Lauda (song)

The lauda (Italian pl. laude) or lauda spirituale was the most important form of vernacular sacred song in Italy in the late medieval era and Renaissance. Laude remained popular into the nineteenth century. The lauda was often associated with Christmas, and so is in part equivalent to the English carol, French noel, Spanish villancico, and like these genres occupies a middle ground between folk and learned lyrics.

Originally, the lauda was a monophonic (single-voice) form, but a polyphonic type developed in the early fifteenth century. The early lauda was probably influenced by the music of the troubadours, since it shows similarities in rhythm, melodic style, and especially notation. Many troubadours had fled their original homelands, such as Provence, during the Albigensian Crusade in the early 13th century, and settled in northern Italy where their music was influential in the development of the Italian secular style.

A monophonic form of the lauda spread widely throughout Europe during the 13th and 14th centuries as the music of the flagellants; this form was known as the Geisslerlied, and picked up the vernacular language in each country it affected, including Germany, Poland, England and Scandinavia.

After 1480 the singing of laude was extremely popular in Florence, since the monk Savonarola (and others) had prohibited the dissemination of any other style of sacred vernacular music. Many of Josquin's motets and masses are based on melodies he heard in laude during his sojourns in Italy around this time.

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