In 1581 Lasso gained extraordinary rights to the publication of his own music when Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II granted him a rare personal printing privilege. Lasso's first publication to contain the text of the privilege, Sacrae cantiones quinque vocum, appeared in February 1582 from the Munich presses of Adam Berg.

Berg would challenge Lasso's new rights indirectly, taking Nuremberg printer Katharina Gerlach to local and imperial courts over her 1582 Fasciculi aliquot sacrarum cantionum, ...