LASSO, ORLANDO DI (ORLANDUS LAS st i 520-94). A celebrated composer. born at Mons, in Hainault. After having been a choir boy in the Church of Saint Nicholas at Mons, he was taken in 1532. as a prot(•gif of the Viceroy of Sicily. to Sicily and Milan. In 153S he settled in Naples. and after spending three years there, went to Home. where lie was maestro di cappella at Saint John Lateran until 1348. In 1554 we find him at Antwerp; in 1357 he went to Munich on the invitation of Duke Albert V. of Bavaria. and after being identified with the Court chapel, became in 1562 the maestro di cappella. This post he retained till his death. Lasso was the forerunner of Palest•ina. At first he wrote madrigals and songs in the style of Areadelt and Willaert, hut he soon devoted his attention to sacred eompositions. and it is upon these that his reputation rests. lie was the last of the
great masters of single counterpoint, and he worked out his ideas clearly, brilliantly. and with a greater melodic charm than any of his p•edeees-ors. His best work. the Penitential Psalms of Dorid (r•milflished in modern nota tion by Debn. MS), compares favorably with the works, of his greater contemporary. and his in fluence on church music of his day was scarcely less than Palestrina's. Consult : Breitkopf mid Iliirtel's edition of his works (Leipzig. IF394 et seq.) ; Sandberger• Beitriige Grschiehle der baierisehen Itofkapelle tinter 0. di Lasso (3 Leipzig. 1S94) : Declifve. Roland de Lassos. $(1 tie et ses centres (Mons, 1894) ; Delmotte, Sot ice biographique sin- Roland de Lathe, connu sous to none d'Orlando de Lassus (Valenciennes, 1836).