Forgotten Music
P. Ambrosius Stierlin’s (1767-1806) Missa VI
We‘re in the year 1798: French revolutionary troops invade the little Benedictine Abbey Mariastein south of Basel, occupy and loot it; the „Helvetic Republic“ is established, the monastery secularised. At this time, P. Ambros Stierlin is thirty-one years old, he joined the community nine years earlier. He teaches Philosophy and Theology at the school of the monastery, but above all, he shapes the musical life of the Abbey. Just eleven years younger than Wolfang Amadeus Mozart, he initiates an exceptionally early reception of the music of his contemporaries Haydn and Mozart in Mariastein. But he is also a composer himself; 106 works are listed in a catalogue written ten years after his death. Like the rest of his community, he has to leave the monastery and only after six years it is possible for him to return and take charge of the school for the children of the surrounding area established in the pilgrim‘s pub. It is a very short return, because two years later P. Ambros dies, only 39 years old.
On June 19 2022 the ensemble ad·petram performs the newly edited mass VI by P. Ambros Stierlin in a festive service at the Abbey of Mariastein.
