Orlando di Lasso, Chanson on Dessus le marché d’Arras 

Once before I featured a high school choir that turned in a truly top-notch performance. As we enter a new school year, I offer this performance by the Houston High School for the Visual and Performing Arts as inspiration. Admittedly, this is a school with a select student body and a group primed for competition. Still, it shows that, with the right training, high school students can reach a high level of performance in music and numerous other fields.

Orlando di Lasso (1532? – 1594) has been missing from this series, but he was a significant Flemish composer of the Renaissance. He was among a long line of musicians from the Low Countries working in Italy, hence the Italian form of his name. He went to Italy at the age of 12, working as a singer and composer. At the early age of 21 he became maestro di cappella of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, the seat of the bishop of Rome (i.e. the Pope). In the late 1550s, he settled in Munich and lived there for the remainder of his life.

A prolific composer, his works include masses, motets, Italian madrigals, French chansons, and German Lieder.

The singers also perform Cantate domino (at 4:27) by Monteverdi, a composer who should be familiar to readers on this site, and Vespertilians (Bats) (at 7:10) by Jocelyn Hagen. We featured Hagen’s Hands a few weeks back, and I mentioned then that her work would reappear. Vespertilians is quite different and may surprise you. The text is from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and you may find this description from Wise Music helpful:

This beautiful text from Ovid’s Metamorphoses speaks of the creatures named for the time they first appear: vespertilians (bats). Not scary or to be feared, rather, here they “slip into shadows” with “translucent wings that sustain their flight” with “diminished bodies” and “the tiniest of voices.” The composer has crafted a soundscape that paints this most beautiful of images of the much maligned nocturnal flyer.