Georg Victorinus

Georg Victorinus was a music editor and composer active in Munich during the first decades of the seventeenth century. His place of birth is not confirmed: the documents describe him as a native of 'Hultzinensis' or 'Huldschönensis', terms that point either to Hultschin (now Hlučín, near Racibórz, in Silesia) or to Hültschken (now Holičky, in Bohemia), although both identifications remain hypothetical. He is believed to have died in Munich in 1639.

In 1591 he held the post of magister chori at the Jesuit college in Munich, a position he kept at least until 1616. Between 1601 and 1608 he was also responsible for training the boy singers of the Munich Hofkapelle. He maintained a good relationship with Rudolph de Lassus, to whose lost work Cygnaeum melos he attributes the collection he is thought to have prepared for publication in 1626. In 1624 he was teaching at the Peterskirche in Munich and, shortly afterwards, he was ordained a priest.

His reputation rests above all on three collections of sacred music that he edited, which together include twenty-three compositions by him, as well as arrangements of his own. As a composer, he was thoroughly trained in the polyphony of the sixteenth century, although he increasingly adopted the falsobordone technique. His output ranges from two-voice falsobordoni to the Litania de Beata Vergine Maria (1596), in which a four-part choir is set against a six-part choir with a striking effect.