New Introduction

One of the most important European com-posers of the late Renaissance, Iacobus Handl, named Gallus (meaning “the Rooster”), was born in the Duchy of Carniola in 1550. Since the end of the sixteenth century his name has most often been given as Iacobus Gallus, as in the present mams published edition. It is today normally associated with its only known historical reading, that adopted by the composer himself: Iacobus Handl (sometimes also spelt Hándl or Händl), Gallus being almost systemati­cally added as a nickname or sobriquet in the sources (“Gallus vocatus”, “Gallus dictus”) but never treated as a surname to be passed on.1 This interpretation is confirmed by the fact that the composer’s brother, Georgius Handl (?–1616), an important printer active in the Czech Lands, never presented himself under the name Gallus. 
 Although the composer repeatedly stated his origin to be “Carniolus” (i.e. from Carniola), as did his brother Georgius, his precise place of birth in Carniola is unknown. Towns such as Ribnica and Idrija as well as important villages such as Šentviška Gora have been cited as possibilities on the strength of the presence there of important families bearing the surname Petelin,2 but the lack of archival documentation has always proved an obstacle to confirmation. These suggestions have now lost some of their force, although they remain up to the present the only ones ever suggested with any consistency, being justified in every case by reference to oral traditions diligently reported by scholars or other advocates between 1888 and 1941.3 
 The place where the composer acquired his in­itial education and musical training is not known, either, since no preserved document dates from before 1579, the date of Gallus’s first printed com­position, a motet celebrating the election of the new Bishop of Olomouc, Stanislav Pavlovský, who was to become his patron for the next five years. 
 It was mooted by Mantuani that Gallus’s earliest musical and intellectual instruction could have taken place at the abbey of Stièna (Sittich) in Lower Carniola. Though not documented by archival testimony,4 this hypothesis has been ac­cepted by many biographers, since it appears at least partly corroborated by Gallus’s later acquaint­ance with other monastic foundations within the Habsburg domain. This concerns in particular the Benedictine abbey of Melk, thought to be his first known place of residence at the end of the 1560s, as can be inferred from a dedication (1580)5 to Johannes Rueff, abbot of the Cistercian mon­astery of Zwettl, but previously a friar in Melk at the time – so Gallus states in this foreword – when the two men became acquainted. 
 
 Although Mantuani also documented the pres­ence of the composer as a choirboy in the imperial chapel in 1574,6 the evidence on which this asser­tion was based was convincingly and definitively demolished by Metod Milaè in 1991, on the grounds that the “Jacob Hann” mentioned in the archival document actually referred to a different individual, who was younger than the composer. 
 Having left the Benedictine abbey of Melk, Gal­lus later lived in Moravia in another monastery, the Praemonstratensian foundation of Zábrdovice (Obrowitz) near Brno. As the composer himself mentions in several passages in his forewords, it was with the help of the superior of this founda­tion, Caspar Schönauer, that his work received its polish and came to maturity. Gallus remained in friendly contact with Schönauer throughout his life. Not only is one book of his masses (1580) dedicated to this important prelate, but we also find Schönauer similarly mentioned in the com-poser’s first book of motets (1586). Further, a musi­cal deploration in his memory, Epicedion harmo- nicum, was written by the composer in the year that Schönauer passed away (1589), and the latter’s name was again recalled at the beginning of Gal­lus’s collection of secular compositions entitled Harmoniae morales (1589), as well as in his fourth book of motets (1590), which is dedicated to Schön- auer’s successor at Zábrdovice, Ambrosius Telec­zenus. Although the precise dates of the com-poser’s sojourn at Schönauer’s monastery are not known, it must have occurred during the 1570s and at all events not after 1578. 
 In the second half of the 1570s Silesia becomes the most likely place of residence of the composer, who mentions Silesian cities in the foreword to his third book of motets (1587). Again, no archival document backs up this assertion precisely, but the fact that many original manuscript sources for Gallus’s masses and motets originate from Wroc-³aw (Breslau), Legnica (Liegnitz) and Brzeg (Brieg) during those years certainly acts as a strong rec­ommendation in its favour,7 as do the long-lasting connections of the composer with important Sile­sian personalities such as the poet laureate Salo­mon Frenzel and the court minister Wilhelm von Oppersdorff, who will be mentioned later in this introduction. 
