UDK 784.15Gallus Pavel Sykora
Konzervator Brno Konservatorij Brno
Notes on the style and spiritual categorisation of Moralia by Jacobus Handl Gallus
Zapisi k stilu in duhovni kategorizaciji moralij Jacobusa Handla Gallusa
Prejeto: 27. marca 2008 Sprejeto: 5. septembra 2008
Ključne besede: moralia, latinščina, Ovid, posvetni madrigali, stari vek, srednji vek, klasični metrumi, ritmična poezija, manirizem
Izvleček
Proti koncu svojega življenja je Jacobus Handl Gallus (1550-1591) napisal dve knjigi madri-galov: Harmoniae morales in Moralia. Razen moralizirajoče vsebine je povezovalni element obeh ciklusov latinščina, kar vsekakor ni značilnost madrigalnega stila.
Received: 27th March 2008 Accepted: 5th September 2008
Keywords: Moralia, Latin, Ovid, secular madrigals, Antiquity, Middle Ages, classical metres, rhythmic poetry, mannerism
Abstract
Toward the end of his life, Jacobus Handl-Gallus (1550-1591) wrote two books of madrigals: Harmoniae morales and Moralia. The uniting element of both cycles is, except for the moralizing contents, Latin language, which is not usual for madrigal style.
Towards the end of his life when the famous Slovenian composer, Jacobus Handl Gallus (1550-1591), had been long settled in Prague, he composed two sets of secular madrigals whose names bear a moral message - moralia.
The first book Harmoniarum moralium liber (henceforth Harmoniae morales, HM), is divided into three parts and contains 53 four-part vocal works. As the full title1
1 Quatuor vocum liber I - III Harmoniarum moralium, quibus Heroica, Facetiae, Naturalia, quotlibetica, tum facta fictaque poetica etcadmixta sunt. Nunc primum in lucem editus. AuthoreIacobo Handl. Cantus. Pragae, excudebat Georgius Nigrinus. Anno M.D.LXXXIX.
indicates, it was published in 1589 by the typographer Georgius Nigrinus in Prague. Seven years later the second book was posthumously published in Nuremburg (Germany). These are works of a similar character to those of the first book but which had hitherto not been published. As the introduction by his brother, Georgius Handelius Carniolus, indicates, they were already well-known in artistic circles and were being performed. The second book was published under the title, Moralia (henceforth Moralia, M), and contains 47 five, six and eight-voice works.2 They were printed again, this time in Douai, Belgium; this copy was made with some slight changes by Jean Bogard in 1603.
In the text which follows, we will focus on two significant elements which manifest in both cycles. One is the moral content of the majority of the texts, and the other is his employment of Latin as an important phenomenon of humanistic tendencies of the era, despite this language being unusual in madrigals.
Cogitate miseri
»Das Sittengeschichtliche haftet gleichsam noch an der Oberfläche der Dinge, ist ein Kunstmittel neben vielen anderen, deren sich der Manierismus bediente, und ohne tiefere selbständige Bedeutung für das geistige Sichbewusstwerden der Lebenszusammenhänge.«
»A description of morality does not penetrate far below the surface. It is an artistic device used by, among others, Mannerism, without giving any underlying independent significance to an awareness of the relationships we have in life.«
Max Dvorak3
There is considerable variation in the subject matter of the poetry that Gallus set to music. The overriding themes are those of morality and censure of people's shortcomings, though not always intended seriously. Apart from those concerning the inconstancy of friendship, depending as it does on a person's affluence and good fortune, one also finds poetry disparaging moral disintegration - ingratitude, pride, avarice, adultery, hatred, deception, affectation, slander, hypocrisy, cowardice, excessive consumption of wine, false boasting, the negative influences of wealth and money, and at the same time mediocrity and ignorance. Contrasting with these themes are those of the need for friendship, the exhortations for humility, poverty and courage.
In keeping with the overall spirit of the cycle, the poems about a love which is usually destructive or futile are mostly inspired by Ovid. However, his Metamorphoses are primarily intended as light and entertaining reading and the instructions how to gain
2	Moralia Iacobi Handl Carnioli, musicipraestantissimi, quinque, sex et octo vocibus concinnata, atque tam seriis tam festivis cantibus voluptati humanae accojmodata, et nunc primum in lucem edita. Cantus. Cum gratia et privilegio Imperiali, ad annos decem. Noribergae, in officina typographica Alexandri Theodorici. MDXCVI.
