati sunt,
236n.16
O socii neque enim, 187
Zoilo, Annibale, 141, 149151
Nunc dimittis, 151, 1567 (Ex. 7.7)
general i ndex
250
chansons
Susanne un jour, 153
Une puce, 235n.14
hymns, 4163
dating, 5262
Lectiones I, 167
madrigals
Amor che vedi ogni pensieri aperti, 199
Bella guerriera mia, 200
Ben veggio di lontano, 195 (Ex. 9.3),
199
Come val mondo, 200
Lagrime di San Pietro, 219, 224, 225,
227
O belt rara, 195 (Ex. 9.1), 199
Occhi piangete, 202
Quando a mai quel giorno, 192n.36
Questi son lasso, questi, 195 (Ex. 9.2),
199
Standomi un giorno, 91115, 166
Vieni dolce Hymeneo, 191
Voi chascoltate in rime, 195 (Ex. 9.4),
201
Magnicats (numeration as in SWNR),
119
performance practice, 35
7 (Septimi toni), 10
16 (Octavi toni), 8, 15, 16, 17
30 (Sexti toni), 10
37 (Si par souhait), 10
38 (Il est jour), 16, 17
58 (Ultimi miei sospiri), 1718
62 (Octavi toni), 7
68 (Dies est laetitiae), 10
69 (Benedicta es caelorum regina), 139
80 (Vergine bella), 7
90 (Pange lingua), 18
94 (Quinti toni), 7
97 (Erano capei doro), 1523
masses, 1819
Missa super Io son ferito, 152
Missa super Locutus sum in lingua
mea, 238 (Ex. 2.6)
motets, 138, 1401, 148, 1669
Alma nemes, 66
Alma Venus, 235n.14
Angelus ad pastores ait, 166, 1714
(Exx. 8.3, 8.10)
Benedicam Dominum in omni
tempore, 142, 166
Bestia curvaa [Bestia stultus homo],
122
Contemini Domino, 142
Confundantur superbi, 166, 174
(Ex. 8.11)
Deliciae Phoebi, 187
Deus misereatur nostri, 141, 142, 149
Exaudi, Domine, vocem meam, 166,
1745 (Ex. 8.12)
Fertur in conviviis, 11631, 1667, 169
Flemus extremos, 235n.14
Fulgebunt justi, 166
Gustate et videte, 138, 1413, 171
(Ex. 8.4)
In convertendo Dominus, 142, 151
In me transierunt, 142, 1445 (Ex. 7.1)
In te, Domine, speravi, 166, 170, 1734
(Exx. 8.89)
Jam lucis orto sidere, 122
Legem pone mihi, 166
Locutus sum in lingua mea, 236
(Exx. 2.15), 142, 144 (Ex. 7.2), 151
Memento peccati tui, 236n.15
Nunc gaudere licet, 122
Nuntium vobis fero, 235n.14
Nuptias claras, 235n.14
251
Index of Lasso compositions and
printed sources
motets (cont.)
O decus celsi, 235n.14
Pater peccavi, 167
Praesidium Sara, 165
Quare tristis es, anima mea, 142
Quia vidisti me, Thoma, 140
Quid prodest stulto, 167
Scio enim quod redemptor meus vivit,
141
Sidus ex claro, 235n.14
Surgens Jesus, 166, 1712 (Exx. 8.1,
8.67)
Surrexit pastor bonus, 1423, 166, 171
(Ex. 8.2)
Tribus miraculis, 166, 171 (Ex. 8.5)
Tui sunt caeli, 243 (Ex. 11.3)
Ubi est Abel, 166
Veni in hortum meum, 166, 169
Verba mea auribus percipe, 166, 168
Penitential Psalms, 159, 165, 218, 224
Prophetiae Sibyllarum, 227
villanella (ascribed to Lasso)
Voria che tu cantas una canzona, 724
*
Printed sources of Lassos music (listed by
RISM number and brief title)
1555a (14. livre), 64, 140, 162
1555b (DOrlando di Lassus il primo
libro), 64, 140, 162
1555c (Madrigali I 5 v), 76, 207
1555
30
(Villanelle II), 67
1555 RISM deest (Muse II 3 v), 812
1556a (Motetti I 56 v), 138, 164, 187,
208
1557b (Muse II [Madrigali II] 5 v), 75,
91
1557
12
(Muse II 3 v), 889
1557
19
(Canzoni alla Napolitana I),
74n.24
1560
14
(Villotte III), 88n.53
1560
18
(Madrigali I 4 v), 77
1561 RISM deest (Motettorum 5, 6 v),
142
1562a (Sacrae cantiones 5 v), 142, 208,
219
1562c (Sacrae cantiones 5 v), 208
1562
7
(Muse III 4 v), 79
1563c (Madrigali III 5 v), 79, 183, 207
1563
3
(Liber I musarum 4 v), 140
1564b (Primus liber concentuum
sacrorum), 214
1564c (Chansons I 4 v), 2089
1564d (14. livre chansons 45 v),
11718, 167
1564 RISM deest (7. livre chansons),
11718, 167
1565a (Modulorum II vol. 410 v), 215
1565c (Cantiones sacrae II 56 v), 76
1565e (Lectiones), 142
1565
8
(7. livre chansons), 117
1566c (Sacrae cantiones II 56 v), 142
1566d (Sacrae cantiones III 56 v), 142
1566e (Sacrae cantiones IV 68 v), 159,
208
1566f (Lectiones), 167
1567k (Madrigali IV 5 v), 183
1567l (Lieder I 5v), 21920
1567
9
1568a/b (Selectissimae cantiones), 159
1569a (Cant. aliquot 5 v), 219
1569f (Sacrae cantiones IV 68 v), 142
1569
7
(Liber I sacr. cant. 4 v), 168
1569
8
(Liber II sacr. cant. 4 v), 117, 119,
168
1570c (Cant. sacr. 68 v), 219
1570d (Mellange), 117, 211, 213, 224
1570
6
(2. livre chansons 45 v), 191n.35
1570
11
1571d/b (Modulorum I 5 v, Moduli
quinis v), 168, 21516
1571f (Chansons nouvelle 5 v), 212, 215
1572e (Modulorum II 5 v), 168
1572g (Lieder II 5 v), 21920
1573
11
1574b (Patrocinium II, Missae), 139
1575c (Motetti 3 v), 168
1575
10
1576c (Patrocinium V, Magnicat), 142
1576i (Meslanges), 116, 117, 120,
21112, 214, 224
Oxford partbooks, 116, 1301
1576l (Thrsor 46 v), 1201
i ndex of lasso composi ti ons and pri nted sources
252
1576n (17. livre 45 v), 21112
1576r (Lieder III 5 v), 220
1577c (Cantiones 2 v), 219, 221
1577e (Moduli 49 v), 21516
1579b (Selectissimae cantiones 45 v),
117, 11920
1579
1
1581g (Villanelle), 88
1582c (Fasciculus aliquot sacr. cant.),
219, 224
1582d (Sacrae cantiones 5 v), 225
1582e (Motetta 6 v), 225
1582h (Thrsor), 1201
1583b (Lieder IIIIII 5 v), 2201, 224
1584f (Continvation du meslanges),
21213
1584
3
1585a (Sacrae cantiones 4 v), 217, 225
1585b (Cantiones sacrae 68 v), 225
1586g (Meslanges), 212, 224
1587d (Sacr. cant. moduli 4 v), 21718
1588c/d/e (Moduli 4 & 8, 5, 6 v) 218
1592b (Fleur des chansons), 20910
1594a (Cantiones sacrae 6 v), 219, 225
1594b (Thrsor), 1201
1595a (Lagrime di San Pietro), 219, 225,
227
1599 RISM deest (7. livre chansons), 117
1604a (MOM), 1201, 127, 2203
1619a (Centum Magnicat), 15
i ndex of lasso composi ti ons and pri nted sources
253

