Biber Mystery Sonatas by James Clements

In 1676 Heinrich Biber wrote of his ‘faith in stringed instruments (fidem in fidibus)’, demonstrating his love of rhetoric, probably imbued in him by his Jesuit education. Of all Biber’s seven collections of music, however, the expression ‘faith in stringed instruments’ is most evident in the Mystery or Rosary Sonatas, which survive in a beautifully-written manuscript, compiled in the early 1670s, and now housed in the Bavarian State Library. The manuscript contains fifteen compositions for violin and bass, and a concluding Passacaglia for unaccompanied violin. In the absence of a title page, the various titles in use today derive from the fifteen engravings in the manuscript, one placed at the start of each of the first fifteen compositions depicting, in turn, the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary. Similarly, the Passacaglia is accompanied by a drawing of a Guardian Angel holding the hand of a child.

The engravings were probably cut from a Rosary psalter, the name given to the hundreds of devotional books published by Rosary confraternities active in central Europe at this time. These books contained detailed instruction on praying the Rosary, and frequently included biblical quotations, meditations, prayers, and engravings depicting the mysteries. Such books were produced by the Jesuits — a religious order who influenced education and devotional practices more than any other religious group in seventeenth-century Europe — and who were known for advocating Rosary devotion with music. One such confraternity existed in Salzburg during the seventeenth century. It met in the lecture hall — the Aula Academica — of Salzburg’s University, which still contains fifteen paintings depicting the mysteries. The Rosary Sonatas were probably performed in this room. As Biber mentions in the Latin dedication of the Rosary Sonatas, Rosary devotion was promoted most ardently by the dedicatee of the collection and Biber’s employer, Archbishop Maximilian Gandolph von Khuenberg, who may have attended meetings in the Aula Academica. The paintings in the Aula Academica, the engravings in Biber’s manuscript and Rosary psalters exemplify the importance of imagery in Rosary devotion in the region at this time, which correlates with a principal concept of Jesuit devotion, namely, the use of all five senses when praying. Thus, by contemplating the image, reading the texts, and hearing the music, individuals were supposed to create a mental picture of the mystery, often in minute detail and at great length.

Besides the images in the manuscript, another technique uniting the sonatas is the use of scordatura (the retuning of the violin strings to notes other than the conventional g, d', a', e'') in all but the first and last of the sonatas, requiring a total of fifteen different tunings in the whole collection. The compositions using scordatura are notated in the manner of certain tablatures in that the violinist is told where on the string to place the fingers, but the resulting pitch is different from the notated pitch. The requisite scordatura tuning is indicated at the start of each composition, along with a signature often including a curious mixture of sharp and flat signs. The most extraordinary scordatura tuning in the set is in Rosary Sonata XI (The Resurrection), which requires the violinist to interchange the middle two strings, crossing them before the bridge of the violin and again at the nut, resulting in a symbolic cross shape.

The Rosary is formed of three groups of five mysteries: the joyful mysteries (I–V), the sorrowful mysteries (VI–X), and the glorious mysteries (XI–XV), which are presented in this order in Biber’s manuscript.

The violin writing in the sonatas is characterised by the use of musical rhetoric-melodies, harmonies and other musical devices-that would have been understood by educated listeners to represent certain moods, images or ideas. Such devices were either in general use at this time or can be seen elsewhere in Biber’s music. For example, the rapid, swirling figuration that opens the first sonata represented the notion that children are a gift from God in some of Biber’s other music; Christ’s despair in the garden of Gethsemane is depicted with chromatic ascending and descending lines, a device used by Biber in laments; repeated notes on the same pitch denote agitation or anger, combined with sharply twisting melodic lines; and the violent opening figuration of the tenth sonata is sometimes said to represent the nails being hammered into the cross while the virtuosic figuration that ends the sonata could represent the earthquake after Christ’s death. These specific images enhance the mood of each sonata created through careful choice of key, movement type and scordatura tuning, one example being the fifth sonata, using a scordatura of a, e', a', c'' sharp, combined with predominantly ascending melodies to evoke the joyous moment when Mary and Joseph find Christ in the temple.

This article has been adapted from James Clements’ booklet note written for the new recording of the Mystery Sonatas, played by Pavlo Beznosiuk, and released in 2004 on the Avie label.