3	Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte. Studien zur abendländischen Kunstentwicklung. R. Piper & Verlag, München 1924, pp. 226-27.
the favour of a man or woman, or alternatively, how to dispense with it, are cast in the same mould. The madrigal Uxor amice (HM 19) warns against a wife as a great evil: a wife is only good in the grave: »... sed bona, si moriatur, erit...«.
Not all of Gallus' moralia models involve moral inclinations. There is range of themes represented by poems celebrating music or Latin. An example of a work which stands apart is Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferio (HM 32), whose text clearly serves as a mnemonic for remembering Aristotle's rules of logic.4 The moral principles inconspicuously permeate the madrigals on other themes as well. This can be seen in the madrigal, Livide, quare tibi mea Musica displicet uni? (HM 50). From the text which turns abruptly on a certain critic by way of the question, why would you be the only one to not like Gallus' music, we can deduce that the author is obviously a friend of the composer, if not the composer himself. The critic is called Lividus, the Latin equivalent of this bearing the metonymic meaning of »envious« or »jealous«. Consequently, this work can be classified as one of his moralistic works.
The question remains whether this torrent of moral teaching in Gallus' collection is meant sincerely.
It seems rather that the morality, as used here, is little more than a superficial unifying device. The closing moral lesson is rarely sincere or convincing, the magic resting in other features of the individual compositions. Vacuous moralizing (e.g. about the capriciousness of friendship), which takes the form of hollow didactic precepts, is only of a formal character and resembles »the technique of the metamorphosis« in Ovid. And as in the Metamorphosis, metamorphosis itself is just a peripheral formal element. Similarly in Gallus, one finds that the effect does not lie in the overall idea but in the individual pieces. The cycles have been assembled somewhat haphazardly with no sense of catharsis emerging from them, as the name of the work might imply. On the contrary. Individual madrigals have an entertaining character deriving from the nature of the verse as well as the music. There are, for example, the onomatopoeic portrayals of birdsong, the tumult of battle, the chiming of bells.
Could we perhaps extrapolate this perfunctory and diverting interpretation of the morals as the overall atmosphere of the period?
Shakespeare's words come to mind that the world at the end of 16th century, i.e. the era of Gallus, but also of Tasso, Tintoretto, Gesualdo and others, is »out of joint«. The disintegration of renaissance ideals resulted in a crisis of traditional values, morality being one such victim.
Renaissance absolutisation of man ended up in egocentrism. This resulted in a frequent contempt for moral principles to which the notions of the period testify. For example, Francesco Vettori (1474-1539) asserts that man, in his egoism, is only capable of pretending that he is guided by some moral idea. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) speaks with absolute frankness about human egoism which only pursues its own advantage since morality is said to be not innate. Through such a view, Hobbes manages to deprecate the positive evaluation of human nature which the likes of Thomas Aquinas and Grotius depict. On the contrary - when taken to its logical conclusion - in contradiction
4 A more detailed explanation is provided by Petr Penaz in: Marie Kucerova, Petr Penaz: »Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferio Jakoba
Handla Galla. Poznamky k textove a hudebni strance dila.« Opus musicum xvi (1984), no. 4, pp. 106-112.
with biblical teaching, not even the first man prior to committing the original sin - man, in his essence, is bad.
For extreme examples of egoism, one need look no further than Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) who detests not only traditional religious dogma, but also the centuries old principles of moral consciousness. On the path to power, he condones using hitherto disreputable means such as force, deception, betrayal, bribery and the like. Not that these methods are novel products of the era, but in The Prince (Il Principe, 1513) it is the first time that they had been theoretically sanctioned and considered not as immoral but as normal.
The accompanying phenomenon of the intensive emotional and moral atmosphere of the period becomes on one hand a moral probabilism, which as propagated by the Jesuits among others, represents sin as nothing more than a conscious digression from the laws of God. On the other hand, it is a »a pretence to be moral«. The question is to what extent these »moral« attitudes were meant seriously. For example, in 1566 Pope Pius V directed all prostitutes to leave Rome within 12 days. And in the same year Roman law decreed that doctors stop treating patients who do not confess their sins within three days. We concur with Sypher,5 that these and similar absurdities amount to a manifestation of the »guilty conscience« of their instigators.
There is a similar theoretical moralizing without any genuinely felt catharsis, with no »moral context«, in Sypher's words, to be found in Jacobean drama (e.g. Tourneur). Moral aspects serve only as instruments for the extreme emotions and are directly subordinate to dramatic effect. This leads to an independent life of moral ideas, since they do not emerge from an inner conviction of the character. The resulting »depersonalisation« then moves over also into the realm of the emotions. The character is consumed with profound agitation only for the sake of dramatic effect. As it is, in an attempt to achieve the main dramatic goal, namely excitement, the character swings frequently from one moral extreme to the other.
