Composers 16th century
Orlando di Lasso (French: Roland de Lassus, Latin: Orlandus Lassus) was a Franco-Flemish composer and Kapellmeister of the late Renaissance.
In his youth Orlando had a good voice and sang in a choir, traveled in Italy and eventually began composing music himself. In 1563, Lasso was appointed Kapellmeister at the court of Duke Albrecht V and made his chapel professional, and his work earned Munich a reputation as one of the musical centers of Europe. Lasso also taught music and lived mainly in Bavaria.
Lasso was highly gifted, and is considered one of the most versatile and prolific composers in the history of music. He wrote some 1,350 (mostly vocal) compositions in all genres and forms contemporary to his time, of which some 1,200 were published during his lifetime. Lasso was a master of sacred music, but was equally adept at secular composition, spanning Italian, French, and German genres.
Teodoro Riccio was an Italian composer and Kapellmeister of the second half of the 16th century, who worked in Germany for most of his life.
Educated in church music, Riccio first worked as a Kapellmeister in the church of his hometown in Lombardy, where he composed his first madrigals. In 1575 he arrived at the court of Margrave Georg Friedrich of Ansbach-Brandenburg, to whom he dedicated a famous canon, and moved with the rest of the court musicians to Königsberg when the margrave became governor of the Duchy of Prussia in 1578. In 1585 Riccio was appointed Kapellmeister for life at the margrave's court.
Riccio's works are known mainly from printed sources, although several works survive in manuscripts in the Kremsmünster Abbey, the Koninklijke Bibliothek (Brussels), and the Nuremberg Archives.