ORLANDO DI LASSO’S LAST NOTES

Thanks to the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s traveling production of Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro (Tears of St. Peter), audiences are discovering an undeservedly neglected masterpiece by one of the finest composers of the Renaissance. Fame came early for Lasso (1532-1594), who was known by many names: Orlande de Lassus, Roland de Lassus, Orlandus Lassus, Orlande de Lattre, and Roland de Lattre.

Born in Mons, in what is now Belgium, he spent much of his career in Munich, finding success with intimate songs as well as large sacred pieces that unfolded in richly layered sounds favored during that period. He wrote very little instrumental music, though that genre was rapidly gaining in popularity. Lasso’s star had risen with his secular songs, which were performed in Europe’s royal courts, and such promising young composers as Andrea Gabrieli eagerly sought him for study. But as the late 1500s arrived, the Renaissance began to fade, and the Baroque Era dawned. Though his choral works were being dismissed as old-fashioned, he stubbornly continued to write in his intricate style. By the time Lasso breathed his last on June 14, 1594, the fresh energy and new harmonies of the Baroque had made him a relic. The 20 spiritual madrigals and a motet that make up the

Lagrime were finished three weeks before he died. Ironically, Lasso’s Munich employer sent him a curt letter of dismissal that was received on the day of the composer’s death. — M.S.