Orlando di Lasso (1530/2– 1594) was the most famous, popular, and acclaimed composer of his day. Born in Mons in what is now Belgium, as a subject of the Empire, he spent his formative years in Italy, serving as choirmaster at St. John Lateran in Rome when he was barely twenty years old. He soon returned north, however, and settled in Antwerp for a few years until he was hired in 1556 by Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria in Munich, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. His birth in a French-speaking area and his Italian sojourn together with his long residence in Germany (he probably also visited England briefly in the mid–1550s) made him the most cosmopolitan musician of his day. Early on he was recognized as a leading composer throughout Europe, and publications of his music far exceeded those of any contemporary, or for that matter any other musician for at least a century afterwards. He was especially noted for his ability to convey in music the content of the text he was setting; an early commentator praised his ability to “place the object almost alive before the eyes.” Only during the last ten years or so of his life did his popularity wane, though he composed prolifically almost without interruption through his last years, and his music remained a model and a pervasive influence in Germany well into the seventeenth century.