 In 1579, Stanislav Pavlovský, a former provost in Brno and scholasticus of Olomouc, was elected bishop of Olomouc, the ecclesiastical centre of the Catholic Church in Moravia. This election had been the result of a complex process, placing at the head of the most important Catholic diocese with-in the Czech Lands a fervent adherent of Counter-Reformation ideals who had trained at the Col- legium Germanicum in Rome. A seven-part motet composed by Gallus, Undique flammatis, was pub­lished for this occasion. Today lost except for a later copy of the Tenor part, this print was the first to be published under the composer’s name. It has been reconstructed in the present mams series (Supplementa 4) after comparison with another motet featuring an identical Tenor part, Angeli lae­tentur de mirando, which proved on close inspec­tion to be a contrafactum of Undique flammatis.8 
 Shortly after Pavlovský’s election Gallus became organist and choirmaster of the new bishop, there-by making Olomouc and Kromìøíž (Kremsier) his own places of residence. The composer did not wait long before sending to the foremost Prague printer of the time, Jiøí Nigrin, his first book of masses. This Book i (which was never followed by any other) comprised sixteen masses grouped in four collections distributed according to their number of parts (eight, six, five and four parts, re­spectively).9 These four prints (edited in mams 18–21) were issued between 1 September and 22 November 1580 and place a seven-part parody mass based on the motet in honour of Pavlovský, Undique flammatis, at the head of the first volume. 
 The links between Gallus and Nigrin were ob­viously strengthened by the composer’s own brother, Georgius Handl, who was himself work­ing in the printing trade. Georgius apparently came to Prague to be employed at the Nigrin work- shop around 1584/85 after having been attached to the famous music printing establishment headed by Catharina Gerlach in Nuremberg. This printing house, one of the most important of its kind in Germany, was itself heir to the prestigious Berg & Neuber workshop, offering a catalogue of music prints second to no other north of the Alps. The move of his brother from Nuremberg to Prague gave Gallus the perfect opportunity to proceed with the printing of his own oeuvre. The composer accordingly requested leave from the bishop’s ser­vice in Olomouc, which he duly obtained in July 1585 “for personal reasons”. Now freed from his of­ficial duties and “not serving one only man, nor being a slave of the walls” as he himself put it in the foreword to his second book of motets (1587), Gallus settled in Prague, shortly after his brother had done the same independently, in order to supervise the printing of his works. He obtained for his livelihood the post of choirmaster in a modest but venerable Romanesque church of the Old Town placed under the honorary patronage of emperor Rudolf II. Built in the twelfth century and modelled on a rotunda-like architectural de­sign, this church, now destroyed, was known as St John on the Balustrade or St John on the Bank, being located only a few steps away from Nigrin’s printing workshop. 
 Prague was at this time at the peak of its artistic and intellectual splendour. Gaining the status of an imperial seat of government after the Habsburg court took up residence within its walls in 1583, Prague castle was also home to a splendid musical Kapelle surrounding emperor Rudolf II.10 Impor­tant personages such as Philippe de Monte (im­perial choirmaster), Jacob Regnart (vice-choir- master), Karel Luython (organist) and Alessandro Orologio (vice-choirmaster) were only a small part of the available artistic forces, which also boasted musicians among the other court members, such as Jacob Chimarrhaeus (almoner) and Matheo Flecha (chaplain). Notwithstanding occasional in­teractions with the court (see below), Gallus seems to have pursued his work somewhat independently from the imperial context. His links with Jacob Regnart are only hypothetical,11 and no obvious relationship with imperial court composers is known, either.12 
 The results of a carefully supervised printing ac­tivity oriented towards his own oeuvre became perceptible soon after the composer’s move to Prague with a first book of motets issued in 1586,13 followed by two other books in 158714 and a fourth and final one in 1589.15 In all, this vast anthology entitled Opus musicum (edited in mams 5–17) comprised 374 motets following the order of the liturgical seasons: Advent to Lent (Book i); Holy Week and Eastertide to Whitsun (Book ii); Trinity, Dedication (In Festo Dedicationis Ecclesiae) and the Tempus per annum (Book iii); the Common and Proper of Saints and Virgins plus Marian feasts (book iv). This system of organization was already in use at that time for other large-scale motet collections. 
