Lila Ehja

Twelve Sibyls, ancient psychics, became during the Middle-Ages the counterpoints of the Prophets, announcing since the beginning of time (2nd-7th centuries) the arrival of a child who will become the Savior of the World. The emergence of those characters and of these strange and mysterious texts resulted of the fascination the Renaissance resolutely showed towards Antiquity. The Sibyls were even portrayed by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And it is perhaps while he was in Rome as Chapel Master of St John in the Lateran that Roland de Lassus met them and drew from their figures -with names already so dreamlike and evocative of marvelous lands such as Sibylla Delphica, Persica, Erythrea, Cumana, Hellespontiaca, Libyca … – the inspiration for this collection. The Prophetiae were composed somewhere between Rome, Antwerp and Munich, within a short period of disappearance (1554-1555) of Lassus, during which no one knows with certainty what became of the composer.