This Week in Classical Music: December 29, 2025. Happy New Year!We won’t bother our readers and listeners with anything serious; this is the time to be joyous and happy.Therefore, we’ll present a cheerful canzon, Matona, mia cara, mi follere, by the great Renaissance composer Orlando di Lasso.In it, a German soldier (a Landsknecht) serenades, in broken Italian, a girl while standing under her window.He tries to seduce her, but his Italian doesn’t allow for any subtleties. The song starts like this: “My lovely Lady, I want a song to sing/Under your window: this lancer is a jolly fellow!” but that’s as far as we’ll go, as it gets bawdier from there (you can read it both in Italian and in English here).This canzon, part of a set called Villanelle, moresche e altre canzoni, was published in 1581, when Lasso was around 50, when, as he himself said, “he should have known better.”It is performed (here) by the Hilliard Ensemble.
New Year, 2025
This Week in Classical Music: December 29, 2025. Happy New Year! We won’t bother our readers and listeners with anything serious; this is the time to be joyous and happy. Therefore, we’ll
present a cheerful canzon, Matona, mia cara, mi follere, by the great Renaissance composer Orlando di Lasso. In it, a German soldier (a Landsknecht) serenades, in broken Italian, a girl while standing under her window. He tries to seduce her, but his Italian doesn’t allow for any subtleties. The song starts like this: “My lovely Lady, I want a song to sing/Under your window: this lancer is a jolly fellow!” but that’s as far as we’ll go, as it gets bawdier from there (you can read it both in Italian and in English here). This canzon, part of a set called Villanelle, moresche e altre canzoni, was published in 1581, when Lasso was around 50, when, as he himself said, “he should have known better.” It is performed (here) by the Hilliard Ensemble.