 Although very productive from the start, the close collaboration between the two Handl broth-ers came to an end at some point during the year 1587: after the publication of Book ii (15 March) but before that of Book iii (29 September). The reason for this change is not entirely clear but was alluded to by the composer two years later in a Sibylline reference to the “broken strength of the press”, which possibly refers to the return of Geor­gius from Prague to Nuremberg.16 His brother’s absence forced the composer to seek fresh support both at Nigrin’s printshop and around himself. This loss was to leave its mark on the Opus musi­cum itself, for within the anthology a significant difference in the degree of polish is observable between the care apparent in Books i and ii on one hand and the relative negligence found in Books iii and iv on the other. Not only do the forewords cease to display the florid Latin eloquence en­riched with many an allusion to mythology or the Scriptures which characterized the previous texts signed by the composer, but also the lower quality of the printing and proofreading betokens a cer­tain scrappiness in the preparation of the later vol­umes, which were probably produced under less favourable conditions. The composer quickly re­sponded to this change of situation and from 1587 onwards tried to improve his position by means of new contacts. Support at court was one of them, but securing the right to protect the published compositions was another. The imperial privilege bestowed on Books iii and iv of the Opus musi­cum is most likely a consequence of the com-poser’s new-found need for security. It constitutes an important landmark in the history of printed music, being one of the earliest attempts to impose restrictions not only on the copying but also on the sale and even the imitation of a publication.17 
 Among the important Court personalities with whom Gallus was in contact during these crucial years were the imperial almoner Jacobus Chimar-rhaeus, already mentioned, and the imperial counsellor and Master of the Mint in Bohemia, Wilhelm von Oppersdorff. A composition ad­dressed to the former, Chimarrhae, tibi io, was in­cluded in a volume of pieces offered to Chimar- rhaeus as a homage by no fewer than 23 com-posers, the Odae suavissimae published c. 1602.18 A deploration, O miserum, written in memory of the counsellor, who died in that same year of 1587, has been lost except for its text penned by the poet laureate and friend of Gallus, Salomon Frenzel, who belonged, like Oppersdorff, to a Silesian circle in Prague with which the composer obviously had links.19 We may also count among Gallus’s impor­tant contacts at court during those years the canon of Prague cathedral, Georg Barthold Pontanus von Breitenberg, who was to become poet laureate in 1588. The author of some erudite sacred poetry, Pontanus epitomizes the intellectual brilliance of Rudolphine Prague at its best. Gallus set to his words the last part of an Epicedion harmonicum in memory of Schönauer.20 
 Another important support for his musical cre­ativity was obtained by Gallus with the aid of the Prague patricians and members of the City Coun­cil mentioned in a collective dedication found in the foreword to the third book (1587) of Opus musi- cum. Although none of the “counsellors, senators, patricians, citizens and eminent patrons” ad­dressed in this dedication has ever been individ­ually identified, it is noteworthy that they attest to the composer’s fame in spheres of influence largely dominated by non-Catholics, exactly as had been the case for the situation that Gallus had en­countered in Silesia prior to his appointment in Olomouc. Having been explicitly associated, in Olomouc, with the Catholic hierarchy, Gallus’s compositions started once again to circulate in the Bohemian capital among musical institutions as­sociated with the different confessions of the Re­formed Church (Utraquist, Lutheran). This expan- sion is confirmed by the fact that during the sec­ond half of the 1580s Gallus’s compositions found their way into anthologies published in a Lutheran setting, such as the Sixtus Kargel Lute tablature (1586), printed in Strasbourg by Bernard Jobin21 (which contains an intabulation of the motet Surge propera), and the collection Christliche Psalmen published in 1587 by Nicolaus Selneccer,22 a theo­logian at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, which con­tains a spiritual song in German, O Herre Gott, by Gallus. This work was reprinted no fewer than three times and survives in four different manu­script sources.23 To these insertions must be added the fact that many expressions of gratitude to the composer for his music come, during those same years, from Lutheran musical or civic institutions such as the Convivium musicum in the Lusatian town of Görlitz, the choral society in Oschatz near Leipzig, which in 1588 mentions Gallus as a direc­tor, and the Leipzig municipal treasury that same year. All these tributes lead one to suspect that a brief presence of Gallus in Leipzig and its sur­rounding cities at the turn of 1587 and 1588 is more than probable.24 