It is difficult to decide which of these current tendencies Gallus took on board.
We have attempted here to outline the atmosphere in which he worked, and account for why the many moral lessons in his moralia cannot be taken seriously, given the context of the era. So do other explanations offer themselves? The extent of the pessimism in his works cannot simply be an expression of the breakdown of renaissance ideas; it may also be a pointer towards the baroque Jesuit ideology of the insignificance of man before God. That is reflected in the selection of poems by pre-Christian authors.
The poetry about the capriciousness of fate, the compositions expressing the creatu-ralness of man compared to God, and the exhortations to piety differ markedly from those in the style of Ovid, some of which are overly lascivious. Some poetry contains advice on learning how to suffer, since real victory is said to be born only of suffering. In other literary models one finds the fear of death and even an almost baroque submitting oneself to the hand of fate. For example, the madrigal Cogitate miseri (HM 14), whose accented goliard verse points to the unknown medieval author,6 urging us
5 Wylie Sypher: Four Stages of Renaissance Style. Transformations in Art and Literature 1400-1700. Garden City, New York 1955.
Ulysse Chevalier: Repertorium hymnologicum. Graz 1892-1921. UB. 546 (s. XIII.) f. 166v.
wretched mortals to recognise their insignificance at the last judgement. No-one will find judgement there based on earthly codes of law, as God alone will be the judge, the only judge and witness:
Cogitate miseri, qui vel quales estis, quid in hoc iudicio dicere potestis. Hic non erit codici locus nec digestis, idem erit Dominus iudex, actor, testis.
In a similar vain, the compositions rail against mortality and the smallness of man: O homo si scires (HM 28), Quid sis, quid fueris (HM 41), O mors quam dura, quam tristia sunt tua iura (HM 42) etc.
Latina linguarum regina
In his moralia, Gallus set poems from Antiquity, late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Whilst the book, Harmoniae morales, consists mainly of medieval texts, with only seven texts from Antiquity and six from late Antiquity, the Moralia collection has a vast majority of antique poetry with 27 from that period and four from the late Antiquity.
The Latin poet who takes centre stage in the two collections is Ovid (22 texts), followed by Virgil (3), Horace (2), Martial (2), Catullus (1) and Tibullus (1). The late Antiquity is represented in texts by Maximian (3), Claudian (1), Ausonius (1) and the remaining six poems from this period are contained in the collection Anthologia latina (Lipsiae /Leipzig/ 1869, 1870).
Medieval authors are predominantly anonymous though their poetry was published in anthologies.7 Some of the poems were evidently written by members of Gallus circle of friends. And it is just as likely that some of the poems were written by the composer himself given the wording of the foreword to Harmoniae morales:»... quidquid poetice conflarepossum ...«.8 This is striking especially for the madrigals linked to Handl's pseudonym which in Latin means »cock«: Gallus amat Venerem, cur? (HM 6). Or perhaps in the feminine, »hen«: Quam gallina suum parit ovum (HM 7).
The formal unifying element in both books is language, for which he chose the »queen of languages«, Latin, which as mentioned in the foreword to Harmoniae morales, was unjustly neglected in artistic circles despite being the »most renown and most widespread language here and everywhere«.9 And as mentioned above, secular madrigals of the 16th century typically use the national language, the vernacular. This use of Latin is
Of fundamental significance for Gallus' moralia are, first and foremost: Carminumproverbalium, totius humane vite statum breviter delineantium, nec non utilem de moribus doctrinam iucunde proponentium Loci communes, Basel 1576; Andreas Gartner: Proverbia Dicteria, Ethicam etMoralem Doctrinam complectentia, Frankfurt a. M., 1575.
Heinz Walter Lanzke endeavoured to identify the unknown texts in his dissertation, Die Weltlichen Chorgesange (»Moralia«) von Jacobus Gallus, Mainz 1964, which established the standard for the bulk of the works. This research was partly completed and in some instances the findings were corrected by Pavel Sykora: Texty svétskych skladeb Jacoba Handla-Galla, unpublished magister dissertation, Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts, 1986.
Jacobus Gallus Carniolus (Jacobus Hándl): Harmoniae morales - quatuor vocum. Ed. Dragotin Cvetko, Slovenska matica,
Ljubljana 1966, p. 2.
