Capella Vitalis Berlin - Romanus Weichlein: Encaenia Musices (2015)

A Musical Feast, Encaenia Musices, is the name Romanus Weichlein chose for his Opus 1 collection of twelve sonatas, published in 1695. In its preface Romanus Weichlein states that he composed the pieces ‘for the ear, rather than for the eye’, and that the musicians should feel free to shorten, lengthen and rearrange them as desired. The sonatas are in the style typically found in Austria at the time: freely composed violin and trumpet lines above an ostinato baseline emerging as a virtuosic baroque musical feast. Romanus Weichlein was born into a family of musicians in Linz, given the name Andreas Franz Weichlein. Upon entering the Monastery at Lambach he took up Romanus as his monk’s name. The CD cover of this brilliantly performed recording by capella vitalis berlin presents the family shield of the Abbot Severin Blass, to whom the Weichlein dedicated his Canon on the Posthorn, for four violins. This canon is found today preserved in the monastery on a copperplate, and provides a light interlude and addition to the sonatas of Encaenia Musices.

Romanus Weichlein (1652-1706) received his first musical training at the abbey of Lambach and entered the Benedictine Order in 1671. He went to Salzburg to study at the University where he became a doctor of philosophy in 1673. Here he also got acquainted with Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. Returning to Lambach, he later became chaplain and musical director of the Benedictine convent of Nonnberg in Salzburg.

His oeuvre isn't very large, and it is quite possible that some of it has been lost. What has been left is this collection of sonatas as well as a number of masses. Encaenia Musices contains 12 sonatas for two violins, two violas and bc, with two additional trumpets in the Sonatas I, V and XII. There are similarities with music by other Austrian composers, like Biber and Schmelzer. Even so Weichlein's sonatas have their very individual traces as well.