Orlande de Lassus

Roland de Lassus, a Flemish composer also known as Orlando di Lasso, had been taken to Italy at an early age.

He had already been working there for approximately ten years when, at the age of twenty-one, he was appointed choirmaster at the basilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome, but relinquishes the post a year and a half later to Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.

Lassus enters the service of Duke Albert V of Bavaria in 1556.

Nicolas Gombert, who dies around 1560, is, together with Josquin des Prez, Jean Mouton, Palestrina, and Roland de Lassus, a noted composer of the so-called "parody masses" based on polyphonic motets, chansons, or madrigals rather than on single melodies.

Castrati had first appeared in Italy in the mid-sixteenth century, though at first the terms describing them were not always clear.

The unbroken voices of these male soprano or contralto singers have been preserved by castration performed—illegally and inhumanely—before puberty so that the larynx remains undeveloped.

The voice of the castrato consequently retains its high range, but because his lungs and chest mature, he is able to produce sounds of extraordinary power.

The phrase soprano maschio (male soprano), which could also mean falsettist, occurs in the Due Dialoghi della Musica of Luigi Dentice, an Oratorian priest, published in Rome in 1553.

On November 9, 1555 Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este (famed as the builder of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli), had written to Guglielmo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua (1538–1587), that he has heard that His Grace was interested in his cantoretti and offered to send him two, so that he could choose one for his own service.

This is a rare term but probably does equate to castrato.

The Cardinal's brother, Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, is another early enthusiast, inquiring about castrati in 1556.

There were certainly castrati in the Sistine Chapel choir in 1558, although not described as such: on April 27 of that year, Hernando Bustamante, a Spaniard from Palencia, had been admitted (the first castrati so termed who join the Sistine choir are Pietro Paolo Folignato and Girolamo Rossini, who will be admitted in 1599).

Surprisingly, considering the later French distaste for castrati, they certainly exist in France at this time also, being known of in Paris, Orléans, Picardy and Normandy, though they are not abundant: the King of France himself has difficulty in obtaining them.

By 1574 there are castrati in the Ducal court chapel at Munich, where the Kapellmeister (music director) is the famous Orlando di Lasso.

Flemish composer Roland de Lassus, chapelmaster at the Munich court of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria, completes his expressive setting of the Seven Penitential Psalms in 1570.

Catherine de Médici in 1573 stages Ballet des Polonais to the music of Roland de Lassus, the poetry of Pierre de Ronsard, and the dances of Balthazar de Beaujoyeux.

French poet and dramatist Robert Garnier, an eloquent and imaginative poet, bases his play Hippolyte, published in 1573, on a classical theme.

Giovanni Gabrieli, a nephew and pupil of Venetian composer Andrea Gabrieli, becomes organist and assistant to Roland de Lassus in Munich from 1575, when he is around twenty-one.