Ibidem.
exceptional in this genre. We will now examine some of the circumstances which could have inclined the composer to set Latin texts to music.10
Gallus's Prague base was the church, sv. Jan na Zabradli (St. Johannes in Vado, St. John's Church). He rubbed shoulders at the court of Rudolf II, to which his compositional style was suited, and with the Latin humanists in Prague. It is more than likely that at least one of Gallus' Prague circle of humanistically-oriented men of letters contributed poems to moralia. One of the most likely candidates is his friend, Jin Bartholdus, known as Pontanus (died 1614), author of some of the texts he set, such as Epicedion harmonicum, 1589, Panegyrica Iesu Christo. The poet Tomas Mitis (1523-1591), also wrote texts that Gallus set, and he dedicated a poem to the composer, Aeternitas utriusque musicae, included in the Synopsis biblica (1586). Other friends include SalomonFrencelius (15611601), other authors of the anthology In tumulum Iacobi Handelii Carnioli...,11 which was published shortly after the composer's death: Jan Kerner (Ioan Khernerus, died 1612), Martin Galli, Jan (Ioan) Sequenides Cernovicky (Czernovicenus, 1569-1633); there is another author known only by his initials, IMV.
This almost blind admiration for Latin which resulted from not only the untraditional use of this language for madrigals, but also displays the author's attitude to this »queen of languages«, carries the spirit of the age of humanism which Italian academies brought to Prague and with whom Gallus was in frequent contact.
Apart from the cited passage from the foreword to Harmoniae morales, there is another text amounting to a defence of Latin, the madrigal Linguarum non est praestantior ulla Latina (HM 49). A poem by an unknown author, composed as an elegiac distich and largely unrhymed, celebrates Latin and propagates its essential knowledge for the educated man:
Linguarum non est praestantior ulla Latina, quam quisquis nescit, barbarus ille manet;
sis Italus, Gallus, Germanus sive Polonus, nil nisi vulgaris diceris arte rudis.
Quisquis Latine nequit, nulla se iactet in arte, nil scit, nil didicit, barbarus ille manet.12
This poem resonates, in reaction to the deterioration of contemporary art, with a defence of admirable poetry (Casta novenarum, HM 5), as well as with a celebration of music: Musica noster amor (M 28) and Musica Musarum germana (M 29).
We will now turn our attention to more formal aspects of the verses. Poems originating in Antiquity, which form the bulk in moralia, are written in classical metres,
Dragotin Cvetko developed an interesting account of the use of Latin in Handl's madrigals, in which he highlights the fact that the composer was equally a foreigner in both Bohemia and Moravia. Handl set neither Czech texts nor German despite spending some of his life in Austria. This begs the question to what extent he was conscious of his Slovenian roots. (D. Cvetko: Iacobus Handl Gallus vocatus Carniolanus. Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti /Academia scientiarum et artium slovenica/, Ljubljana 1991, pp. 102-103.)
In tumulum Iacobi Handelii Carnioli, insignis musicaepracticae artificis, qui Pragae IIII. Idus Iuliipie in Christo obdormivit annoj 1591.
No language exceeds Latin, / he who knows it not will forever be a barbarian; / whether Italian, Gaul, German or Pole, / you will be regarded as vulgar and uncultured. / He who knows not the Latin tongue, let him not glory in any art, / nothing does he know, nothing has he learnt, he will forever be a barbarian.


mostly dactylic hexameters and elegiac distichs; less frequent are the dactylic pentameters and the hendecasyllabus phalaecius, which are governed by the rules of ancient prosody.
Considerably fewer are examples of the rhythmic poetry typical of the Middle Ages. In fact, across the entire moralia, there are only three rhythmic poems, and they are in the book Harmoniae morales. The first of them, Currit parvus lepulus (HM 3), is a young hare's lament, fleeing hunters and their dogs. It ends by making its point as a searing lesson of life, but depicted comically. The moral poem, Cogitate miseri (HM 14), mentioned above, is made up of goliard verses, a fingerprint of medieval student verse. The last example is the poem En ego campana (HM 43), whose protagonist is a bell recounting its essential and irreplaceable role in the lives of the people.
An important phenomenon for moralia is the imitation of ancient models. Even this tendency bears the spirit of Italian academies, where an unrestrained admiration for Latin is carried in the extreme results even as far as the production of falsifications. The majority of poems set to music in the moralia, whose texts appeared in the Middle Ages, try to appear related to the traditions of Antiquity, at least in their formal aspects. The poems are composed in classical metres taken from the style of classical writers. The likeness is not entirely faithful, however, owing to the introduction of rhyme as a new element. Metrical poetry interweaves with the rhythmical and thus a rhythmical-metrical poetry arises, poetry written in rhymed dactylic hexameters or pentameters.