 Following the departure of Georgius Handl from Prague, the death of Gallus’s long-standing friend and supporter Caspar Schönauer on the first day of 1589 was another blow for the com-poser. An occasional publication entitled Epice­dion harmonicum25 (published in mams Supple- menta 4) was dedicated to this friend’s memory. It contains a preface that constitutes the longest and most personal surviving text written by Gallus. The musical contents comprise three composi­tions, two of which are scored for eight parts di­vided into two choirs: the first part is a deploration for Schönauer; the second, an acclamation cel­ebrating the enthronement of Schönauer’s suc­cessor, Ambrosius Teleczenus. Both texts are writ- ten from the perspective of the composer, and it is highly likely that Gallus himself penned them. A third, more modest composition in four parts concludes the Epicedion with a further acclama­tion of Teleczenus as the new provost of Zábrdo­vice. The music for this last piece is probably a contrafactum adapted to words specially written by Pontanus von Breitenberg.26 
 The last volume of his music printed during Gallus’s lifetime was a collection of 53 secular com­positions on Latin texts for four voices entitled Harmoniae morales27 (published in mams 26), which originally came out in three volumes in 1589 (Book i) and 1590 (Books ii and iii). In his fore­word the composer explains, adopting a topos fre­quently found in dedicatory texts, that his friends have urged him to give himself some respite from serious music and permit himself a more relaxed form of inspiration by addressing secular matters. Gallus admits, however, that in order to avoid any resemblance to the vein of the madrigal in its lyri­cal and sensual aspects he has chosen to use the Latin language and name his compositions moralia. This text is also important for containing the sole mention from the composer’s own mouth of his employment as the choirmaster of a church. Gallus also alludes to his recent difficulties with the printing of his oeuvre following the departure of his brother. Last but not least, he also makes a clear personal allusion to the fact that, as a Car­niolus, he does not consider himself a German but belongs, rather, to a different nation, identifying his compatriots elliptically by the word nostrates (“our people”). The literary sources of the collec­tion are numerous, and the composer explains how he has received a great number of texts from friends and acquaintances for setting to music. This fact is confirmed by the great variety of sources and provenances displayed by these texts: Classical Latin poetry (Ovid, Martial, Virgil) ap­pears alongside medieval proverbs and Renais­sance apophthegmata or epigrammata in the manner of Erasmus of Rotterdam. The three mod­ern authors identified in this collection are two poets laureate – Georg Pontanus and Salomon Fren- zel, already mentioned – plus the Protestant jurist Lucas Geizkofler (1550–1620), who had studied in Strasbourg under the supervision of Johannes Sturm (as had Frenzel) and became an adviser and lawyer acting for the Fugger family in Augsburg. Both his and Frenzel’s names connect the intellec­tual circle around Gallus with a Lutheran milieu close to the Melanchthonian ideals of irenism and piety. 
 Gallus died on 18 July 1591. This event prompted Nigrin to publish a one-page commemorative po-etic tumulum (epitaph).28 The page, preserved to-day uniquely at the Strahov Praemonstratensian monastery in Prague,29 displays the famous portrait of the composer in a medallion as well as four Latin poems and one eteostichon (chronograph) signed by the composer’s friends. Their names – Jan Kherner from Pilsen, Martin Galli Èernovický, Ian Mathiolus Vodniansis and Ian Sequenides Czernovicenus – are all connected with the school and church of St Henry in Prague, located fairly near the church of St John where Gallus worked and had his place of residence. One of the main centres of Lutheran faith in the Bohemian capital, this school of St Henry again confirms the importance of the Reformed milieu in the composer’s immedi­ate intellectual surroundings. 
 An inventory of the books Gallus kept at his home was drawn up six days after his decease under the supervision of Georgius Handl along­side three other witnesses who included the Prague printer Jan Schuman.30 Reaching the impres- sive number of around five thousand volumes,31 this inventory makes obvious the fact that Gallus had taken on at least part of the responsibility for selling the prints of his own music, since all his publications from the Nigrin workshop are listed there in numerous copies (reaching two hundred and fifty in the case of the two most recent ones: Book iv of the Opus musicum [1591] and the Har­moniae morales [1590]). That Gallus was person-ally involved in the distribution of his oeuvre is indeed more than sufficiently confirmed by the large number of acknowledgements made to the composer or his representatives that express grati­tude, or simply record payments, for copies. These documents coming both from civic (Lutheran) in­stitutions (such as ones in Görlitz, Naumburg and Leipzig) and from monastic foundations (Kloster­bruck, Kremsmünster etc.) in conjunction with sales accounts garnered from the famous Frank­furt and Leipzig book fairs, help us to construct an early circulation network for his music that al­ready possesses a measure of precision.32 Another striking feature of the Gallus inventory lies in the fact that, except for a single copy of the monumen­tal Patrocinium musices volumes devoted to Or­lando di Lasso by Adam Berg in Munich (com- plete in their six parts),33 nearly all the other vol­umes originate from the Gerlach printshop in Nu­remberg. Since many of these are similarly men- tioned as existing in several copies among the composer’s belongings, it seems likely that they constituted Georgius Handl’s legacy from this workplace, which he passed on to his brother in Prague for sale or preservation. 
