Heinrich Biber (1644–1704) In the seventeenth century the violin consolidated its position as expressively the most wide-ranging of non-keyboard instruments. This was an age of great violin makers, like Amati and Stradivari, as well as outstanding performers like Corelli. Italy was the centre of instrumental prowess, but the finest of all seventeenth-century virtuosos was Heinrich Biber, who spent most of his working life in Salzburg. A composer as well as a performer Biber was fascinated by the doctrine of the affections: the belief that emotional states such as tenderness, fear and anger could be given direct musical expression. Many Baroque composers pursued this idea but none did so with such a degree of quirkiness, flair and sheer experimental verve as Biber. Above all else in his violin sonatas, he reveals an astonishing combination of profound feeling and technical wizardry that suggests a brilliant improviser at work. Biber was born in Warttenberg in Bohemia but probably received his early training in Vienna under Johann Schmelzer, the leading Austrian violinist of the day. Some time around 1668 he entered the service of Archbishop Karl von Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn, a music lover whose castle in Moravia boasted a fine musical establishment. In 1670, while on official business, Biber mysteriously abandoned his position while in Salzburg and entered the employ of another powerful churchman, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, Maximilian Gandolph. He was to remain there for the rest of his life: beginning as a court violinist and rising to the rank of court Kapellmeister and cathedral choirmaster in 1684 before his eventual ennoblement in 1690. In his later years his duties included writing a substantial amount of large-scale choral music for the cathedral, among which the Requiem in F is outstanding. Despite his renown as a performer, there is no evidence to suggest that he travelled anywhere much farther than Munich. Nor was there any known contact with other major composers, apart from his colleague at Salzburg, George Muffat (a student of both Lully and Corelli), who shared Biber’s enthusiasm for writing sonatas Violin Sonatas The normal tuning of instruments of the violin family is in intervals five notes apart (fifths). However, much of Biber’s music employs a device called scordatura whereby an instrument is tuned differently from piece to piece. This was done for a variety of reasons: to extend the possible range of notes, to make certain chords playable, and to change the character of the instrument by creating new sonorities. In The Mystery Sonatas, composed for a religious ceremony celebrating the Rosary, Biber takes the use of scordatura to imaginative extremes. Each sonata corresponds to an event in the life of Jesus or the Virgin Mary and, though they employ stylized dance forms and sets of variations, each attempts to evoke a particular devotional mood and sometimes to create a particular scene – such as the fluttering of angelic wings in No. 1 (The Annunciation) or the rising of the sun in No. 11 (The Resurrection). The set ends with a passacaglia for unaccompanied violin, the earliest known extended work for solo violin and an obvious forerunner of J.S. Bach’s great Chaconne. In the other outstanding set of violin sonatas of 1681, scordatura is rarely used: they are, nevertheless, highly inventive and technically demanding works. Once again, sets of variations abound, as does brilliant passage work, often over a sustained note in the bass part. Certainly, these works are occasionally flashy for the sheer hell of it, but more often their sudden changes of mood reveal a brilliant, restless and essentially improvisatory musical temperament.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 14:54:13 +0000
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