Heinrich Biber, a 17th- century Bohemian Catholic, took the Psalmist’s exhortation to “sing unto the Lord a new song” further than most other composers of Western music.
Biber’s innovations included a set of Rosary Sonatas, also known as the Mystery Sonatas, 15 short pieces for violin and continuo, with a final work for solo violin.
Unpublished until after their rediscovery in the late 19th century, these Rosary Sonatas required that the violin be retuned for 14 of the 16 individual pieces, making performance of the set a fantastic technical challenge. It is not even practical for a violinist to try to play through all of them on a single instrument, given the number of retunings needed.
Several later classical composers have used a bit of retuning to make a musical effect, of which perhaps the most celebrated example is the spookily retuned violin that begins Saint-Saëns’ ghostly Danse Macabre. Yet none of the transitory retunings called for in other music by the likes of Pachelbel, Vivaldi, Telemann, Haydn, Paganini, Mahler, Stravinsky, Bartók and Ligeti even begin to approach the extreme and adamant experimentation of Biber.
This resolve to impose unfamil-iarity on performers and listeners effectively recounts the Gospel story anew in sound. Fifteen pieces correspond to the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries.
Unfamiliar tuning on the violin conveys intensely original emotion at times, adding freshness and immediacy to the episodes. Yet even in evoking the most tragic events, there is a graceful terpsichorean impression, especially in ideal performances like those by soloist Igor Ruhadze and the Ensemble Violini Capricciosi (Brilliant Classics).
More than challenging instrumentalists to regain equilibrium in unaccustomed sound worlds, Biber genuinely believed in the spiritual content of violin music.
He repeatedly declared in Latin dedications to his printed works what he termed a “Faith in Fiddles” (Fidem in Fidibus).
He expected his performers to approach the instrument afresh for each Mystery, as if accepting new strictures was part of the inner spiritual journey. As a result, Rosary Sonatas is sometimes as stylish as a dance version of the New Testament starring Fred Astaire.
However, Biber’s contemporaries were not entirely delighted with his creative breakthroughs. One rival, the now-forgotten Johann Jacob Walther, slated Biber in the preface to a 1688 work, as a violinist who “squeaks now on two or more strings falsely tuned ad nauseam.”
The implied contempt suggests that to some of his fellow musicians, Biber’s new permutations were as distasteful as today’s traditionalists find current avant garde atonality.
The Rosary Sonatas won unprecedented acclaim starting in the 1970s with the advent of the authentic instrument approach to classical music, although few violinists have added the extra burden of trying to play them in the more folksy-sounding instrumental style of Biber’s era, in which sheep-gut strings were attached to a curved bow.
Biber’s religious illumination in music was not limited to this inexhaustibly compelling work. For centuries an imposing Missa Salisburgensis à 53 voci (53-part Salzburg Mass, 1682), a setting of the Mass for 16 voices and 37 instrumentalists, or a total of 53 different parts, was attributed to different composers.
Only in the past decade or so have musicologists generally accepted that the only one who could have composed it was Biber, inspired by the grandiose interior of the Salzburg Cathedral.
Considered the largest surviving piece of sacred Baroque music, Missa Salisburgensis throws string ensembles, oboes, cornetts, trumpets, and timpani at listeners.
Its vastness has appealed to many, especially in recordings by the Catalan conductor Jordi Savall. Yet some may prefer the slightly more intimate, albeit bracingly invigorating Missa Bruxellensis (Brussels Mass, c.1700). The latter work, also unsigned but universally attributed to Biber, had to wait until the year 2000 for its first recording, by Savall and his Concert des Nations.
Perhaps the tenderest and most humane of Biber’s masses is the Missa Sancti Henrici (Mass of Saint Henry, 1697) written for the occasion of his daughter Anna Magdalena’s entry into the novitiate at Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg.
To pay homage to the Emperor Henry II, the second founding saint of the convent, Anna Magdalena assumed the name Maria Rosa Henrica. In a charming recording (BMG Classics) by the Regensburger Domspatzen, the Regensburg Cathedral choir from Bavaria, Missa Sancti Henrici is a comforting, highly civilised conversation among trebles, tenors and baritones.
Biber also composed smaller-scaled sacred works that are well worth hearing. These include a picturesque undated suite, Die Pauernkirchfahrt (Peasants’ Church Procession) for six instrumentalists. The music evokes rural workers gathering in church to sing a hymn to the Virgin and then enjoying a knees-up at a tavern. The music begins in coyly decorous form and develops into a worldly collection of good-humoured jigs. Nikolaus Harnoncourt, leading an ensemble in 1971 (Telefunken), recorded a winning version of this work.
These and other achievements have persuaded many devotees of sacred music that Biber deserves to rank alongside the other great Bs of classical music, including Bach and Beethoven.
Yet his rediscovery is surprisingly recent. Although his children included musicians who worked in the Salzburg court, as did their father, they apparently could not persuade the public that his compositions, which quickly sounded dated if not perversely difficult, remained performance-worthy after his demise in 1704.
For years, classical music meant new sounds written to order, and only occasionally were older works deemed worthy of revival.
Also, it must be added that al- though little is known about Biber’s personal life, what has been uncover- ed does not necessarily provide the most alluring picture of him.
In the late 1600s, Biber was employed by Karl II von Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn, Bishop of Olomouc, Moravia. Biber was based in the modest town of Kroměříž, now in the Czech Republic. There he was very highly regarded and, by all accounts, acclaimed for his virtuoso violin playing.
However, the lure of a larger music capital proved irresistible and Biber took the occasion of being sent on a mission in 1670 by the bishop to a town near Innsbruck, Austria, to haggle for instruments, to abandon his professional responsibilities. Rather than meeting the instrument maker as scheduled, Biber, then in his late 20s, mysteriously reappeared in the employment of Maximilian Gandolf von Kuenburg, Archbishop of Salzburg.
His former employer was loath to offend the archbishop, so he made no effort to compel Biber to return to his contractual duties. Six years later the offended Kastelkorn finally issued him release papers.
Biber would stay in Salzburg for the remainder of his life, apparently feeling no guilt for his apparently duplicitous careerism.
Fortunately, no such betrayal of confidence is audible in Biber’s works, and today’s listeners can relish such cutting edge achievements as the Rosary Sonatas, Missa Bruxellensis, Missa Sancti Henrici and Peasants’ Church Procession, authoritative performances of which are readily available online.
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