Biber: The Mystery Sonatas
Sonatas 1 - 15 & Passacaglia

Walter Reiter with Cordaria

-  Two CD Set  -

Programme Notes

Heinrich Biber was born in the small town of Wartenberg (now Straz pod Ralskem) near Reichenberg (Liberec) in northern Bohemia, the son of a gamekeeper; he was baptized on the 12th of August, 1644. Nothing is known for sure about his career until the late 1660s, when he is recorded as being in the service of Karl Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn, prince-bishop of Olomouc in Moravia, though there is evidence that at some point he worked for Prince von Eggenberg at Graz in Styria. Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn maintained an important musical ensemble in his castle at Kromeríz in central Moravia, and it is likely that Biber received much of his musical training there, perhaps from Pavel Josef Vejvanovský, the Kapellmeister. In any event, Biber left Kromeríz in the autumn of 1670, apparently without permission, and shortly afterwards entered the service of Maximilian Gandolph, Archbishop of Salzburg. He remained there for the rest of his life, becoming vice-Kapellmeister in 1679 and Kapellmeister in 1684. In later life he also seems to have been well known at the Bavarian court in Munich and the Imperial court in Vienna; on the 5th of December 1690 he was awarded the title of nobility by the emperor, hence the ‘von’ often added to his name.

Biber’s music was never entirely forgotten in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mainly because it had the reputation of being fearsomely difficult. Charles Burney wrote in 1789 that ‘of all the violin players of the last century Biber seems to have been the best, and his solos are the most difficult and fanciful of any music I have seen of the same period’. Burney’s knowledge of Biber’s music seems to have been limited to the printed Sonatae violino solo (1681). This collection requires a formidable technique, and explores a number of virtuoso devices, though scordatura (the deliberate mis-tuning of the violin) is called for in only two of the sonatas, and is used in a relatively restrained manner. Burney would doubtless have been even more astonished by Biber’s music had he known the 15 Mystery or Rosary sonatas, in which 14 different scordatura tunings are explored. The set is Biber’s best-known music today, though it was never printed in his lifetime, and remained unknown until it was finally published in 1905.

The Mystery or Rosary sonatas survive in a single manuscript source, now in the Bavarian State Library in Munich. The manuscript is in the hand of a copyist, and is extremely carefully and beautifully laid out. Each sonata, for instance, is prefaced by an appropriate engraving, apparently cut from a devotional book and pasted into the score. The manuscript begins with a dedication to Archbishop Max Gandolph, which has led scholars to suggest that it was a personal offering to his employer, though another possibility is that the manuscript was intended to serve as printer’s copy for a publication that, for one reason or another, never reached fruition. In any case, the manuscript lacks a title-page, which explains the confusion over the title of the collection: we do not know what formal title Biber gave it, though the sonatas are called ‘Mystery’ because he closed his dedication with the words ‘I have consecrated the whole to the honour of the XV Sacred Mysteries which you promote so strongly’.

The 15 ‘mysteries’ or meditations on the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary are divided into three cycles of five. The Joyful Mysteries are based on episodes in Jesus’s early life, from the Annunciation to the Finding in the Temple; the Sorrowful Mysteries deal with episodes in the Passion, from the Sweating of Blood to the Crucifixion, while the Glorious Mysteries continue the story from the Resurrection to the Assumption of the Virgin and the Coronation of the Virgin. The cycle was used in the traditional Rosary devotions in September or October, in which the faithful processed around a cycle of paintings or sculptures placed at strategic points in a church or other building. At each ‘station’ (equivalent to the more familiar Stations of the Cross) they would have recited a series of prayers, relating them to the beads on the rosary—hence the alternative title ‘The Rosary Sonatas’. They would also have listened to appropriate biblical passages and commentaries, and presumably to Biber’s musical commentary. As Biber pointed out in his dedication, Max Gandolph was strongly in favour of Rosary devotions, and supported a Confraternity of the Rosary in Salzburg. According to Davitt Moroney, the rooms used by this society still survive, and have paintings of the mysteries around the walls. It was presumably in this building that Biber’s sonatas were first performed.

In the manuscript the 15 Mystery Sonatas are followed by a Passacaglia in G minor for unaccompanied violin. It is prefaced by a picture of a guardian angel leading a child. The rosary devotions were often associated with the feast of the Guardian Angel, celebrated at the time on various dates in September and October, and Biber makes the work suitable for the feast by basing it on four notes descending from tonic to dominant in the minor mode. This bass pattern is the traditional one associated with the Italian passacaglia, but it also happens to be the first line of a contemporary hymn to the Guardian Angel, ‘Einen Engel Gott mir geben’.

