Lasso: Complete Motets 6

The French and Italian interest in Lasso's motets in the mid-1560s was matched in Germany by the Nuremberg publisher Theodor Gerlach, the successor to Berg and Neuber, who had already issued many Lasso motets earlier in the decade (CM 2 and CM 3). Gerlach's two-volume Selectissimae cantiones of 1568 was in effect the first collected edition of Lasso's motets, reprinting almost all the pieces previously published in France and Italy and adding twenty motets for from four to eight voices published for the first time, including two contrafacta. Gerlach's sources for the first editions were faulty, and the expanded reissue of Selectissimae cantiones in 1579, edited by Leonhard Lechner, corrects its errors. The 1568 books include at least two pieces associated with the wedding in that year of Wilhelm, the heir apparent to the Bavarian dukedom, and Renata of Lorraine, Lasso's "Te Deum laudamus" and "Laudate Dominum, quoniam bonus." In addition to the settings of sacred texts other celebratory motets and some Latin drinking songs round out the volume.

In monte Oliveti oravit ad Patrem

O quam suavis est, Domine

O crux, splendidior cunctis astris

Veni Creator Spiritus

Locutus sum in lingua mea

Beatus vir, qui non abiit

Huc me sidereo

Nunc gaudere licet

Te Deum laudamus

Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna

Laudate pueri Dominum

Laudate Dominum, quoniam bonus

Edite Caesareo Boiorum

Cernere virtutes

Salve festa dies

Christe, Patris verbum

Alleluia, vox laeta personat

Ave color vini clari

Ecce Maria genuit nobis

Exsultate, justi, in Domino

Jessie Ann Owens, Notes, March 1999