It was perhaps in the early 2010s when I first stumbled upon Bohemian-born composer Johann Baptist Wanhal. His symphonies, in particular the three from a recording by Matthias Bamert and the London Mozart Players, were gaining in popularity and receiving increasing play time on my local classical music radio station.
Intrigued by his style, not least by his use of minor-key Sturm-und-Drang-like dramatism, I decided to have a look at what else he might have composed. Thankfully, works attributed to Wanhal had been cataloged by scholars Paul Bryan (symphonies) and Alexander Weinmann (non-symphonic works). These indices reveal an extraordinarily impressive corpus of works; his output of over 1,300 compositions apparently included at least 100 quartets and over 70 symphonies. Excitingly, the catalog also mentions over 100 sacred works with at least 58 masses. As a life-long singer and avid (amateur) performer of church music, to me this presented an interesting potential. Unfortunately, only two of these masses appear to have been published, the rest survives only in manuscripts and copies in a multitude of archives strewn all across Europe.
The Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) proved an invaluable resource at revealing where these forgotten pieces may be hiding. As luck would have it, copies of two masses listed in Weinmann's catalog are being kept at the music library of Einsiedeln Abbey which was but a stone's throw away from where I lived at the time. In 2015, I reached out to archivist and librarian P. Lukas Helg who graciously invited me to view those manuscripts at the abbey. This marked the beginning of this journey.
It was clear from the entries in RISM that these sources would be copies in separate performance parts, and the scoring and movements were also listed. However, other than single-voice incipits from the Kyries, no other information was available. The actual nature of the works would thus only reveal itself upon inspection.
On the afternoon of my scheduled appointment at the library I was warmly greeted by the archivist who had already prepared the two manuscripts for viewing. Unfortunately, P. Lukas was not able to shed any more light onto the provenance of these sources. It is not known how or even when they came into the possession of Einsiedeln Abbey. It seems that the documents alone must speak for themselves. While he had other duties to attend, I was then left to inspect and photograph the centuries-old pages. I couldn't help but wonder how long it had been since someone read through them, much less when the music they contained was last heard.
Since the works were in separate parts and thus without immediate context, it was difficult — at least for an amateur like me — to get a clear picture of what I had in front of me without reassembling it into a score first. However, several peculiarities became apparent fairly quickly that started to cast doubt on the authenticity of the attribution to Wanhal. Many of these have since been pointed out in the respective entries of the Catalogus novus Wanhali, a new catalog of Wanhal's work that was not yet available then. At the time, I had also reached out a few times to the Johann Baptist Wanhal Association to inquire about the state of the musicological research into Wanhal's masses. Unfortunately, that was not crowned with much success; perhaps because it was non-existent or in its very early stages.
Nevertheless, I decided to proceed in my effort to transcribe the manuscript parts so they can be assembled into scores. Even if it these masses were not composed by Wanhal, and even if they are at times of at least questionable musical quality, it seemed like these ancient parts deserved to be reassembled into a single score after enduring in obscurity for so long.
And so, over the course of many years, I would return to these two masses every once in a while and continue the transcription. I did this in no particular order or fashion, just depending on how the mood hit me. I am not qualified by any means of providing any musicological judgment, but every so often, a freshly transcribed movement or passage will bring a smile to my face (and ears). Surely, humanity has produced many works that are best confined to a dusty shelf in a dark archive's basement, but I do not believe these two masses should be among those.
- Catalogus novus Wanhali: Nokki dubious 4
- Weinmann Verzeichnis XIX:F5
- RISM: 400013336
- Working directory: nokki-d4
- Catalogus novus Wanhali: Nokki dubious 6
- Weinmann Verzeichnis XIX:G6
- RISM: 400013340
- Working directory: nokki-d6
PDF scores are automatically generated every time this repository is updated. These can be found on the project's GitHub Pages website.
Some audio/video renderings can be watched on the Samples page.