 | Lassus, Orlande de - "Libera me, Domine" for Oboe & Pipe Organ Oboe and organ |
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| Composer : | Lassus, Orlande de (1532 - 1594) | ||
| Instrumentation : | Oboe and organ | ||
| Style : | Renaissance | ||
| Arranger : Publisher : | MAGATAGAN, MICHAEL (1960 - ) | ||
| Copyright : | Public Domain | ||
| Added by magataganm, 12 Dec 2022 Renaissance composer Orlande de Lassus was born in Mons and got his start as a choirboy. An often disputed story has the child Lassus kidnapped three times on account of his beautiful singing voice; the only certainty is that by 1544 he had joined the service of Ferrante Gonzaga, Viceroy of Sicily. A stopover in Mantua allowed Lassus to absorb prevailing Italian influences. Lassus spent less than a year in Sicily and transferred to Milan for the remainder of the 1540s. He often used an Italian form of his name, Orlando di Lasso. In 1551, Lassus was made choirmaster at St. John of Lateran in Rome, but remained only until 1553, being succeeded by Palestrina. Lassus returned to Mons in 1554, receiving word that his parents were ill, but upon his arrival found them already dead and buried. In 1555, Lassus' first book of madrigals and a collection of various secular works appeared simultaneously in Antwerp and Venice, thus beginning his status as a one-man industry of musical publications. Lassus' work accounts for three-fifths of all music printed in Europe between 1555 and 1600. In 1557, the German Duke Albrecht V engaged Lassus' services as a singer at the court in Munich. Lassus' status was upgraded to Kapellmeister in 1561. His position enabled considerable travel, and Lassus made frequent trips to Venice, where he met and made friends with the Gabrielis. Judging from the range of settings, both sacred and secular, coming from Lassus in these years, it is apparent he was asked to supply music for a wide variety of events at the court of Duke Albrecht. The flood of published editions, both authorized and not, of Lassus' music during this time established him as the most popular composer in Europe, and in 1574 he was made a Knight of the Golden Spur by Pope Gregory XIII. In 1579, Duke Albrecht V died, and the longstanding extravagance of his court left his successor, Duke Wilhelm, with little choice but to make deep cuts in the entertainment budget. This had a direct and negative effect on Lassus' fortunes, but nonetheless he declined an offer in 1580 to relocate to the Court at Dresden. By the late 1580s, the number of new pieces Lassus undertook began to slow down. In the months before his death, Lassus succeeded in bringing to life his last great masterwork, the Lagrime di San Pietro, in itself a summation of the highest forms of Renaissance musical art. He died at about the age of 62, and in 1604 his sons published an edition of his collected works entitled Magnus opus musicum. This was used as the basis for the first modern edition of Lassus' music, published in Leipzig between 1894 and 1926. In the late 1570s and 1580s Lassus made several visits to Italy, where he encountered the most modern styles and trends. In Ferrara, the center of avant-garde activity, he doubtless heard the madrigals being composed for the d'Este court; however his own style remained conservative and became simpler and more refined as he aged. In the 1590s his health began to decline, and he went to a doctor named Thomas Mermann for treatment of what was called "melancholia hypocondriaca", but he was still able to compose as well as travel occasionally. His final work was often considered one of his best pieces: an exquisite set of twenty-one madrigali spirituali known as the Lagrime di San Pietro ("Tears of St. Peter"), which he dedicated to Pope Clement VIII, and which was published posthumously in 1595. Lassus died in Munich on 14 June 1594, the same day that his employer decided to dismiss him for economic reasons; he never saw the letter. "Libera me" ("Deliver me") is a responsory sung in the Office of the Dead in the Catholic Church, and at the absolution of the dead, a service of prayers for the dead said beside the coffin immediately after the Requiem Mass and before burial. The text asks God to have mercy upon the deceased person at the Last Judgment. In addition to the Gregorian chant in the Roman Gradual, many composers have written settings for the text, including Tomás Luis de Victoria, Anton Bruckner (two settings), Giuseppe Verdi, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Duruflé, Igor Stravinsky, Benjamin Britten, Sigismund von Neukomm, Orlande de Lassus, Krzysztof Penderecki, Antonio Salieri, Lorenzo Perosi, Arnold Rosner and Patrick Gowers (first stanza only). The Christian technical thrash band Believer also used the entire text in the operatically sung section of "Dies Iræ (Day of Wrath)" in their 1990 album Sanity Obscure. Source: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlande_de_Lassus) Although originally composed for Chorus (SAATTB), I created this Interpretation of "Libera me" (Deliver me) for Oboe & Pipe Organ (2 Manuals w/Pedals). | |||
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