Concert

Baroque festive music for a South Tyrolean nunnery

The chronicle of the South Tyrolean Benedictine convent of Säben reads: “On 17 October [1691], Father Romanus Weichlein […], highly experienced in composition and musical instruments, arrived from Salzburg.”

In 1685, nuns from the Nonnberg Abbey near Salzburg had settled on the Säbener Klosterberg, and six years later they brought in Romanus Weichlein, a monastery musician who had already made a name for himself in his home convent in Lambach (not only because he killed a monastery cook, allegedly in self-defence). Weichlein had received first-class musical training from the famous Biber in Salzburg. He earned great merit in Säben. When he left the monastery for Lambach in 1705, the chronicler noted: “He had been a capelan and instructor in music there for 13 years, brought the music of Säben to a much greater perfection, composed many musicals and brought much benefit to the monastery […]”.

In and for Säben, Weichlein composed his collection “Encaenia musices”, exquisite high baroque chamber music in the manner of Biber, but with its very own flavour, solemn and brilliant, a testimony to the excellent quality of Säben’s monastery music under Weichlein’s direction.

Romanus Weichlein’s “Encaenia musices”, Innsbruck 1695

Ensemble vita & anima
Christian Gruber and Martin Patscheider (natural trumpets)
Gottfried von der Goltz (baroque violin and conductor)
Peter Waldner (positive organ)