DICTIONARY OF MUSIC - El Atril

LASSUS LASSUS 643
and Excellencies and the Duchess Anna attended
by Jladame Dorothea returned home greatly
pleased with the sweet and delightful mass they
had heard,' and to follow all the occurrences of
fourteen consecutive daj's of Orlando's life, still
we must refer the curious reader to the pages of
Jlassimo Trojano, and can only stop to mention
that, towards the end of the time, he was the
life and soul of an impromptu play suggested by
the Duke, in which he not only acted one of the
principal parts, but introduced various pieces
of music on the stage with the aid of a band of
picked singers.
In the same year we have tw^o most important
publications: (1) ' Selectissimae Cantiones a 6
et pluribus ' and
(2) the same a 5 et 4. The
firstbook opens with amassivework infourmovements,
'Jesu nostra redemptio, ' in the grand
gloomy style of the old masters, followed by
shorter and simpler pieces, such as the prayer
in the garden of Gethsemane, with a melodious
jirelude on the words ' In monte Oliveti oravit
ad patrem,' followed by a simple strain of devotional
music carrying the hearer quietly and
expressively, but not dramatically, through the
Saviour's agony and resignation. The volume
is not confined to religious music. There are
some pieces with secular words, such as an ode
to Albert 'Quo properas facunde nepos Atlantis,'
but there are also some capital drinking-songs,
and the ' Jam lucis orto sidere, ' with its second
part ' Qui ponit aquam in Falerno,' is a fine
specimen of a part-song for two choirs singing
alternately, a kind of nmsic mucli in vogue at
the time, the introduction of which is said to
be due to Adrian Willaert,
The other volume is confined to music a 5 and
a 4, and is proportionately simple. Commer has
printed eight or nine of the sacred numbers in
score and they are not difficult either to understand
or to appreciate. Among the secular pieces
there is a comic setting of the psalm ' Super
flumina Babylonis,' each letter and syllable
being sung separately as in a spelling lesson :
L