7.30 pm, Saturday 8 August, 2009
When, in February 1568, Duke Wilhelm of Bavaria married Princess Renée of Lorraine, the music was directed by Orlandus Lassus.
As Court Kapellmeister, Lassus was in charge of the largest musical household in Europe, comprising over ninety singers and
instrumentalists. The music for the wedding used these resources to the full - motets, madrigals, chansons and dances, everything from
intimate 4-part songs to the great 40-voice motet Ecce beatam lucem by Alessandro Striggio, which Lassus directed.
Accounts and pictures show singers with lutes, viols, spinet, organ, and all manner of wind instruments from cornett to racket.
Our concert will present some of the works described in contemporary accounts, and other repertoire both by Lassus and by composers whom he revered,
including Cipriano de Rore and Andrea Gabrieli and - forces permitting - Striggio's forty-part motet, the model for Tallis's Spem in alium.