 A second volume of yet unpublished secular compositions, continuing the vein of Harmoniae morales, came out in Nuremberg, supervised by Georgius Handl, five years after the composer’s death under the title of Moralia34 (published in mams 27). With its 47 compositions scored for five to eight voices, this collection is the perfect follow-up to the Harmoniae morales, raising the total number of secular pieces attributable to Gal­lus to exactly one hundred. We once again find Georgius Handl involved in the management of the printing process, although the whole project apparently had to navigate a rather convoluted series of stages. Probably conceived in the Gerlach workshop soon after the composer passed away, this volume had to wait until 1596 for its publica­tion under the name of another printer, Alexander Philip Dietrich, who was in part an inheritor of the former firm and a man with whom Georgius seems to have been in close contact. Dietrich had earlier been employed at the Gerlach printshop,35 but volumes containing music became only of marginal importance within his catalogue once he set up business as an independent printer.36 In view of the rather shoddy quality of this print, it appears that Dietrich merely added a title page produced in his own workshop to a volume previously printed, but probably not corrected (and therefore never actually marketed) by Katharina Gerlach. Similar action would be taken by Dietrich one year later with the unsold copies of Opus musicum Book iv, where the original Nigrin prints went on sale again with a title page bearing a new title (Cantiones sacrae) and Dietrich’s imprint.37 In the foreword to the “Dietrich” Moralia of 1596, Geor­gius Handl relates how keen his brother had been to respond to the wish of those of his friends who had sent him short Latin texts for setting to music and how he would have composed many more such pieces, had he not died of exhaustion while still in the bloom of his age. Unlike all the other volumes of printed music by Gallus, this Moralia collection was reissued shortly after this first pub­lication in 1603 – in the town of Douai in Flanders, then part of the Spanish Netherlands. Prepared in the printshop of Jean Bogard, it is textually a dis­tinct and improved edition where many misprints of the original (“Dietrich”) edition have been cor­rected. It also marks the only appearance of Gal­lus’s music within the flourishing music market of a city then belonging to the Antwerp-Leuven net­work of printing establishments.38 
 Although the Moralia were printed and issued in Nuremberg, it was from Prague that Georgius’s foreword to this volume was signed (a foreword not reproduced in the 1603 Bogard edition). This corresponded to a decisive shift in Georgius’s ca­reer as a printer, since Gallus’s brother, having re­turned from Nuremberg to Bohemia, was at that moment on his way to Olomouc, the place where Gallus had established his main residence some sixteen years previously. Now Olomouc became Georgius’s definitive place of activity with the opening there, in 1597, of a printshop owned by him that bore the address “apud Georgium Han­delium”, “v Giøíka Handle” or “durch Georgium Händl”, depending on the language of publication. 
 This printing firm soon became the most im­portant of its kind in Moravia,39 distinguished by the use of the technique of engraving on copper,40 and with at least one music print, the Catholic cantional known as Rozenplut kancionál (1601). Among the main specializations of the Handl print catalogue41 are numerous publications of Latin poetry linked with the festive activities of the Jesuit college in Olomouc under the patronage of Bishop Pavlovský, a context for which Gallus had probably composed part of his Opus musicum. Another important section of the Handl catalogue is composed of booklets in the Czech language containing the decisions of the Olomouc City Council as well as devotional publications for the use of Utraquist or Taborite believers. Finally, com- memorative epithalamia or tumuli related to im­portant patrician families were also published by Handl, mostly in German. In addition to these publications, distributed according to the three main confessional areas (Jesuit-Catholic, Utra­quist or Taborite, Lutheran), the Handl catalogue also contained ambitious editions of a more gen­eral kind, such as the Zøijzenij Zemské Margkrab­stwi Morawského [Description of the Moravian Margraviate Territory] (1604), which became one of its most widely circulated titles.  
 Handl’s printshop lasted until 1616 under Geor­gius’s name, and was then taken over by his widow Barbora, who in 1617 married Januš Jan Heimbel, using as imprint “Georg Handl’s heirs”. It later con­tinued under Georgius’s son, Mathias Handl. The fact that Mathias converted to Catholicism at the time of the Battle of the White Mountain (1620) and the strong advance of the Counter-Reformation that immediately followed it suggests that his father Georgius, Gallus’s brother, was probably a Protestant. This belief is strengthened by the fact that in 1610 Cardinal Dietrichstein censured the Olomouc printers Georgius Handl and Jan Milich­thaler for having issued Evangelical canticles and sermons. Although printing activities became se­verely reduced in Moravia after 1620, Mathias Handl’s press became the only one to remain ac­tive up to 1622, the date of the last known print bearing his name. This final publication, the Pisnì Katolické by Jiøík Hlohovský, is another important Catholic cantional containing music. No mention of Mathias Handl is known from after that date, and it is supposed that this printer left Moravia for another place of activity.42 
 Two motets by Gallus (Ecce quomodo moritur and Sepulto Domino) appeared in a liturgical Agenda seu ritus ceremoniarum ecclesiasticarum by Hi­eronymus Powodowski as possible substitutes for plainsong during the Good Friday liturgy.43 This Agenda, published in Kraków in 1591, is clear evi­dence that Gallus’s motets had already been in use during liturgical ceremonies of the post-Triden­tine Catholic church in Poland for some time. It seems, however, to represent something of an ex­ception, since no further compositions by Gallus are to be found in a Catholic collection until 1719 and the publication, in Hradec Králové, of the can­tional Slavièek Rajský compiled by Jan Josef Bo-žan.44 The motets Ecce quomodo and Sepulto Do- mino are once again the only ones selected, this time in three-voice arrangements that constitute the sole polyphonic works in the collection, which otherwise contains 470 monodic melodies and 930 spiritual texts in Czech. 
