LASSO, ORLANDO DI, or ORLANDUS Lessus, a very distinguished name in musical history, was born in 1520, at Mona in Flanders, but, eays Thuanue, was, on account of his fine voice, forced away while a boy by Ferdinand Gonzago, and detained by him in Sicily and in Italy. Afterwards, being grown up, ho taught during two years at Rome. He then travelled in France and England with Julius Caesar Brancatius, and subsequently lived some years at Antwerp. On the invitation of Albert, duke of Bavaria, he next proceeded to Munich, where he married. But Charles IX. of France, whose conscience-pangs, on account of his share in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, admitted, like those of Saul, of no alleviation, save that afforded by music, offered Orlando the high and lucrative situation of maltre-de-chapelle ' at his court, which the composer accepted, and, with his family, was on his way to Paris, when the death of the king arrested his progress, and he returned to Munich, where ho died in 1594.
The compositions of Lasso are very numerous, and all show great knowledge of his art, much invention, and a manly determivation not to be shackled by the rules and examples of the bigoted musicians of his time. "He was the first great improver of figurate music," Sir
John Hawkins remarks; and Dr. Burney tells us that in his songs Alla Napolitaua' " the chromatic accidental semitones are expressed by a sharp, and no longer left to the mercy and sagacity of the singer, as was before the constant custom." After his death, Rudolph, his eldest son, published a collection of his works, in seven volumes, under the title of Magnum Opus musicum Orlaudi de Lasso, complectens mums cantionea quas Motetas vulgo vocant, a 2 ad 12 voc.,' &c.; and at Munich is preserved among the musical archives a manuscript of his compositions, ornamented with superb vignettes. In the British Museum is a Latin motet by Orlando ; and specimens of his genius are given by Hawkins and Burney, in their histories of music.