We do not know when Biber wrote the Mystery sonatas. Most scholars are agreed that the collection as it exists in the Munich manuscript dates from the middle of the 1670s, perhaps from 1676. However, there are signs that not all the works were written at the same time, or for the same set of circumstances. Sonata no. 11 (The Resurrection) is probably the same work as the one listed in a contemporary inventory as ‘Sonata Paschalis. Surrexit Christus Hodie’, indicating that it was intended for Easter rather than the Rosary devotions in September or October, while no.10 (The Crucifixion) exists in a variant version with programmatic titles that relate to the Siege of Vienna in 1683 rather than the Crucifixion. Furthermore, as Eric Chafe has pointed out, a distinction can be made between those sonatas, such as nos.6 (Christ on the Mount of Olives) and no.11, that seem to have been conceived specifically with a programme in mind, and those that are basically dance suites. Indeed, it is possible that Biber assembled the collection at Salzburg partly from suites he had originally composed at Kromeríz, replacing unsuitable dances with newly composed descriptive movements.

Biber also used scordatura to make his sonatas suitable for the theme of each of the mysteries. Scordatura is notated as if the violin is tuned normally, so that the written music bears little or no resemblance to what is heard. It has two main effects: it makes playing chords in a particular key much easier than with the normal tuning, and it changes the sonority of the instrument. Thus, the collection can be thought of as a voyage of discovery through exotic sonorities, beginning and ending with works that use the standard g-d'-a'-e' tuning, Sonata no.1 (The Annunciation) and the Passacaglia in G minor. Appropriately, the sonatas representing the rest of the Joyful Mysteries mostly use tunings in sharps that give the violin a bright, open sonority. No. 2 (The Visitation) uses a-e'-a'-e'', an A chord and one of the most popular and resonant scordatura tunings. The more withdrawn tuning b-f#'-b'-d'' is suitable for the intimate B minor Sonata no.3 (The Nativity), while the D minor Sonata no.4 (The Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple), a ciacona on a two-section ground bass, uses a-d'-a'-d''. The dance suite no.5 (The Twelve-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple) uses another popular and sonorous A major tuning, a-e'-a'-c#''.

By contrast, the five Sorrowful Mysteries mostly use ‘dissonant’ tunings that mute the violin. The C minor Sonata no.6 (Christ on the Mount of Olives) uses the extraordinary tuning ab-eb'-g'-d'', while the F major Sonata no.7 (The Scourging at the Pillar) compresses the tuning of the violin into an octave, c'-f'-a'-c'', as does the B flat major Sonata no.8 (The Crown of Thorns), tuned d'-f'-bb'-d''; the A minor Sonata no. 9 (Jesus Carries the Cross) is tuned c'-e'-a'-e''. Raising the bottom string a fourth or a fifth in these sonatas adds greatly to the sense of strain and tension in the music. Sonata no.10 in G minor (The Crucifixion) returns to a sonorous, open tuning, g-d'-a'-d''; it consists of a Praeludium, in which we seem to hear Jesus being nailed to the cross, and an extended Aria with variations, which ends with a vivid description of the earthquake that followed his death.

The five Glorious Mysteries are mostly in sonorous tunings. The G major Sonata no.11 (The Resurrection) is the most extreme of all: the two middle strings have to be crossed over at either end to give the extraordinary re-entrant tuning g-g'-d'-d''. It creates an unearthly sonority, appropriate to the theme, and allows the subject of the central movement, the Easter plainsong hymn ‘Surrexit Christus hodie’, to be played on the violin in octaves. The tuning of Sonata no.12 (The Ascension) is a C major chord, c'-e'-g'-c'', which allows the violinist to imitate a choir of trumpets in the ‘Aria tubicinium’; a ‘violone’ provides the timpani part. The D minor Sonata no.13 (Pentecost) uses another A major tuning, a-e'-c#''-e'', to illustrate the ‘rushing, mighty wind’ of Pentecost in rapid swirling thirds. The D major Sonata no.14 (The Assumption of the Virgin) uses a-e'-a'-d'', and largely consists of a lengthy aria with variations based on a simple three-chord ground bass, while the C major Sonata no.15 (The Beatification of the Virgin) uses the tuning g-c'-g'-d''. As with Sonata no.14, there are no biblical texts to be illustrated, and so the work seems to be a purely abstract sequence of movements, ending with a serene sarabande.