 Aside from these two exceptions, Gallus’s musi­cal legacy in the seventeenth century and beyond seems to have developed in an almost exclusively Protestant setting. Not only did the motet Ecce quo- modo moritur find its way into many Lutheran hymnals: it also gained an official position within the musical settings of the Passion within Central and North German sources.45 Collections of poly­phonic music designed for Lutheran Latin schools likewise included selected motets from the Opus musicum all through the seventeenth century. Among these sources, the printed anthology Flo­rilegium Portense edited by Erhard Bodenschatz in 1603 and 1618 (for the use of the Pforta school, near Naumburg) is the most important, featuring nineteen motets by Gallus.46 It was principally from this selection that Gallus’s musical legacy was carried forward across the centuries and gained wide circulation in the northern parts of Central Europe. From that source, too, developed a strong interest in the composer within the German-speaking cultural world at the start of the nine­teenth century, Gallus becoming above all regarded and honoured as the “German Palestrina”,47 before the publication of the first historical study to men­tion his name came out in Carniola in 1858.48 
 Besides this printed legacy, numerous examples included in theoretical treatises of the early seven­teenth century, copies written in German key­board organ tablature and manuscript sources associated with the use of a particular church or school are preserved in Silesia, Scandinavia, Upper Hungary (today, Slovakia) and Saxony. The wealth of material encountered in Swedish collections, in particular, shows that Gallus’s motets, as well as his Moralia, were used as substitutes for mass move- ments in Lutheran services.49 The sources also contain parody masses based on compositions by Gallus that have so far received little attention from scholars. This manuscript legacy draws on a corpus of approximately thirty compositions that prior to the modern age kept alive the memory of the Carniolian composer in Northern and North-Central Europe. 
 When situated within the larger framework of late sixteenth-century music, Gallus’s magnificent oeuvre displays striking independence and orig­inality. Although sharing with many composers of the time an origin within the “international” style of Franco-Flemish polyphony of the 1540s (Clemens and Gombert in particular), his musical language developed on this basis forms a unique synthesis of contrasting elements, such as: (1) frequent use of a double choir in the Central-European man-ner; (2) a profound sensitivity for the rhythmic shaping of phrases as well as an acute feeling for form in the widest sense; (3) an influence from monastic environments; (4) a mastery of vocal “orchestration” and clef combinations, probably the most varied in the whole sixteenth-century re­pertory. This virtuosic handling of registral com­bination emerges with particular force in the many compositions for equal voices (ad voces ae­quales), among themselves featuring very diverse cleffing. Such compact texture is frequently found in Czech Utraquist repertories, as exemplified by the compositions of Jan Trojan Turnovský and Jiøí Rychnovský. Equally, it could reflect polyphonic practices cultivated within monastic settings. 
 Taken as a whole, Gallus’s creativity presents a multi-faceted picture where Counter-Reformation motets with sparkling, almost percussive rhythms sit alongside polyphonic writing rooted in a deep and interiorized sense of spirituality, as well as short, syllabically declaimed stanzas rich in irony and word-painting. Parallels to this work can be found in a repertoire that has never really taken off as music for modern audiences: composers such as Lambert de Sayve, Blasius Amon, Johan Knöfel and Johannes Nucius are far more evocative of the aesthetic background surround­ing Gallus’s compositions than the better-known masterpieces of Lasso or de Monte and even the Venetian double-choir music with which his works have all too often been compared. 
 A similar statement could be formulated about Gallus’s stylistic legacy as well. This legacy is hardly perceptible in any of the prominent composers of the early seventeenth century acclaimed by pos­terity, and the loss of all the music of the only known disciple of Gallus in Olomouc, Abraham Nymphäus, is an additional setback in our attempt to evaluate the composer’s posterity.50 Developments of the stylistic features typical of Gallus are to be found, however, in the musical language of such composers as Philipp Dulichius, Melchior Vulpius and particularly Nicolaus Zangius (c. 1570–1617), for whom recent research has demonstrated both links to the Moravian aristocracy and some strik­ing stylistic features shared with Gallus that make Zangius probably the most noteworthy follower of the Carniolan composer.51 
 Many of Gallus’s compositions have not ap­peared in print, nor in modern editions, up to the present day. A group of these compositions com­prising four masses and four motets has been as­sembled in a volume of the present mams series (Compositions preserved in manuscript, mams 28). They do not represent the sum total of the com-poser’s musical legacy still not known through a modern edition, as can immediately be verified from Marko Motnik’s thematic catalogue,52 and this is especially the case with the German Lieder on secular or spiritual texts. Unfortunately, several of these compositions have not survived in their entirety, and their authorship is often question­able. Considering the wealth of material found in several archival collections (particularly in Silesia and Sweden), it is to be hoped that future editions will at last make these pieces available to the mod­ern reader and musician, thereby completing the picture of the fascinating musical legacy be­queathed by Gallus. 
