New Foreword

With this online edition of the 22 vol­umes dedicated to the music of Iacobus Handl-Gallus in the series Monumenta artis musicae Sloveniae (hereafter abridged as mams), originally published between 1985 and 1991 with two supplements in 2009 and 2015, it is the wish of the editorial board to provide a new introduction summarizing what has been known about the composer’s life and works up to the pres­ent day (2022). Musicological research on Gallus started at the end of the nineteenth century and reached its first important milestone with the work of Josip Mantuani (1860–1933), including the first complete critical edition of the Opus musicum, published between 1899 and 1919.1 For the most part, Mantuani’s findings and assertions still form today the basis of any serious research on the com-poser. These have been complemented in the twen­tieth century mostly by Paul A. Pisk (with an edi­tion and critical study of Gallus’s masses issued between 1935 and 1969),2 Dragotin Cvetko (includ­ing four monographic studies published in 1965, 1972, 1984 and 19913 as well as the first critical edi­tion of Gallus’s complete secular works in 1966–1968),4 Allen B. Skei (critical edition of Gallus’s Moralia in 1970)5 and Metod M. Milač (with an important dissertation on Gallus’ younger years, 1991).6 From 1985 onwards this musicological ac­tivity around Gallus has been crowned by the work of Edo Škulj, the editor in chief of the present edi­tion of Gallus’s works in the mams series. Škulj’s many contributions dealing with Gallus have, in particular, included the publication of an anthology, Gallusov zbornik,7 of Slovenian articles devoted to the composer by various authors, originally ap­pearing between 1858 and 1950, as well as that of a thematic catalogue, Gallusov katalog, published in 1992.8 Many articles, critical editions and studies emanating from different European and American musicologists have later on added important de­tails to the knowledge and comprehension of Gal­lus’s importance in the history of music in Central and Northern Europe during and beyond the late sixteenth century. Among them, Marko Motnik’s monograph published in 2012, Jacob Handl-Gallus: Werk – Überlieferung – Rezeption, is the most up-to-date and complete synthesis of the composer’s work currently available. It contains a detailed thematic catalogue (using Škulj’s numbering) with musical incipits and sources of all confirmed works as well as attributions. 

Marc Desmet 
(ihrim Saint-Etienne, cnrs umr 5317)

1.Jacob Handl (Gallus), Opus musicum I–VI, ed. JosefMantuani and Emil Bezecný, Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich 12, 24, 30, 40, 48, 51/2, 6 vols (Vienna: Artaria, 1899–1919).
2.Jacob Handl (Gallus), Messen, ed. Paul Amadeus Pisk,Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich 78, 94/5, 117, 119, 4 vols (Vienna: Artaria, 1935–1969).
3.Dragotin Cvetko, Jacobus Gallus Carniolus (Ljubljana:Slovenska Matica, 1965); Dragotin Cvetko, Jacobus Gallus, sein Leben und Werk (Munich: Dr. Trofenik, 1972); Dragotin Cvetko, Jacobus Gallus (Ljubljana: Partizanska knjiga, 1972); Dragotin Cvetko, Iacobus Hándl Gallus vocatus Carniolanus (Ljubljana: sazu, 1991).
4.Jacobus Gallus Carniolus (Jacobus Handl), HarmoniaeMorales, ed. Dragotin Cvetko and Ludvik Zepič (Ljubljana: Slovenska Matica, 1966); Jacobus Gallus Carniolus (Jacobus Handl), Moralia, ed. Dragotin Cvetko (Ljubljana: Slovenska Matica, 1968).
5.Jacob Handl, The Moralia of 1596, ed. Allen B. Skei, 2vols (Madison: A-R Editions, 1970).
6. Metod Milač, “Jacobus Gallus (1550–1591): New Readings from the Sources” (PhD diss., Syracuse University, 1991).
7.Edo Škulj, Gallusov zbornik (Ljubljana: Družina, 1991).
8.Edo Škulj, Gallusov katalog (Ljubljana: Družina, 1992).