Jacobus Gallus

[1] 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.

[4] 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.

[1][6] His most notable work is the four-part Opus musicum (1586–1590), a collection of 374 motets that cover the liturgical needs of the entire ecclesiastical year.

Some of his chromatic transitions foreshadowed the breakup of modality; his five-voice motet Mirabile mysterium contains chromaticism worthy of Carlo Gesualdo.

He enjoyed word painting in the style of the madrigal, yet he could write the simple Ecce quomodo moritur justus[9] later used by George Frideric Handel in his funeral anthem The Ways of Zion Do Mourn.

[1] Critical editions of Gallus works have been prepared by Edo Škulj and published by the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRCSAZU).

[11] A monument with a bronze head of the composer, work by the architect Jože Plečnik and the sculptor Lojze Dolinar from 1932, as well as a stone plaque from 1973 also commemorate him there.