Formally this poetry follows the style of the ancient models while at the same time reproduces the structure which corresponds better to the literary and conceptual taste of the Middle Ages. At the same time could be mastered up to a point, especially the dactylic hexameters and elegiac distich. The rules of ancient prosody are on the whole intact, an insufficient feeling for the number of syllables however ensures that in many instances it was little more than an attempt to emulate ancient metres. This was particularly evident in the errors concerning the length of syllables. As already mentioned, there were various methods of rhyming in the classical verse schema. Gallus' moralia, contains the following types of rhyme:
•	versus leonini - rhyming with the word before the caesura in the third metrical foot (penthemimeres) with the last word of the hexameter;
•	versus caudati - rhyming at the end of two verses;
•	versus unisoni - in two hexameters rhyming the last word before the caesura with the last verse (aaaa);
•	versus cruciferi - with the chiastic rhyme scheme (abba);
•	tripertiti dactylici - in every verse the ends of the second and fourth metrical feet rhyme with each other, the end of each hexameter rhymes with one another.13 Gallus chooses from the poetry of Antiquity models whose content corresponds to
the conception of the period and of the given theme. In several of the works he manages to link ancient poetry with that of the Middle Ages, and on occasions with contemporary poetry. The linking of various literary sources into a single whole is achieved through the affinity of their themes. Sometimes there are medieval verses adapted to Antiquity
See Jana Nechutovä, Josef Hejnic: jvod do studia stfedoveke latiny. Univerzita J. E. Purkyne, Brno 1977.
l;
- becoming for example, the second part of an elegiac distich. Elsewhere however, this method leads to forms that are imperfect formally and at the same time asymmetrical. For example, the linking of a hexameter with an elegiac distich.
As an example of such an attempt at synthesis, consider Tempore felici (M 2):
Tempore felici, multi numerantur amid Cum fortuna perit, nullus amicus erit. Donec eris felix, multos numerabis amicos Tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris.
The poem binds the medieval double verse and the antique model into a single whole. Both parts have form and content in common. The medieval text (Carmina proverbalia 9) was created in the mould of Ovid's famous verses (Tristia I) which treats the inconstancy of grace and friendship. The affection (i.e., the quality of friendship) changes according to whether the person is prospering well or not.
There is a striking similarity between the individual verses of the ancient and medieval poems which we present as a derivative work in the second place. In both hexameters, there is a concord among four words which are distinguishable only in their grammatical forms:
felix - felici multos - multi numerabis - numerantur amicos - amici.
This permutation is nothing more than time-setting at the beginning of the verses: Donec eris - tempore. The second verses expresses a sad truth: if fortune turns her back on us, (... tempora si fuerint nubila, Ovid; cum fortuna perit, CP) we no longer prosper and so our friends desert us: ... solus eris (Ovid); ... nullus amicus erit (CP).
The medieval texts took Ovid as a model even in formal aspects. The imitation of the elegiac distich, at least as far as the observation of the regular quantity of syllables is concerned, is perfect; »unstylish« exclusively through rhymes, the poet here creates versus leonini:
felici - amici perit - erit.
The combination of ancient verses with those of the Middle Ages exudes erudition and is supposed to evoke a sense of continuity between renaissance humanism and the Latin poetry of classical Rome. While the poetry has a unified theme without catharsis (an imitating poet merely repeating the standpoint of the Roman author), the result is unnatural: unlike ancient unrhymed poetry, the medieval verses are rhymed and they even have internal rhymes. Such treatments employing ancient models are not unusual just in this epoch. This appears for example, in the eighth book of madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi, Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi (Warlike and Amorous Madrigals, ed.1648 in Venice) in the poem Ogni amante e guerrier, an adaptation of Ovid (Amores I. 9) by Rinuccini in fact.
The mannerist poetic techniques reflect this intellectual exhibitionism. In the opinion of several scholars, the inauspicious Trident council (1545-1563) also had an effect on the formal aspect of mannerism. The emphasis on the infallibility of the church which, in the person of the pope, is the bearer of the one right view, excluded all non-official views. Science and philosophy became suspicious disciplines within whose framework was permitted at best vacuous »Plato-ising«. According to Francesco de Sanctis,14 banning the cultivation of ideas influenced the unprecedented development of the form.