 
Marc Desmet 
(ihrim Saint-Etienne, cnrs umr 5317)
 1. Although “Handl” can also be related to the meaning of “chicken” via the word “Hendl” in use in Austria and Bavaria, where standard German has “Huhn”.
 2. The Slovenian expression for “rooster”.
 3. The main sources on the debate concerning Gallus’s place of birth are found in Danilo Fajgelj, “Zopet nekaj o Gallusu”, Ljubljanski zvon 8 (1888): 312 (hypothesis: Idrija); Josip Mantuani, “Einleitung”, in Jacob Handl (Gallus), Opus musicum i, xii (hypothesis: Ribnica); Jožef Zazula, “Gallusi so bili Idrijèani”, Cerkveni glasbenik 61, nos 1–4 (1938): 12, 37 (hypothesis: Idrija); Ivan Laharnar, “Glas s Tolminskega o naših Gallusih-Petelinih”, Cerkveni glasbenik 61, nos. 5–6 (1938): 78–79 (hypothesis: Šentviška Gora); Anton Skubic, “Èigav je J. Gallus-Petelin?”, Slovenec 66, no. 138 (1938): 9 (hypothesis: Ribnica) and Karel Bezeg, “Rojstni kraj Jakoba Petelina-Gallusa”, Cerkveni glasbenik 63, nos. 7–8 (1940): 101–111 (hypothesis Idrija / Šentviška Gora and Ribnica). All articles edited in Škulj, Gallusov zbornik.
 4. Nor is it established that the composer received his musical training in Carniola, since Gallus could have left his homeland already at an early age.
 5. In the first book of masses, fourth section (Masses for four parts).
 6. Mantuani, “Einleitung”, in Jacob Handl (Gallus), Opus musicum, xii.
 7. See Toma¿ Je¿, “Twórczoœæ Jacoba Handla w Ÿród³ach proweniencji Œl¹skiej”, Muzyka 49, no. 4 (2004): 27–62.
 8. Before this rediscovery the motet Angeli laetantur de mirando had been published as an independent work in an edition by Elena Kmet’ova: Iacobus Gallus, Angeli laetantur de mirando, ur. Elena Kmet’ová, Monumenta musicae Slova­cae, hc 0603 (Bratislava: Hudobné Centrum, 2006).
 9. rism a/i h (and hh) 1976 to h (and hh) 1979.
 10. See Robert Lindell, “Music at the Court of Rudolf II”, in Gallus Carniolus in evropska renesansa, vol. 2, ed. Drago­tin Cvetko and Danilo Pokorn (Ljubljana: sazu, 1992), 155–170. For more recent studies on the brilliant music scene of Rudolphine Prague, see the essays and bibliographies pub­lished by the research group Musica Rudolfina supported by the Musicological Institute of the Charles University in Prague: www.bibemus.org.
 11. See Marc Desmet, “‘Gallus apud Belgas’ or The Douai Moralia (1603) Reconsidered”, De musica disserenda 11, nos. 1–2 (2015): 67–86.
 12. Although he could have met and probably been ac­quainted with Philippe de Monte, who was living in Prague’s Old Town as he himself was.
 13. rism a/i h1980 and hh1980.
 14. rism a/i h (and hh) 1981, h (and hh) 1982.
 15. rism a/i h (and hh) 1985.
 16. See Marc Desmet, “‘Typographicum robur fractum’: Jacob Handl’s Relation to the Printing Press”, De musica dis­
serenda 3, no. 2 (2007): 13–25.
 17. See Pawe³ Gancarczyk, La Musique et la révolution de l’imprimerie, les mutations de la culture musicale au XVIe siecle, French translation from Polish by Wojciech Boñkowski (Lyons: Symétrie, 2015), 179–180 (orig. Polish version published 2011).
 18. rism b/i [c.1610]1 8.
 19. On the importance of this “Silesian circle” in Prague, see Christian Thomas Leitmeir, “Words for Music, Words about Music: Salomon Frenzel von Friedenthal’s Epigrams as a Source for Music History”, in Ars Musica and its Con­texts in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, ed. Pawe³ Gan­carczyk (Warsaw: Liber pro Arte and authors, 2016), 367–394.
 20. On the Epicedion, see footnote 26.
 21. rism b/i 15862 3.
 22. rism a/i [s2772 and a/i [ss2772.
 23. See, in Motnik, Jacob Handl-Gallus, reference hk 494.
 24. See Motnik, Jacob Handl-Gallus, 176–177.
 25. rism a/i h1984.
