Orlande de Lassus, born in the Franco-Flemish city of Mons in the early 1530s, achieved international fame as maestro di cappella at the Bavarian court, which he served from 1556 until his death thirty-eight years later. Despite his long tenure in Munich, Lassus, as the American musicologist James Haar neatly puts it, “never entirely let off being a Frenchman”. He wrote around 150 chansons, mostly published in the Netherlands and Paris and widely reprinted elsewhere. Dessus le marché d’Arras, for six voices, was published in Paris in 1584 and appears to be based on the tune of a popular song. Its rapid-fire patter, shifts from quadruple to triple metre and use of alternating combinations of voices collectively illustrate the bustle of Arras marketplace, where a ‘Spaniard’ tells a young girl that she could ‘make good money there’.

from notes by Andrew Stewart © 2008