Biber - Violin Sonatas 127:01

Romanesca
with
Andrew Manze, baroque violin
Nigel North, lute & theorbo
and John Toll, harpsichord & organ

Album Notes

Sonata I 1. Praeludium - Presto 4:18 2. Variatio - Finale 7:08 Sonata II 3. Praeludium - Aria e Variatio - Finale 9:02 Sonata III 4. Praeludium - Aria e Variatio 7:44 5. Variatio 5:13 Sonata IV 6. Sonata - Gigue 4:05 7. Adagio - Aria e Variatio - Finale 8:25 Passacaglia for solo lute 8. Passacaglia for solo lute 6:42 Sonata Representiva 9. Allegro 1:54 10. Nachtigal 2:13 11. CuCu 0:39 12. Fresch 1:22 13. Die Henn & Der Hann 0:38 14. Die Wachtel 0:59 15. Die Katz 0:59 16. Musqetir Mars 1:09 17. Allemande 3:09 Sonata V 18. Praeludium 2:46 19. Variatio - Presto 5:18 20. Aria e Variatio 3:30 Sonata VI 21. Sonata - Passacagli 6:07 22. Sonata - Gavotte - Finale 8:26 Sonata VII 23. Sonata - Aria 4:53 24. Adagio - Ciacona 6:06 Sonata VIII 25. a Violino Solo - Sonata - Arias - Sarabanda 6:23 26. Allegro - Gigue 2:50 Sonata La Pastorella 27. Sonata La Pastorella 4:46 Passagalia for solo violin 28. Passagalia for solo violin 10:06

Album Notes

Born In Bohemia in 1644, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, violinist, gambist and composer, was first employed in the service of the Count of Kromcriz in Moravia. He abandoned this post without permission in 1670 and joined the Kapelle at Salzburg where he remained until his death in 1704. Shameless attempts to curry the aristocracy's favour were rewarded with a modest title in 1677, directorship of the Kapelle in 1684 and eventual ennoblement (i.e. the coveted "von") in 1690. Referred to as "the formidable virtuoso" (by Jacob Stainer, the most celebtated instrument maker of the day), his reputation and oeuvre reveal a man of enormous talent, sharp of wit and elbow.

Charles Burney famously observed: "of all the violin players of the last (i.e. 17th) century Biber seems to have been the best, and his solos are the most difficult and most fanciful of any I have seen of the period". The "solos" Burney saw were almost certainly the Eight Sonatae of 1681; their "difficulty" was a striking innovation and their "fancy", though harking back to sonatas by Uccellini, Pandolfi Mealli, Schmelzer and Muffat (organist at Salzburg Cathedral from 1678 to 1680), nevertheless outdid them all in quirkiness.

At the heart of Biber's style is unpredictability. His constant inventiveness produces music which, but for the fact that it exists on the printed page, might have been improvised straight into a baroque tape-recorder. Ability to extemporize was one of the main pillars of a 17th-century instrumentalist's technique, usually over bass pedals and ostinati, with which these pieces abound.

For example, the "Passagalia" for unaccompanied violin (borrowed here from the Rosary Sonatas to which it is an appendix) is perhaps a snapshot of the consummate improviser at work, its ground (a descending tettachord) unaffected by the twists and turns above, below and around it. On the other hand, the lute Passacaglia is for the amateur, an anonymous contemporary arrangement of part of Sonata VI, with all the violinistic (i.e. difficult) passages omitted!

One device for which Biber is well-known, namely scordatura (retuning the violin to suit a particular key or tone colour, which he used to great effect in the Rosary Sonatas), only occurs twice in the 1681 set, in Sonata IV and halfway through Sonata VI. This latter work begins with a chiasmic motif characteristic of"Crucifixus" settings and employs the same scordatura and musical affect as the Crucifixion Sonata (no.10) in the Rosaries. Could it have been an original version?

As a pefformer Biber was undoubtedly a show-off; as a composer he was not above filching ideas and twisting them to his own advantage. For example, the opening of his Sonata "La Pastorella" is identical to Schmelzer's work of the same name, except that the older composer wrote it as a trio sonata, whereas Biber double stops on one violin! And near the end Biber distorts Schmelzer's theme into a gigue by another contemporary, J. J. Prinner. Malicious or just facetious? Nowadays we cannot be sure but only reflect that after Biber had absconded from his Kromeriz post Prinner was recommended to replace him - by Schmelzer.

Incidentally, it was the same Prinner who, in his 1677 treatise, "Musicalisch Schlissel", gave some valuable advice: "If you want to play the violin properly you must hold the instrument so firmly with your chin that there's no reason to hold it with the left hand, otherwise it would be impossible to play quick passages which go high and then low... Nevertheless, I have known virtuosi of repute who irrespective of this put the violin only against the chest, thinking it looks nice and decorative, because they have taken it from a painting where an angel is playing to St. Francis and found it more picturesque: but they should have known that the painter was perhaps more artful with his paintbrush than he would have been with the violin bow" (translation: Charles Medlam). It seems that the chin on/off debate raged then as now!

Though Kromeriz lost Biber, its library retained many of his compositions, notably the Sonata Representativa. The Count is known to have been partial to programmatic music: these bestial sound-effects are generally self-explanatory, but it is important to know that most ofthem are taken note for note from an internationally influential work of Jesuit musicology, the "Musurgia Universalis". Written by Athanasius Kircher, the polymath who also penned weighty tomes on subjects as diverse as volcanos, Egyptian hieroglyphi and Noah's Ark, the two large volumes were published in Rome in 1650 (and in Germany in 1662) and present for the first time the concept of a "Doctrine of Affections", systematically relating both physical and psychological states to musical expression. Biber's direct quotation is not only a case of advertising how well-read he was (although we should not be surprised at the conceit); there is also an implied, mutual flattery going on between composer and patron/audience. And on delving further into the "Musurgia", are we to assume that Biber was also conversant with Kircher's more mystical visions of a "Sympathetic Harmony of the World", the ten "Enneachords" and the "Symphony of Nature"? How interested was he in the Hermeticism or the esotericism of Kircher, Kepler and Fludd? Do the Rosary Sonatas betray a Rosicrucian?

Without these answers it is difficult to know on what level to interpret Biber's 1681 preface in which he dedicates the Sonatae to his employer, Archbishop Maximilian Gandolph. Is it merely conventional sycophancy or does the impenetrably cunning Latin word play contain an arcane message with its allusions to Sun (Sol), Earth (Solum) and Throne (Solium)? And why does the author excuse himself for "not observing the arithmetical norm" of a set of nine sonatas?

When one of the most colourful, interesting and important violinist-composers before Corelli publishes a set of solo sonatas, it would not be unreasonable to assume that he is presenting to the world at large a musical, technical, even philosophical manifesto. And yet the Sonatae have until now received little more than cursory interest from performers, a shameful neglect which contrasts strongly with the attention shown by musicologists and editors for over a hundred years, and with the enormous impact they never fail to make on the listener.

-- ANDREW MANZE

harmonia mundi usa, inc. 2037 Granville Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90025 (p)(c) 1994

Recording: September 15-18, 1993 and January 8-11, 1994, St. Martin's Church, East Woodhay, United Kingdom Executive Producer: Robina G. Young Sessions Producer/Engineer/Editing: John Hadden

Cover: Fantastic Bird with Scroll (detail), Albrecht Durer, 1513 London, The British Museum, Sloane Collection (c) British Museum


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