Geistliche Musik im Stift Wilhering/Sacred music in Wilhering Abbey

In 2016 Wagner Verlag launched the series Geistliche Musik im Stift Wilhering/Sacred music in Wilhering Abbey in collaboration with Stift Wilhering and its organist and music archivist Stefan Ikarus Kaiser.

The series presents editions of works closely related to Wilhering. As a rule, these will be unpublished works from the rich historical archive of the monastery itself, as well as works that were either written specifically for the monastery or whose composers have a close relationship with Wilhering.

The inaugural volume is an edition of a large orchestral work from the Biedermeier era. Its composer, Mathias Pernsteiner (inset), served as an organist at Wilhering in 1822 and 1823. This Mass, the so-called Missa posta in musica, was dedicated to Bruno Detterle, who was Wilhering’s Abbot at the time; it has not been previously published or performed. The work is an outstanding testimony to the Austrian church music of the period.

Below, a look at the monastery’s church, which has been called “the most outstanding Rococo ecclesiastical space in Austria”.

Missa Sancta Trinitas

In 2016 the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance issued Missa Sancta Trinitas (4 vv). (B-Tc A58), a critical edition of the anonymous Missa Sancta Trinitas—which survives only in the manuscript B-Tc A58, housed at the Archives et Bibliothèque de la Cathédrale de Tournai—together with a critical edition of the four-part motet Sancta Trinitas.

The edition, part of CESR’s Le corpus des messes anonymes series, was prepared by Anne-Emmanuelle Ceulemans.

Above (click to enlarge) and below, the Sanctus from the Mass.

Motet database catalog online

Developed by Jennifer Thomas of the University of Florida’s School of Music, Motet database catalog online indexes manuscripts and printed anthologies of motets produced between 1475 and 1600 and contains about 33,000 motet and Mass Proper appearances. Each part of each motet is indexed as a separate record; the total number of records stands at 50,040.

The database allows scholars the flexibility to investigate the motet and its many contexts from multiple vantage points simultaneously by enabling sorting on various fields separately and in combination, a type of inquiry that is not possible on a large scale with printed books. Users can also search for specific words or groups of words, for particular names, or for many items in combination. Scholars with specific questions can isolate the data that will best serve their needs.