Lassus

Orlande de Lassus (Orlando de Lasso, Orlandus Lassus and other variations) (c1530/32-1594), Franco-Flemish composer, was one of the greatest composers of his age, the most respected of the Flemish school of composing and certainly a composer whose volume and variety of output has been rarely matched in any age.

He was a catholic who spent time in Italy and wrote music for all the rites of his church, masses, motets, canticles, antiphons, psalms, Magnificats and many ceremonial works, and music for occasions. However he spent the last 30 years of his life at the Protestant court of the Duke of Bavaria in Munich and there wrote music appropriate for its setting.

He wrote prodigiously and in every genre of his age, both sacred and secular. He is an important figure in the history of the madrigal, the chanson, all forms of choral music, and could write in the various national styles of the day. He is acknowledged as being a central cultural figure of the Renaissance.