The rhetoric of Orlando di Lasso's contributions to the Divine Offices of Matins and Lauds : a study of the relationship between liturgy, text and music

The music of Orlando di Lasso has long been regarded as a touchstone ofsixteenth-century musical rhetoric. Using this assumption as a starting point, the present thesis is a detailed investigation of the rhetoric of the composer's works written for the Divine Offices of Matins and Lauds, a previously neglected but highly significant part of his oeuvre. The iute:rp:retation offered shows the rhetorical structure of the music to be the result of a complex interrelationship of liturgical, textual and musical factors.The categories and procedures of classical rhetorical theory and practiceinform the analysis of both the texts and the music included in this study. Such an approach is not only historically sympathetic but is proven to be an essential component of the cultural and intellectual milieu in which Lasso and his contemporaries lived.The major results obtained and conclusions reached include a broadening ofthe repertoire composed for these offices by Lasso, with the transcription of three previously unpublished works almost certainly by him, but omitted from his complete works and previous studies of his music. In addition, there is aquickened awareness of contemporary perceptions of the liturgy of the Church and its rhetorical basis, a more sympathetic appreciation of the oratorical and literary qualities of the texts set by the composer, as well as a more sensitive assessment of his precise artistic achievement in these works and of the rhetorical basis of his compositional approach in general