The Complete Motets 12

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, a volume printed with Lasso's permission. The twenty five-voice motets in this volume range from complex free imitative works, to cantus-firmus motets, to a work best described as a musical joke, "Ut queant laxis." The feast of Corpus Christi receives emphasis with three motets, "O salutaris hostia," "O sacrum convivium," and "Respexit Elias."