Lassu, Roland de

(1532-1594) (Rolando de Lasso)

   composer

   Born in Mons, Flanders, Roland de Lassu, known also by the Italian form of his name, Rolando de Lasso, was a precocious genius and left his homeland very early for Italy (1545). He spent time in Palermo, Milan, Naples, and Rome, where he for a time served as choirmaster at the Church of Saint John in Lateran (1553). It was in Munich, in the service of the duke of Bavaria, for whom he became choirmaster, that he remained until his death, but not without making several journeys in Europe, particularly in italy, where he met the composer Palestrina and had the future italian composer Giovanni Gabrieli as a student. His work is vast (more than 2,000 compositions) and includes villanelles, moresques, and italian madrigals; polyphonic German lieder and French songs; and, in the area or religious music, 53 masses, 180 magnificats, passions, lamentations, and more than 1,000 motets. Lassu's music, with its harmonic innovations, developed concurrently with the Catholic Counterrefor-mation in Germany that occurred after the shock of the Protestant Reformation.