Meantime in Germany we find also musicians of distinction, though as yet none of the very first rank. One of the oldest of these was Adam von Fulda, a learned monk, known both as a composer and theorist, and the author of at least one highly esteemed motet, O vera lux et gloria. Heinrich Finck, Thomas Stolzer, Ludwig Senfl, and Heinrich Isaak all deserve an honorable place in the history of German music of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Isaak, though for some time considered a German, was born in the Netherlands, probably about 1450, and was one of the most learned of the contemporaries of Josquin. He lived for a time in Ferrara, afterward becoming organist at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent. From this post he went to Rome, and finally entered the service of the Emperor Maximilian I at Vienna. Petrucci printed five of his masses in 1506, and included many of his other compositions in collections published early in the century. Manuscript works are in the Munich, Brussels, and Vienna libraries. His part songs were considered models of their kind, and are not lacking in interest even to-day. It is to Isaak we are indebted for the lovely Inspruck, ich muss dich lassen, used as a hymn by the followers of Luther, and by Sebastian Bach in the St. Matthew Passion.
Ludwig Senfl (born 1492, died about 1555), a pupil and the successor of Isaak at the court chapel of Maximilian I at Vienna, was later chapel-master at Munich. According to Riemann, Senfl was one of the most distinguished, if not the most important, of the German contrapuntists of the sixteenth century. He is further remembered as a friend of Luther. A great number of his compositions are preserved, among them being masses, motets, odes, songs, and hymns for congregational singing.
The work of the brilliant Clement Jannequin in Paris was largely secular and will be treated in another chapter. It may be remarked in passing that types of composition perfected by him were to have great influence upon instrumental music before the end of the century. In England John Merbecke (d. 1585), Christopher Tye (d. 1572), Thomas Tallis (d. 1585), and William Byrd (d. 1623) match the Netherlands in skill and bring to their music not only the spirit of the new age, but the peculiar melodiousness which has always characterized English music. The works of Tallis became great favorites and in the famous English collections of music for the virginals toward the end of the century several of his vocal works appeared as transcriptions. Byrd must be ranked as one of the most daring composers of the time. Though he conformed to the new religion he remained at heart a Catholic, and his great works are akin to those of the greatest Catholic composers on the continent. He has, indeed, been called the Lassus of England. Here, too, must be mentioned, though belonging almost more to the next century, Thomas Morley (d. 1602), John Dowland (d. 1626), and perhaps the greatest of all English composers except Henry Purcell, Orlando Gibbons (d. 1625). All these men were composing at the end of the century, especially madrigals and other secular forms famous not only for their great technical skill, but for their remarkable sweetness and expressiveness. They were all, moreover, skillful instrumentalists and brought music for the harpsichord to a state far advanced beyond anything on the continent. John Bull (d. 1628) was not only a master of the art of counterpoint but a virtuoso on both organ and harpsichord, whose match could be found only in Andrea and Giovanni Gabrielli in Venice.
Everywhere the Renaissance spirit was at work, but prosperous Venice stands out clearly as the centre of the new movement which so colored and remodelled music. Effects of double choirs, chromatic harmonies, tendencies toward definiteness of form, and even the combination of voices and instruments within the church itself, all marks of the changes which were affecting the development of music, all signs of the liberation of music from the sway of the church and of its closer relationship with passionate active life, are first found in the works of the composers who were connected with St. Mark’s cathedral. But these men were really pioneers and the results of their innovations, though radical and far-reaching, were hardly foreseen. They sowed seeds, so to speak, which were to grow and flower long after their death. We have now to consider how the art of the Netherlanders grew to a present perfection in the works of two men—Orlando di Lasso and Pierluigi da Palestrina—both of whom, but particularly the latter, pursued an ideal untouched by the modern forces playing upon music about them; an ideal which, moreover, they attained and by attaining brought to an end the first great period in the history of European music.
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.