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Introduction
Orlande de Lassus's Prophetiae Sibyllarum is a collection about which very little is concretely known. The only version of the work to survive from Lassus's lifetime is a set of four small-format illuminated manuscript partbooks from Duke Albrecht V's court in Munich. The date forthe completion of the partbooks is set between 1558 and 1560, since each of the partbooks contains a portrait of the composer captioned "Orlando di Lasso at 28 years of age."1 As to the date of composition, there is no solid attribution.
Scholarship around Prophetiae Sibyllarum has tended to emphasize the composition's adventurous harmonic idiom. The work, which consists of twelve motets, each titled after a specific sibylline prophetess and prefaced by a Prologue, does, indeed, move far beyond Lassus's normal level of chromaticism.2 This chromaticism reaches the density of Gesualdo's at times, but serves a different purpose:to highlight the ancient, secret, unusual, and mysterious effect of the poetic texts.3 However; the chromaticism is not anachronistic in any way: it is the by product of a fashion for such music at the time, motivated largely by NicolaVicentino and the use of the ancient Greek chromatic tetrachord.
The prophetic poetic texts are part of a history of literary works that draw a line between prophecies of antiquity, and the birth, life, and death of Jesus.4 In this formulation, the prophecies supposedly foretell details of Jesus' existence. Considering the Renaissance's fascination with antiquity, this reinforcement of Christian thought originating in the ancient world would have been very important.
Lassus's Prophetiae Sibyllarum is a product of its time, rather than a prophetically mystic beacon of the future of music, as it is sometimes described. If there are to be more performances of this piece, the scholarship around the work needs to be synthesized into a practical performance guide in English. It is the goal of this paper to be that guide. The guide will consist of: a brief familiarization with the outlines of the composer's life; a historical survey of the prophetic tradition in which the collection of motets lies; an analysis of the cycle as a whole; and a proposal of performance methods. As the 450th anniversary of the creation of the Prophetiae Sibyllarum partbooks approaches,...