Scan 27
Groves Dictionary Of Music And Musicians,vol.5 L-m, 1900
21 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1and was well known in London also as a professor and composer. Lahee was the victor in various prize competitions for glees and madrigals: in 1869 with 'Hark, how the birds' (Bristol); in 1878, with 'Hence, loathed melancholy', after Milton (Manchester); in 1879, with 'Away to the hunt' (Glasgow); in 1880 and 1884, with 'Love in my bosom' and 'Ah! woe is me' (London Madrigal Society). Equally good work can be seen in his other choral songs, such as 'The Unfaithful Shepherdess', 'Love me little, love me long' and the popular 'Bells', and in his anthems no less than in his various songs and instrumental pieces.
3Good taste is shown by this composer in the choice of his words, and he found Longfellow congenial with his musical style. The cantata 'The Building of the Ship' was written in 1869 for John Curwen, who desired a work of moderate difficulty for the use of Tonic-Solfais. It was performed on a large scale in the Hanover Square Rooms, attained considerable popularity in the provinces and made its way to Africa and America. The subject of another cantata, Tennyson's 'The Sleeping Beauty', afforded Lahee scope for a greater variety of treatment, and contains some graceful writing for women's voices. L. M. M.
5LA HÈLE (La Helle), George de (b. Antwerp, 1547; d. ? Madrid, prob. late 1586).
7Netherlands composer. He was a choir-boy at Antwerp Cathedral and a pupil of Barbé (1) there, and later became a chorister at Soignies Cathedral. In 1560 he was sent to Madrid to join the royal chapel of Philip II, and he remained in Spain as a chorister for ten years. In 1570 he was sent back to the Netherlands to be enrolled as a student at the University of Louvain; but he left there on 28 Mar. 1572 to become choirmaster at the church of Saint-Rombaud at Mechlin in succession to Séverin Cornet. In 1573, while still there, he is mentioned as holding some clerical dignity at Toledo, but he was never a fully ordained priest. In 1576 he took two prizes at the competitions of Évreux, for the second-best motet, 'Nonne Deo subjecta', and the best chanson, 'Mais voyez mon cher esmoy'. About 1577 he obtained an appointment at Tournai Cathedral, and from there he dedicated eight masses to Philip II in Oct., published as 'Octo Missae, quinque, sex et septem vocum …' with Christophe Plantin of Antwerp the following year.1 In 1578 he became a canon at Tournai and in 1581 prebendary; but he seems to have been at Arras by that time, and in 1582 he returned to Madrid to become chapel master in the royal chapel, where he improved the service list and enlarged it by having music copied for it. He held church benefices at Courtrai and elsewhere, but lost them on getting married about the early part of 1586. He became ill on 16 June of that year and was no longer alive on 19 Feb. 1587.
9The eight Masses of 1577-78 are remarkable as being all missae parodiae, the motives being borrowed from the most celebrated motets of the great Netherlands masters. Thus there are 2 masses a 5 based on two motets by Lassus a 5, 'Oculi omnium' and 'Gustate et videte'; 2 masses a 6 based on two motets by Lassus a 6, 'Quare tristis es' and 'Fremuit Spiritus Jesu', 2 masses a 7 based on Josquin's celebrated motets 'Praeter rerum seriem' and 'Benedicta coelorum regina'; 2 other masses a 5 based on Rore's 'In convertendo' and Crecquillon's 'Nigra sum sed formosa'. The whole work is thus a homage paid by La Hèle to his greater predecessors. A number of works of La Hèle are supposed to have perished in a fire at Madrid in 1734.
11According to van der Straeten other known works by La Hèle are a Credo for 5 voices, a Kyrie a 5 and another a 6, two 4-part Passions, a 'Lamentatio Jeremiae' a 5 and another a 6, and 2 motets a 8 and one a 4. The printed 'Octo Missae' are in the libraries of Brussels (Bibl. Roy.), Antwerp (Musée Plantin), Tournai (Bibl. Comm.), Paris (Cons.), Vienna (State Lib.), Milan (Cath. Lib.), Cambrai, Rome (Sistine Chapel and Lateran) and Stockholm. Manuscript copies of the mass 'Fremuit Spiritus Jesu' are at Turin and Danzig. The Évreux prize motet is in a volume entitled 'Musici sacrarum cantionum …' (Prague, 1593), to be found in London (B.M.), Berlin (State Lib.), Munich (State Lib.), Ratisbon (Proske Coll.), Cologne, Vienna (City Lib.) and Zwickau. The prize chanson is in Phalèse's volume 'Le Rossignol musical des chansons de divers auteurs' (Antwerp, 1598), which also contains another, 'Au countraire, vos beaux yeux', and is at Brussels (Bibl. Roy.), The Hague (Scheurleer Coll.) and Danzig (City Lib.).
131 A facsimile of this work, which is one of the most magnificent specimens of musical typography, and an account of it may be seen in Goovaerts's 'Histoire et bibliographie de la typographie musicale dans les Pays-Bas', pp. 46 & 253.
15J. R. M., adds.
16BIBL. – DORSLAER, G. VAN, 'George de La Hèle, maître de chapelle, compositeur' (Antwerp, 1924).
18LAHMER, Ruel (b. Maple, Ontario, 27 Mar. 1912).
20American composer. He was taken from Canada to the U.S.A. as a child and attended secondary and high schools there. Later he studied at Stetson University, DeLand, Florida, and at the Westminster Choir College at Princeton, N.J. Afterwards he attended Columbia University in New York and Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Conducting
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