to his many publishers. During his lifetime a staggering seventy-nine printed volumes of his music (and
only his music) were issued, a total that leaves his nearest competitors in a cloud of dust; and his work
was included in forty miscellaneous publications as well. Lasso volumes continued to be issued
posthumously all over Europe—Graz, Munich, Paris, Antwerp—until 1619. His output covered every
viable sacred and secular genre of continental Europe: Masses (almost all of them parody settings),
motets (including many full calendrical cycles in various genres), and vernacular settings in all the
languages he spoke. His work has never been published in its entirety; his sons tried to issue his entire
backlog after his death but gave up in despair. Nobody knows exactly how much music Lasso wrote, but
his published works, including those published only in modern times, number more than two thousand
items.
FIG. 17-4 Concert at the Bavarian court chapel directed by Orlando di Lasso from the keyboard (frontispiece by the Bavarian
court painter Hans Mielich to a manuscript now in the Bavarian State Library, Munich).
From this vast assortment any selection at all would be invidious and unrepresentative. So without
undue hand-wringing we will limit ourselves to what was most representative of the age rather than the
man. We will get our most vivid quick impression of Lasso’s special character if we forgo his magnificent
legacy of Catholic church music (where, after all, he had competitors and counterparts) and sample the
full range of his secular work, which was unique, choosing a single piece in each of four languages. Each
of them, moreover, illustrates this cagey chameleon-composer’s bent for witty mixtures and juxtapositions
of styles.
Je l’ayme bien (Ex. 17-10) is from Lasso’s very first publication, a miscellany called D’Orlando di
Lassus il primo libro dovesi contengono madrigali, vilanesche, canzoni francesi e motetti a quattro
voci (“The First Book by Orlando di Lasso, containing madrigals, vilanescas, French chansons, and
motets for four voices”) published in Antwerp by Susato in 1555, when the composer was 23 years old.
The Parisian chanson style, by then a quarter century old, has been elegantly reconciled to the ars
perfecta in Lasso’s setting, in which a striking melody that might have prompted an exquisite
harmonization from Claudin is given an elaborate imitative exposition, which supplies the exquisite
harmonies all the same.
Matona (i.e., “Madonna”) mia cara (Ex. 17-11), informally known as “the lansquenet’s serenade,”