IV
Orlando di Lasso[119] was born in the town of Mons, in Hainault, probably in 1530. The Flemish form of the name, Roland de Lattre, seems to have been abandoned early in favor of the Italian. The fate of the musically gifted boy, both during and long after the Middle Ages, was a choir school; and accordingly Orlando was entered as chorister in the local church of St. Nicholas. A writer named Van Quickelberg, giving an account of Lasso in 1565, says that he quickly came to a good understanding of music, and that the beauty of his voice caused him to be twice stolen from the school in which he lived with the other choristers. Twice also his ‘good parents’ rescued him; but, finally (at the age of twelve), he became attached to the suite of Ferdinand of Gonzaga, Viceroy of Sicily, with whom he travelled to Italy. Orlando stayed for some time in Naples, Rome, and Milan, continuing his studies, and then seems to have undertaken a long journey through France and England. By the year 1555 he was settled in Antwerp and rather widely known as a composer. Two years later Albert V, duke of Bavaria, called him to serve as chamber musician at his court in Munich. Duke Albert was a liberal man, a connoisseur of art, and, oddly enough, a man of some fame both in the athletic and in the religious world. He founded the famous royal library of Munich, to which we have had frequent occasion to refer, and enriched it during his lifetime with many valuable manuscripts and objects of art.
At first Lasso, being unfamiliar with the German language, filled rather a subordinate position among the duke’s musicians; but in 1562 he was appointed master of the chapel, which included both the choir and an orchestra. From this year on, up to the time when the illness attacked him which resulted in his death, his career was one of ever-increasing success and prosperity. He was called the ‘Prince of Musicians.’ In 1570 he was ennobled by the Emperor Maximilian II, and in the year following Pope Gregory XIII decorated him with the Order of the Golden Spur. On visiting Paris he was received with great favor by King Charles IX; while at home Duke Albert assured him his salary for life and appointed three of his sons to honorable positions in the chapel. The successor of Albert, Duke Wilhelm II, not only confirmed Lasso in his position, but presented him, in appreciation of his services, with a house and garden, and also made suitable provision for his wife. Neither the favor of royalty nor the admiration of princes, however, could render him immune to ill fortune. His last few years were clouded by mental trouble and melancholia. In June, 1594, he died, and was buried in the cemetery of the Franciscans. The monastery has been destroyed, but the monument to Lasso was preserved and now stands in the garden of the Academy of Fine Art in Munich.
Although the name of Lasso is not so well known to the world to-day as that of Palestrina, his career was a remarkable one. In the oft-mentioned Munich library, among other works of the master, is a manuscript copy of his most famous work, the ‘Penitential Psalms,’ written between 1562 and 1565, but not published until some time later. At the performance of these psalms Duke Albert was so impressed and affected that he caused a manuscript copy to be made and placed in his library. It was richly ornamented by the court painter, Hans Mielich, and other artists, and magnificently bound in leather.[120] Duke Albert was perhaps an exceptional patron; but, granting that to be the case, Lasso’s career shows how honorable was the position held by a great musician in his century.
Orlando di Lasso.
In the duke’s chapel were upward of ninety singers and players, several of them composers of merit, all of them musicians of ability. The choir singing was well balanced, and correct in pitch, even through the longest compositions. The general order of the ducal service was for the wind and brass instruments of the orchestra to accompany the mass on Sundays, and festival days, and, on the occasion of a banquet, to play during the earlier courses of the dinner. The strings, under Morari as conductor, then enlivened the remainder of the feast until the dessert, when Lasso and his choir of picked voices would finish the entertainment with quartets, trios, or pieces for the full choir. For chamber music, all the instruments would combine. The duke and his family were keenly interested in Lasso’s work, passionately fond of music in itself and proud of the celebrity of their chapel master. It is one of the instances where reverence and appreciation came to the artist during his lifetime; and it is not to be doubted that these fortunate circumstances had a tremendous influence on the master’s work. His industry and fertility were prodigious. Compositions amounting to two thousand or more are accredited to him—masses, motets, magnificats, passion music, frottole, chansons and psalms. There are two hundred and thirty madrigals alone. Following the lead of Willaert, he sometimes used the divided choir and composed for it, and also showed himself not indifferent to the growing taste for psalm singing.
The Seven Penitential Psalms, composed at the duke’s request, are for five voices, some numbers with two separate movements for each verse, the final movement, Sic erat, for six voices. Each psalm is a composition of some length, though modern ideas as to their tempi, and therefore as to the time required for their performance, show considerable variation. ‘It is not true that Lasso composed the Penitential Psalms to soothe the remorse of Charles IX, after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, but it is more than probable that they were sung before that unhappy monarch, and his musical sense must indeed have been dull, if he found no consolation and hope expressed in them. This is no everyday music, which may charm at all seasons, or in all moods; but there are times when we find ourselves forgetting the antique forms of expression, passing the strange combinations of sounds, almost losing ourselves in a new-found grave delight, till the last few moments of the psalm—always of a more vigorous character—gradually recall us as from a beautiful dream which “waking we can scarce remember”.... So unobtrusive is its character that we can fancy the worshippers hearing it by the hour, passive rather than active listeners, with no thought of the human mind that fashioned its form. Yet the art is there, for there is no monotony in the sequence of the movements. Every variety that can be naturally obtained by changes of key, contrasted effects of repose and activity, or distribution of voices, are here; but these changes are so quietly and naturally introduced, and the startling contrasts now called “dramatic” so entirely avoided, that the composer’s part seems only to have been to deliver faithfully a divine message, without attracting notice to himself.’[121]
De Lasso’s secular compositions are placed by critics almost unanimously even above his ecclesiastical work. The madrigals and chansons reveal force and variety of treatment, bold experiments with chromatics, a freer modulation and a keen sympathy for the popular elements of music. ‘Lasso shed lustre on, and at the same time closed, the great epoch of the Belgian ascendancy, which, during the space of two hundred years, had given to the world nearly three hundred musicians of marvellous science.’[122] The decline and fall of the Netherland school, which began with the death of its last great master, Lasso, are ascribed by Fétis to the political disturbances and wars of the sixteenth and succeeding centuries. But it seems more probable that the intricacies of the contrapuntal art created a desire for simpler methods. The genius of Italy and Germany, upon whose soil the last Netherland masters flourished, supplied the very qualities which brought the art to perfection.