CD 29

Music from Stams Monastery VII

The music historian Hildegard Herrmann-Schneider has been working on the music archive of   Stams   Monastery   for several years. She reorganized the archive and is currently preparing  a  comprehensive scholarly  catalogue,  thus making  a  detailed  survey of  the  complete  collection possible  for  the  first  time. Consequently,   the   music curator of the Ferdinandeum, Manfred Schneider was able acquire  copies  of  most  of the monastery’s manuscripts and printed music that refers to the Tyrol for the Tiroler Landesmuseum.Heputtogether various concert programs from these resources and is having them  performed  one  after another and documented on CDs. One of the remarkable events in the course of these activities  was  the  festive concert at the monastery church of Stams marking the closing of the 1995 Tyrolean Exhibition. For the fi rst time in over 200 years, an audience was able to listen to the impressive works of sacred music by the major Bohemian composer Johann Zach   (1699-1773).   Zach had  often  stayed  at  Stams Monastery for longer periods of  time. The  music-loving fathers greatly admired Zach, who felt comfortable there and also left the monastery his most important works, including the festive, large-scale, virtuoso Missa Sancti Thomae Aquinatis (tracks 13-26) and his solemn Requiem in D Minor (tracks 1-11), for copies to be made. With its collection of over 60 manuscripts,  some  of  them autographs, the music archive of Stams Monastery has the world’s biggest collection of works by Zach. In his lifetime he was considered one of the three great composers of his generation  and  was  highly esteemed far and wide.

Track 1, 2:00
Requiem aeternam
Johann Zach
(1699-1773)

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