Everything about Jacobus Gallus totally explained
Jacobus Gallus Carniolus (
Jacob Handl or
Jacob Handl-Gallus) (
July 3,
1550 –
July 18,
1591) was a late
Renaissance composer of
Slovene origin. Born in what is today
Carniola, part of
Slovenia, then part of the
Habsburg Holy Roman Empire, he lived and worked in
Moravia and
Bohemia during the last decade of his life.
Life
Gallus may have been born with the name of
Jakob Petelin. Petelin means "rooster"; Handl and Gallus mean the same in German and Latin, respectively. He was born in Reifnitz,
Carniola (now
Ribnica),
Slovenia. 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 monastery at Stična in Carniola. He left Slovenia 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) to the bishop of
Olmütz,
Moravia between 1579 (or 1580) and 1585. From 1585 to his death he worked in
Prague as
organist to the church sv. Jan na Zábradlí. Gallus died on
July 18,
1591 in Prague.
Work
Gallus represented the
Counter-Reformation in Bohemia, mixing the polyphonic style of the High Renaissance
Franco-Flemish School with the style of the
Venetian School. His output was both sacred and secular, and hugely prolific: over 500 works have been attributed to him. Some are for large forces, with multiple choirs of up to 24 independent parts.
His most notable work is the six part
Opus musicum, 1577, a collection of 374
motets that would eventually cover the liturgical needs of the entire ecclesiastical year. The motets were printed in Prague printing house
Jiří Nigrin. The motet
O magnum mysterium comes from the first volume (printed in 1586) which covers the period from the first Sunday of
Advent to the
Septuagesima. This motet for 8 voices shows evidence of influence by the
Venetian polychoral style, with its use of the
coro spezzato technique.
His wide-ranging, eclectic style blended archaism and modernity. He rarely used the
cantus firmus technique, preferring the then-new Venetian polychoral manner, yet he was equally conversant with earlier imitative techniques. 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 later used by
George Frideric Handel in his funeral anthem
The Ways of Zion Do Mourn.
In the mentioned printing house Jiří Nigrin were also published 16 of his 20 extant
masses.
His secular output, about 100 short pieces, was published in the collections
Harmoniae morales (Prague 1589 and 1590) and
Moralia (
Nuremberg 1596). Some of these works were madrigals in Latin, an unusual language for the form (most madrigals were in Italian); others were songs in German, and others were compositions in Latin.
Trivia
An image of Gallus appeared on the Slovenian 200
tolar bill, along with an image of the Slovene Philharmonic and a short excerpt from one of his mass settings.
Further Information
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