Roland de Lassus, a Flemish composer also known as Orlando di Lasso, had been taken to Italy at an early age.

He had already been working there for approximately ten years when, at the age of twenty-one, he was appointed choirmaster at the basilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome, but relinquishes the post a year and a half later to Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.

Lassus enters the service of Duke Albert V of Bavaria in 1556.