The Sacred and the Secular in Post-Tridentine Church Music: De Rore, Lasso, and the Magnificat Da le belle contrade

Abstract

Although scholars have often claimed that the Council of Trent called for the elimination of secular elements in church music, the official decree issued by that body in 1562 actually called only for the exclusion of music incorporating anything 'lascivum aut impurum'. The precise meanings of these terms and others, such as 'profanum', 'vanum', and 'turpis', which were used to describe prohibited music in the wake of Trent, nonetheless remain unclear, for church authorities never used them in reference to specific compositions. With respect to the many masses and Magnificats that composers based on secular compositions in the decades following the Council, this study proposes two axioms: first, such pieces fulfilled the expectations of the institutions that performed them; second, composers, in their choice of particular model compositions and in their treatment of those models, articulated the period's understanding of appropriate church music, using secular elements amenable to reinterpretation within the sacred realm and rejecting elements that were wanton, impure, and otherwise inimical to the sacred. In the Magnificat Da le belle contrade, for example, Lasso borrows from De Rore's madrigal in a severely circumscribed fashion, using only the music associated with the opening description of the morning star-a symbol of the Virgin-and a handful of passages whose texts reflect the meaning of specific words in the Magnificat text. Entirely absent are the eccentric and theatrical gestures of the madrigal's central lament, gestures at odds with liturgical music of the post-Tridentine Church as Lasso conceived it.