Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber
Jonathan De Souza
Known as the “Mystery Sonatas”, or sometimes the “Rosary” Sonatas (“Rosenkranz” in German), each one is a meditation on one of the fifteen sacred mysteries contemplated during the saying of the Rosary, i.e. aspects of the life of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. It is thought that Biber wrote this music for performances during Rosary Week—the first week of October—to assist the Confraternity of the Rosary in Salzburg with their private devotions. Each sonata corresponds to one of the fifteen Mysteries, and a passacaglia for solo violin which closes the collection, possibly relating to the Feast of the Guardian Angel which, at the time, was a celebration that took place on different dates near those of the rosary processions in September and October. Unpublished until after their rediscovery in the late 19th century, these Rosary Sonatas required that the violin be retuned for fourteen of the sixteen individual pieces, making performance of the set a fantastic technical challenge.
Listen to the Manze–Egarr interpretation on YouTube
Or follow this link to listen to the Holloway performance of the Sonatas.
Click here to read the excellent technical article by Jonathan De Souza, “Instrumental Transformations in Heinrich Biber’s Mystery Sonatas”, or read the original HTML at Music Theory Online.
The Mystery Sonatas transform the violinist… they recall a paradoxical relation between sound, embodiment, and spirituality that Braxton Shelley observes in African-American gospel performance, where “intensified physicality actually loosens the believer’s relation to the material world, enhancing his or her connection to what is often called ‘the spiritual realm’”. While the religious scenes in Biber’s manuscript can guide musical interpretation, they are also brought to life in performance—a kind of performance that, for Biber and his contemporaries, was both musical and devotional. The retuned violin thus opens up new ways of knowing, feeling, and experiencing the world. To change one’s instrument, ultimately, is to change oneself.
Click here to read an article by Michael De Sapio on Biber and the Sonatas.
What makes Biber my favorite composer is the way his music reconciles the spiritual and the earthly, and earthy, aspects of existence. In Biber’s world the sacred and the secular were integrated in a way we can only imagine today. According to musicologist Charles E. Brewer, music “was thought to have the power to make the most sacred rituals pleasing and to allow even the most secular entertainments to be imbued with piety.” Music was a human reflection of divine order and as such pervaded all of reality, “whether it was at a table filled with culinary delights or a table upon which the mystery of the Eucharist was performed.”
On Scordatura
Scordatura is a deliberate non-standard tuning of a string instrument, chosen to change available chords and fingerings, resonance, range or timbre. The scordatura gives the violin a brighter, more piercing sound, contributing to the eerie, almost otherworldly character of the music. See here an article on cross-tuning more generally. There are some styles of traditional music for which cross-tuning is essential. Among the most significant of these are Romanian lautareasca, Romani or Gypsy music, American Old Time, and Norwegian hardingfele fiddling.
Through the scordatura, Biber makes the violin transcend the natural and approach the supernatural, or at least break through the bounds of the possible.
Score Manuscript
Follow this link to view the images of the original manuscript score at the National Library of Germany.