Bergquist Peter - Orlando Di Lasso Studies

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What is the book about?

What is the book about?

Who is Orlando di Lasso?

Who is Orlando di Lasso?

Orlando di Lasso Studies

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s magni fi cat setti ngs

s magni fi cat setti ngs

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)a. These exhibit a great

s cycle of polyphoni c lati n hymns

s cycle of polyphoni c lati n hymns

s cycle of polyphoni c lati n hymns

s cycle of polyphoni c lati n hymns

s cycle of polyphoni c lati n hymns

s cycle of polyphoni c lati n hymns

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s cycle of polyphoni c lati n hymns

s cycle of polyphoni c lati n hymns

and the canzone

and the canzone

and the canzone

and the canzone

and the canzone

and the canzone

and the canzone

) on percosse ad uno (m. 93).

and the canzone

and the canzone

in the quinto, and an F

in the canto (mm.

and the canzone

between basso and canto on n. In line 2 [I saw] a pensive lady go, so

juxtaposition in m. 277. The line closes on

having been heard through-

s as it passes through a modally irregular cadence forma-

of the A-mi cadences, an A-mi

and the canzone

so often used in cross-relations, and a hint at a modally

in the cantos slow descend-

in the canto (m. 325) which is repeated in the

is heard, but this time the cadence is another

continues to be heard as the canto falls silent in mm. 3357. The

in the superius of the last chord.

of the A-mi cadence is stressed by its use at par-

and the canzone

tur - ba - ve- runt

in the key signature, is the f

in the nal chord;

and b, as well as f and f

(the latter not only in the nal

s publi cati ons

s publi cati ons