Säbens Ehr‘ und Zier 2024

Baroque festive music for a South Tyrolean nunnery

The chronicle of the South Tyrolean Benedictine convent of Säben reads: 'On 17 October [1691], the highly reputable Father Romanus Weichlein [...] arrived from Salzburg [...], a gentleman highly experienced in composition and musical instruments. in 1685, sisters 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 of Lambach - not only because, as parish vicar of the small Waldviertel community of Oberkirchen in the Zwettl district, he is said to have killed his housekeeper and cook in self-defence. Weichlein had received first-class musical training from the famous Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber in Salzburg. He earned great merit in Säben. When he left the monastery for Lambach in 1705, the chronicler noted: "He has 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 [...]. It was in and for Säben that Weichlein composed his exquisite collection of sonatas Encaenia Musices (1695), published in print by Jakob Christoph Wagner in Innsbruck, exquisite high baroque chamber music in the manner of Biber, but with its very own flavour: magnificent, solemn and brilliant, an impressive testimony to the excellent quality of Säben monastery music under Weichlein's direction.
A co-operation project with the Tiroler Landesmuseen & the musikmuseum CD series

Romanus Weichlein
Encænia Musices Op. 1 (Jakob Christoph Wagner - Innsbruck, 1695) & trumpet duets
Christian Gruber & Martin Patscheider - natural trumpets
Gottfried von der Goltz & Karoline Echeverri - baroque violins
German Echeverri & Nina Pohn - baroque violas
Annekatrin Beller - baroque violoncello
Barbara Fischer - Violone
Andreas Arend - theorbo
Peter Waldner - positive organ