Peter Holman, December 2000

The Rosary

The rosary is a devotion to, and in honour of, the Virgin Mary. The word comes from Latin and means a garland of roses, the rose being one of the flowers used to symbolize the Virgin Mary. Although it is sometimes said that St. Dominic instituted the rosary, (certainly the first Confraternity of the Rosary was founded in 1474 by a Dominican, Jacob Springer, in Cologne), centuries before him, monks had begun to recite all 150 psalms on a regular basis. As time went on, it was felt that the lay brothers, the conversi, should have some form of prayer of their own, but as they were illiterate and couldn’t read the psalms, they needed an easily remembered prayer. The prayer first chosen was the ‘Our Father’, and, depending on circumstances, it was said either fifty or a hundred times. The conversi used chaplets of beads to keep count, and these became known also as Paternosters. The term rosary came eventually to mean both the devotion itself and the chaplet used to count the Paternosters, and later on, the recitations of the other two prayers integrated into the devotion, the Ave Maria and the Gloria Patri. Between the introductory prayers and the concluding prayer is the heart of the rosary: the decades. Each decade, there are fifteen in a full rosary, is composed of ten Hail Marys, and each is devoted to a mystery regarding the life of Jesus or his mother. When Catholics recite the twelve prayers that form a decade of the rosary, they meditate on the mystery associated with that decade, and it is the meditation on the mysteries that gives the rosary its power. There are fifteen mysteries, divided into three groups of five: the Joyful, the Sorrowful, and the Glorious. With the exception of the last two, each mystery is explicitly scriptural, and although few of Biber’s sonatas can be said to illustrate the mystery in a programmatic sense, they were almost certainly played by Biber to enhance the appropriate meditation through the spirit of the music. (See p.3). May I suggest to the listener that he or she read the relevant passage before listening to each sonata, both to set the scene literarily and perhaps even to experience, regardless of individual belief, something of the awe that Biber would have wanted his public to feel. 

Walter Reiter, April 2001

Scriptural references:

The Annunciation: (Luke 1:26-38); The Visitation: (Luke 1:40-55); The Nativity;
(Luke 2:6-20); The Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple: (Luke 2:21-39);
The Twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple:
(Luke 2:41-51).

Christ on the Mount of Olives: (Matt. 26:36-46); The Scourging at the Pillar: (Matt. 27:26);
The Crown of Thorns: (Matt. 27:29); Jesus Carries the Cross: (Luke 23:26-32); The Crucifixion:(Luke 23:33-46). 

The Resurrection :(Luke 24:1-12); The Ascension :(Luke 24:50-51); Pentecost: (Acts 2:1-4); The Assumption of the Virgin, The Beatification of the Virgin: (no reference).

Biber’s Mystery Sonatas: a personal view

The night before we began this CD, we rehearsed in the church in London where the recording was to take place. We had just started the first sonata, (the fluttering of Gabriel’s wings, holiness descending unto Mary), when from a far corner of the building, a pigeon appeared. My first thoughts were that this could seriously disrupt the recording. However, the pigeon merely circled once around the church, after which it mysteriously disappeared, never to return.

‘Miracle, wonderment, inspiration, holiness’: key words, I believe, in the conception and interpretation of these works. For me, the Mystery Sonatas are indeed mystical tone poems, sometimes programmatic, as we imagine the angel’s wings (1) or the cruel driving of the nails into the cross (10), but more often, seeking to portray in sound the essence of each Mystery.

Contrasting sharply with these atmospheric evocations are the dances with their variations, at first hearing perhaps incongruous with what has gone before, but which serve to remind us, possibly, of the human element in this multi-episodic drama, indeed marking out for us the dividing line between the human and the divine.
I first heard the Mystery Sonatas in the late sixties, while still infatuated with the playing of Kreisler and Heifetz. I was totally overwhelmed by their power to move, to excite, to shock, to uplift, and by the sheer range of emotions they encompassed (expressed in myriad colours and sonorities), from ecstatic jubilation to utter despair, from spiritual nirvana to unfettered violence. I was dazzled by the audacious eccentricities which make them so utterly unique, and by the speed at which one is propelled from one ‘affekt’ to the next.

Biber uses Scordatura, tuning the strings to a different set of notes for each sonata, both in order to achieve technical feats impossible with normal tuning, and to obtain different sonorities, due to varying amounts of pressure from the strings, thus helping to achieve the desired mood for that sonata. For the violinist, this involves a constant contradiction between sight and sound, for what you see may not be what you hear. A written A, for example, may sound a B, a G, or some other note altogether. The key signature may show an F# at the top of the stave, but an F an octave lower...of course, neither note may sound anything like an F at all! What appears to go up may in fact go down, or it might start by going up and then take a plunge in the middle of a run! Even putting the fingers or the bow on the right string can involve complex mental gymnastics, especially when, as in No 11, the two middle strings are actually crossed over! Just imagine how difficult it must have been for Biber to write, and how much experimentation it must have involved!

I am eternally grateful to my colleagues, both the players and the recording team, who worked so hard on this project, to my wife Linda who did everything for me except tune and play, and to Jan Hart, of Signum, for the administrative miracles she performed. But this record is dedicated to my teacher Ramy Shevelov, of Tel Aviv, who died while it was being made, and whose inspiration and wisdom have enriched my entire life.

Walter Reiter, July 2000