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Jacobus Gallus Carniolus (Slovenian: Jakob Petelin Kranjski) (15501591) was a late-Renaissance composer of Slovene ethnicity. Born in
Carniola, his first musical steps were in monastery Stini in Slovenia, and
later in Rijeka (Croatia) or Trieste (Italy). It is assumed that he also learned
with Italian organist Andre Gabrieli. He sang in the boys choir in palace
chapel in Vienna, and worked in monasteries and bishops residences
around Austria, Czech republic, Moravia and Bohemia, and from 1585. he
moved to Prague as a cantor of a church.
Gallus was the first to bring the Venetian choir style to middle
Europe. Under this influence are the choirs with eight voices, but also
some with six, twelve voices and others. Basically the voices were divided
into two choirs: choirs with same voice structure, high and low voices, and
sometimes into three or four choirs. These groups are basically then
making a kind of dialogue and theyre repeating the parts of previous
choir, changing their phrase and bringing new. Their mutual conversation
can be chain connected or independent, and rarely a choir, that already
finished its phrase, would make a kind of accompaniment for the other.
Every choir is chords-conceived, so if it is polyphonicly built up, there are
outstanding combinations appearing in every choir, and also in their
mutual relations which are against each other. There are examples when
two-choir style appears in choirs based on free polyphony.
Calm melodic lines, with small interval jumps are sometimes with
chromatic added up to give color. It doesnt impose otself by its presence,
but it gives a special sonority to the choral. Light melodic flow is based on
changing between the shorter and longer notes in spiritual work. These
are, in contemporary, whole notes (or even longer) and halfs, even
quarters, which are, like the eight-notes, used as ornaments or in
sequence, in essence of passages. In secular compositions the form is
somewhat different and the movement is more vivid (in quarter or eightnotes). Passages which are highlighted feature different metrics (in whole
notes) The change of measure during pieces is conditioned by metric
changes to the text. Flexibility and liveliness of Galluses rhythm can be
felt in the splice of voices that are pulsing continuously. Gallus used
quantitative Renaissance rhythm with swaying flow in thoughtful
connections of two-piece and three-piece measures, with different note
lengths. Hes sometimes approaching the Slovene, respectively Czech and
Slovenian rhythmic and melodic elements. Based on old church moduses,
Galluses pieces exceed from one to another modus, and he uses Picardy
third in the inner cadence.
and flow are interrupted by free composed parts, and that indicates the
independence of the composers work.
Galluses choir opus continued to live even after his death. He was
not known only among his closer friends but also among bigger baroque
composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friedrich Haendel.