was printed rather late in Lasso’s career, in a 1581 volume of “low style” Italian songs (Libro de
villanelle, moresche, et altre canzoni) published in Paris. It is thought, however, to date from an earlier
period, perhaps Lasso’s earliest, when he accompanied his first employer, Ferrante Gonzaga of Mantua,
on expeditions throughout Italy. Lansquenets were Swiss or German lance-bearing mercenaries (soldiers
of fortune) who enlisted as infantrymen in foreign parts. The word itself is a jocular French corruption of
Landsknecht, German for “trooper” or “foot soldier”. There was also an Italian variant, lanzichenecco,
and Italian armies such as Ferrante’s were full of them.
EX. 17-10 Orlando di Lasso, Je l’ayme bienThere could be no better emblem of Lasso’s inveterate cosmopolitanism than this silly Italian song,
written by a Fleming in imitation of a clumsy German suitor who barely speaks his lady’s language. The
genre to which it belongs, called villanella or town song (or to be excruciatingly precise, a todesca,
meaning a villanella with a ridiculous German accent), was a strophic song with refrains and hence the
direct (and deliberately debased) descendant of the frottola or “trifling song” of old. The refrains are