ORLANDE DE LASSUS

Quintessentially a man of his time, Lassus was not only the most widely admired composer of the High Renaissance, but also a man who summed up, in his life and work, what that period was all about, musically. In his compositions, he mastered the art of choral polyphony, as it had developed over time, and brought it to a peak that left no room for further evolution: after him, a new language had to emerge. His was an international language, stylistically, used all over Western Europe; and three other great composers were his peers in virtuoso use of it, Byrd and Palestrina and Victoria. The other three, though, were local in their profession, respectively in London and Rome, and local in reputation, at least in their lifetimes. Lassus, by contrast, had a career that was truly international in both location and reputation; he worked, successfully, in Belgium, France, Germany, and Italy, and his fame was continent-wide.

Born in 1532, in the city of Mons in Hainault, the French-speaking part of what is now Belgium, he showed musical talent early, and at the age of twelve he entered service with Ferrante Gonzago, a nobleman from Mantua, who was recruiting Flemish musicians for his household. In Italy, his talent bloomed and, when he was still only nineteen, he was appointed choirmaster at one of the most important churches in Rome, the church of St John Lateran. Moving on from there, he returned to Flanders and worked for a while in Antwerp. But by 1556, despite his youth, he was already a leading figure in his profession and was invited to Munich, to serve as director of music and composer in the chapel and court of Duke Albrecht of Bavaria. He accepted the post, and remained in it for the rest of his life. Albrecht, however, and his son Wilhelm, who succeeded him, were not like the later employers of Bach and Mozart, who held both men to an exclusive contract and forbade them to accept outside engagements: Albrecht and Wilhelm were proud of Lassus; he was a feather in their caps as enlightened patrons, and they gladly permitted him to travel, from time to time, and to work elsewhere; his talent was his passport, so to speak, and over the years he toured in Austria, France, Germany, and Italy, and was especially acclaimed in Bologna, Ferrara, Frankfurt, Mantua, Paris, Rome, Trento, and Venice. Munich, though, remained home base. He married there. Two of his sons followed in his footsteps there as musicians. He greatly enjoyed his house and garden, and his life there as a distinguished citizen. Offered a similar position in Dresden, by the Duke of Saxony, he declined: he had put down roots in Munich and had no wish to uproot himself. He died there in 1592.

During his intermittent travels, Lassus wrote frequently to Wilhelm, who was his friend as well as his patron. The letters have survived, and they are full of charm and wit, written sometimes in a jumbled mixture of French, German, Italian, and Latin. This ease with languages is reflected, too, in his compositions. Like most Roman Catholic composers, then and since, he fluently set Latin liturgical texts to music. But in addition he composed a large number of secular pieces with vernacular texts: Italian madrigals, with words by Petrarch; French chansons and German Lieder, some of them humorous, some amorous, some nature-loving, and a few bawdy. The bulk of his work, though, was sacred: he composed lifelong for the Church, in all the current forms: Canticles, Faux-bourdons, Hymns, Lamentations, Lessons, Litanies, Masses, Motets, Offices, Passions, Psalms, and Responsories. This body of work, of course, was accessible to the faithful all over Catholic Europe, where his vernacular pieces had only local appeal; and as a Catholic composer, Lassus was widely published and performed. Within the limits of what was then thought of as the known world of civilization, he was a world-figure, earning fame, respect, and affection. Nor did he ever rest on his laurels. To the end of his days, he remained prolific: his oeuvre totals some twelve hundred compositions.

At a distance of more than four hundred years, it is interesting to compare sixteenth-century Europe with the Europe that is emerging in the twenty-first century. In both periods, the continent was and is an amalgam unified around a great idea, and largely devoid of fixed frontiers. The intervening centuries saw the invention of nation-states, and the wars produced by their rabid rivalries. But in the fifteen-hundreds, although princes and prelates held sway over patches of territory, there was a unitary aspect to European life, at least in the still Catholic lands, and people could feel at home anywhere: the educated shared a common language in Latin; and even the least educated had a common sense, in their religion, of what life was about. The basis of that unity disappeared, with the rise of the Reformation, and with the subsequent watering down of Faith by a preference for Reason and for Science. And where there had once been a world focused on God, there was now a world obsessed with Mammon, with the acquisition and protection of property — individual property, and the territorial property for which governments and armies competed. It took a whole series of wars, culminating in the 1914–18 and the 1939–45 wars, for Europe to learn its lesson. Nowadays, there is a European Union of twenty-five peoples pursuing a common purpose, with a lessening emphasis on local sovereignty, and with a heartening respect for human rights and the obligations of peace; and all of that is strengthened by the introduction of a common currency and by the abolition of frontiers.

In this brave new Europe, Lassus would have felt totally at ease. Indeed, in his career and in his outlook, he was an uncanny prototype of the new European man. So it is appropriate that the statutory heart of the European Union should be located in his native land, in Brussels, a little to the north and east of Mons, where he was born. And if the citizens of Mons, proud of their native son, reflect upon their city’s troubled past, they can look to Orlande de Lassus as model for a more hopeful future: creative, warm-hearted, idealistic. Mons had borne the brunt, for two centuries, of repeated attacks by Dutch, English, French, and Spanish forces. It was the scene of a ferocious battle in the first world war; and in the second, it suffered from aerial bombardment by the Germans. Now, old enmities can be put to rest; and the statue of Lassus, in the public square, can preside over a community happily part of the new European Dream.