 26. On the Epicedion, its foreword and its structure, see Marc Desmet, “Façade et revers d’une architecture musicale solennelle: la structure de l’Epicedion Harmonicum de Jaco­bus Handl (Gallus) et ses énigmes non résolues”, De musica disserenda 10, no. 2 (2014): 101–123.
 27. rism a/i h1986.
 28. The complete document is translated into Slovenian in Edo Škulj, ed., Gallusovi predgovori (Ljubljana: Družina, 1991), 118–123.
 29. As part of the “Dobøenský collection” (Dobøenského sbírka jednolistù) [dr i 21b, fol. 29v–30r.
 30. See Marc Desmet, “Jacobus Handl Gallus’ Inventory: New Suggestions about the Music Books Found in the Composer’s Belongings”, Hudební vìda 64, no. 4 (2017): 441–454.
 31. Taking into account the different partbooks related to polyphonic parts.
 32. See Motnik, Jacob Handl-Gallus, 58–60 where a table of these testimonies reckons seventeen of them, in addition to mentions of Gallus’s prints in the Book Fairs in Frankfurt and Leipzig.
 33. rism a/i l 857; 873; 874; 877; 885 and 974.
 34. rism a/i h1988 and hh1988.
 35. See Susan Jackson, “Who is Katherine? The Women of the Berg & Neuber-Gerlach-Kaufmann Printing Dy­nasty”, in Music Fragments and Manuscripts in the Low Countries: Alta capella; Music Printing in Antwerp and Eu­rope in the 16th Century: Colloquium Proceedings, Alden Biezen 23.06.1995, Alden Biezen 24.06.1995, Antwerpen 23-25.08.1995, eds. Eugen Schreurs and Henri Vanhulst, Year­book of the Alamire Foundation 2 (Leuven; Peer: Alamire, 1997), 451–463.
 36. See Petr Voit, “Alexander Philipp Dietrich”, in En­cyklopedie Knihy, starší knihtisk a pøíbuzné obory mezi po­lovinou 15. a 19. století (Prague: Nakladatelství Libri ve spo­luprací s královskou kanonií Premonstratù na Strahové, 2006), 211, accessed 21 April 2022, 
https://www.encyklopedieknihy.cz/index.php?title= 
Alexander_Philipp_Dietrich.
 37. See Pawe³ Gancarczyk, “The Mystery of Sacrae Can­tiones (Nuremberg 1597): Remarks on Jacob Handl and 16th-Century Printing Practice”, De musica disserenda 3, no. 2 (2007): 25–33.
 38. Desmet, “‘Gallus apud Belgas’”.
 39. Voit, “Alexander Philipp Dietrich”, 211.
 40. Voit, “Jiøí Handl”, in Encyklopedie Knihy, starší knih­tisk a pøíbuzné obory mezi polovinou 15. a 19. století (Prague: Nakladatelství Libri ve spoluprací s královskou kanonií Pre-monstratù na Strahové, 2006), 341, accessed 21 April 2022, https://www.encyklopedieknihy.cz/index.php?title=Ji%C5%99%C3%AD_Handl.
 41. Roughly a hundred prints by Georgius Handl are known so far. See Desmet, “‘Typographicum robur frac­tum’”.
 42. Voit, “Alexander Philipp Dietrich”, 211.
 43. Motnik, Jacob Handl-Gallus, 293–296.
 44. Ibid., 296–298.
 45. For details, see ibid., 303–313.
 46. rism b/i 1603.1 and rism b/i 1618.1.
 47. Notably in the Encyclopädie der gesammten musika­lischen Wissenschaften, vol. 3, ed. Gustav Schilling (Stutt­gart: Franz Heinrich Köhler, 1836), 124.
 48. See Camillo Maschek, “Biographische Skizzen be­rühmter Kirchen-Tondichter”, Caecilia 1 (1858): 34.
 49. See Marc Desmet, “A Neglected Chapter on Handl’s Sources: Readings from the Swedish Manuscripts”, De musica disserenda 5, no. 2 (2009): 7–23.
 50. For a summary of the archival mentions devoted to Abraham Nymphäus, cantor of Saint-Mauritius in Olo­mouc, see Hana Studenièová, “Mìstská hudební kultura na Moravì v prìdbelohorském období” (PhD diss., Masary­kova univerzita Brno, 2019), 49, 54, 169, and 170.
 51. On Zangius, see Vladimír Manas, Nicolaus Zangius: hudebník pøelomu 16. a 17. století; Na stopì neznámému (Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2020), as well as the recording by Cantiones sacrae directed by the same scholar, Ensemble Versus & Capella Ornamentata, cd Opera Di­versa, 2017.
 52. Motnik’s catalogue (Jacob Handl-Gallus) lists 48 manuscript compositions (hk 497–544) of still uncertain authorship.

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