The Complete Motets 15

Adam Berg issued Lasso's Cantica sacra sex et octo vocibus almost simultaneously with the four-voice motets found in CM 14. The concluding eight-voice motet, "Omnia tempus habent," draws its dialogue structure from that of the text itself and includes abundant word-painting.

The fifteen six-voice motets are each outstanding in this and other ways. Most set scriptural or liturgical texts, while "Huc ades, o Erneste" is in honor of the younger brother of Duke Wilhelm V of Bavaria. For the responsory "Angelus Domini descendit de caelo" Lasso later added three-voice settings of the verse and doxology. These are preserved in a manuscript and appear in this edition along with the original two-part motet.

Two settings of psalm verses, "Memor esto verbi tui" and "Domine, da nobis auxilium," reveal something of the range of Lasso's approaches to text setting. The former is concise and illustrates its text vividly, while the latter unfolds in a more leisurely manner.