Jacobus Gallus

Jacobus Gallus (a.k.a. Jacob(us) Handl, Jacob(us) Händl; between 15 April and 31 July 155018 July 1591) was a late-Renaissance composer of presumed Slovene ethnicity. Born in Carniola, which at the time was one of the Habsburg lands in the Holy Roman Empire, he lived and worked in Moravia and Bohemia during the last decade of his life. Life Gallus’s name has been Slovenianized as Jakob Petelin (petelin means ‘rooster’; Handl and gallus mean the same in German and Latin, respectively). However, Gallus never used the name Petelin. He was probably born in Reifnitz (now Ribnica, southern Slovenia), although Slovene folk tradition also claims his birthplace to be at Šentviška Gora in the Slovenian Littoral. He used the Latin form of his name, to which he often added the adjective Carniolus, thus giving credit to his homeland Carniola. Gallus most likely was educated at the Cistercian Stična Abbey in Carniola. He left Carniola sometime between 1564 and 1566, traveling first to Austria, and later to Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. For some time he lived at the Benedictine Melk Abbey in Lower Austria. He was a member of the Viennese court chapel in 1574, and was choirmaster (Kapellmeister) t