CHAPTER IV.

ORLAND DI LASSUS AND HIS REGINA

A contemporary of the Rizzio, so humble as a musician and so soaring in his intrigues, was the great Roland de Lattre, better known as Orland di Lassus or Orlandus Lassus, the “Belgian Orpheus,” “le Prince des Musiciens.”  There is as much dispute over the date of his birth as over the early conditions of his life.  But he was born in either 1520 or 1530 at Mons in Hainault, and, according to the old Annales du Hainault, he changed his name from Roland de Lattre to Orland di Lassus because his father had been convicted of making spurious coin and, as a “false moneyer,” had to wear a string of his evil utterances round his neck.

Rarely in history has a composer held a more lofty position than that of this son of a criminal, and even to-day he rivals Palestrina in the esteem of historians as one of the pillars of his art.

He was in the service of the Duke of Bavaria, who gave him as much honour as the later King of Bavaria gave Wagner; he stood so high at court that a year later he won the hand of a maid of honour, Regina Weckinger.  She bore him two daughters and four sons.  One of the daughters was named after her, Regina, and when she grew up married a court painter.  Two of the sons became prominent composers.  The mother was probably beautiful, since an old biographer, Van Ouickelberg, described her children as elegantissimi.

There is every reason to believe that the wedded life of these two was thoroughly happy, save that Lassus was an indefatigable fiend of work.  As his biographer Delmotte says, “His life indeed had been the most toilsome that one could think of, and his fecund imagination, always alert, had enfante a multitude of compositions so great that their very number astounds us (they exceeded two thousand), and forbids us almost to believe them the work of one man.  This incessant tension of soul made imperious demands for the distraction of repose; far from this, he redoubled his work till nature, worn out, refused to Lassus the aid she had lavished.  His mental powers abandoned him abruptly.

“Regina, one day when she returned, found him in a very precarious state; he had lost his mind and knew her no more.  In her terror, she sent word at once to the Princess Maximilienne, sister of the Duke William, who sent at once to the invalid her own physician, the doctor Mermann.  Thanks to his care, the health of Orland improved, but his reason did not return.  From that moment he became sad, dreamy, absorbed in melancholy.  ‘He is no longer,’ said Regina, ’what he was before, gay and content; but is become sombre, and speaks always of death.’”