YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

WHO OWNED LASSO’S CHANSONS?
the second half of the sixteenth century, the French book trade was increasingly
monopolistic and increasingly dependent on centralized royal authority.
By the 1570s, the firm of Le Roy et Ballard issued a series of books devoted
exclusively to Lasso’s settings of French lyrics, most notably the Mellange d’Orlande
de Lassus of 1570 (and its expanded reprintings starting in 1576). These prints stand
as monuments to Lasso’s high standing among French readers – the composer here
garners lavish praise from royal poets and officials as something of a culmination of
the French tradition. They also reflect Lasso’s and Le Roy’s editorial priorities, for
they assemble chansons composed over several decades according to a systematic
plan by musical mode. In the spring of 1571 Le Roy et Ballard also issued the Chansons
nouvelles, a smaller chanson album dedicated to members of the French royal family. 6
At about the time Le Roy brought out the Chansons nouvelles (and only a few weeks
after Lasso himself had visited Paris and the royal household), 7 Charles IX granted
the composer the special authorial privilege that gave him exclusive control over who
might print, distribute, and sell his compositions (new as well as old) in France.
Excerpts from this privilege, which was itself periodically renewed by Charles’s successors,
appeared in a few of the books of Lasso’s music brought out by Le Roy et
Ballard during the 1570s and 1580s(see Appendix, Documents 3 and 4, which offer
two different aspects of this original privilege). 8
6 The Chansons nouvelles was also reprinted almost simultaneously (but without the dedicatory materials)
by Phalèse and Bellère in Louvain and Antwerp as the Livre cinquiesme de chansons nouvelles...
d’Orlande de Lassus. Further on the relationship between the Livre cinquiesme and the Chansons nouvelles,
see H. VANHULST, Catalogue des éditions de musique publiées à Louvain par Pierre Phalèse
et ses fils, 1545–1578, Brussels, 1984, pp. 177–179. Phalèse’s Moduli quinis vocibus of 1571 is similarly
a republication, minus the dedication and liminary poem, of Le Roy et Ballard’s work with the
same name (also 1571). Phalèse’s Primus liber modulorum of 1571 and the Secundus liber modulorum
of 1572 also depend very closely on publications offered by the Paris firm. See VANHULST, Catalogue
des éditions de musique, pp. 174–192.
7 Circumstantial evidence suggests that Lasso visited the French capital and the royal court in April and
May of 1571. In a letter King Charles IX wrote to Lasso’s principal patron, Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria
on 10 May 1571, he noted Lasso’s ‘great and extraordinary skill’ (grand et rare science). Lasso had
apparently served as something of a courier during the trip from Munich to Paris, for he is mentioned
in two letters written by Charles’s young spouse, Elizabeth – she was also Albrecht’s niece – as having
delivered correspondence to her in Paris during April and May. The contents and dating of all of these
documents as they relate to the timing of Lasso’s brief visit to Paris in 1571 are discussed in H. LEUCHT-
MANN, Orlando di Lasso. Sein Leben: Versuch einer Bestandsaufnahme der biographischen Einzelheiten,
2 vols., Wiesbaden, 1976, 1, pp. 155–157; and W. BOETTICHER, Aus Orlando di Lassos Wirkungskreis:
Neue archivalische Studien zur Münchener Musikgeschichte, Kassel, 1963, p. 29.
8 The earliest publication known to include the special authorial privilege is Le Roy et Ballard’s Tertius
liber modulorum quinis vocibus constantium, Orlando Lassusio auctore (1573). Later versions of this
authorial privilege appeared in only a very few other prints brought out by Le Roy et Ballard. It appears,
for instance, in each of a series of imitation masses issued in 1577, prints collected together under the
general title Missae variis concentibus ornatae, ab Orlando de Lassus. Cum cantico beatae Mariae.
Octo Modis Musicis variato. The original privilege of 1571, we read in this document, had apparently
been confirmed in 1575 by Henry III. This same 1575 confirmation of the 1571 privilege also appears
in Octo cantica divae mariae virginis, quorum initium est Magnificat, secundum octo modos, seu tonos
in templis decantari solitos singula quinis vocibus constantia: Auctore Orlando Lassusio (1578). The
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