Presaging the next generation of Italian marinists, several shortcomings such as rhetoric, verbosity, affectation and artifice manifest in the moralia. It might even be worth raising the issue of meraviglia, as advanced by Gallus' younger contemporary, Giambattista Marino (1569-1625). Amazement and wonder, the basic expressive means of the Marino School, can be elicited by a refined Latinisation - Latin as a characteristic of sacred madrigals, though not secular ones - and an effective combination of ancient verses, and in some cases of verses from late Antiquity, with medieval ones. For that matter, the concept of morality is in some aspects similar: Marino's extensive work the mythological epic, Adonis (Adone, Paris 1623), is full of insincere portraits of love manifesting as empty displays of virtuosity. It is unified by a would-be moralistic closing: »boundless pleasure ending in torment.« With such originality, Gallus is categorised into a line of manneristic culture: his sacred compositions and his compositional style both meet the criteria of the late renaissance.
The poetry of Gallus' secular cycle has only a superficial formal perfection. The technique of »continuous commentary« is on one hand appropriate for medieval culture as a whole, and yet the moralia is not concerned with a creative commentary - the poet does not develop the thoughts of his predecessors. It is as if he would hide behind Horace, Ovid, Catullus, Virgil, Martial, Tibullus, Maximian, Claudian, Ausonius and be afraid to express his own opinion. Is this formalism a mere result of creative impotence or an expression of fear?
Gallus spent his whole life writing sacred music above all else. He wrote an extensive foreword to the cycle Harmoniae morales in which a substantial part forms a defence »of the stepping down from the hallowed lofts into the streets«. He asserts in this that »the major part of this composition dwells on supremely virtuous moral questions and he simply cannot abide any form of salaciousness whatsoever«. It is possible that the composer was afraid of an unfavourable reception to the profane content of his compositions, and so he hid under the veil of a moralising that was difficult to criticise.
The foreword to the 1596 Moralia, written by Gallus' brother Georgius, is imbued with a similarly defensive spirit. And at the end of the publication of the same collection in Douai (Belgium) in 1603, one finds the note: »In his Moralibus Cantilenis Iacobi Handelini nihil est quodpietatem aut bonos mores offendat.« (In these moral songs by Jacobus Handl there is nothing that would offend piety and good morals.) Signed Georgius Coluenerius, S. Theol. Licentiatus et Professor, librorumque visitator (Saint. Theology Licentiate and Professor, as the inspector of books). Latin is not the only language the humanists like to employ, but it was essentially the official language of the church.
Francesco de Sanctis: Storia della Letteratura italiana. Editori riuniti, Roma 1948.
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These defences are surely in place since Gallus managed to smuggle into the moralia poems that were simply amoral. An example of such an amoral poem is the celebration of the Archpoet (HM 36), one of the most famous representatives of medieval secular poetry (died around 1140). The Archpoet composes poetry for a thousand poets, while at the same time imbibes for another thousand:
Archipoeta facit versus pro mille poetis, etpro mille aliis Archipoeta bibit.
In closing this short excursion into the world of the Latin works of Gallus, we have observed that the serious moralistic verses are set to music with a detached renaissance polyphony and are a long way from the pessimism of the manneristic generation of Gesualdo. Even though Gallus does not overlook serious conceptualisations of life, as can be seen in the »mors« (accentuating the pedal, for example) rather than abrupt mood swings, as we know from the madrigals of Monteverdi, he does react to the text with an intellectual objectivity of musical figures. Such features place Gallus more at home in the spiritual world of the renaissance. And another aspect connecting him with renaissance ideals is his joy from music as such, the joy of the numerous linguistic and musical games, the use of sound painting, and even the joy of Latin versification.
Povzetek
Proti koncu svojega življenja je Jacobus Handl Gallus (1550-1591), znameniti slovenski skladatelj, ki je deloval v Pragi, napisal okoli 100 latinskih madrigalov. Te skladbe so izšle v dveh zbirkah: Harmoniae morales (1589) in Moralia (1596, 1603). Razen moralizirajoče vsebine je latinščina
povezovalni element obeh ciklusov, kar vsekakor ni značilnost madrigalnega stila. Gallus je uglasbil posnitve antičnih, poznoantičnih in srednjeveških avtorjev, pri čemer je skušal povezati klasičen in srednjeveški verz. Kar zadeva moraliziranje, ki se pojavlja v večini pesnitev, se vsiljuje misel o tem, ali Gallus iskreno tako misli, ali pa je le-to samo pretveza za maniristično poigravanje.