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Where to Begin with Biber's Music

For listeners new to Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644–1704), the most rewarding starting point is usually the Rosary Sonatas, sometimes called the Mystery Sonatas. These fifteen sonatas for violin and continuo, each linked to a mystery of the Rosary, are followed by a solo Passacaglia. They are famous for their use of scordatura, the retuning of the violin's strings. Almost every sonata calls for a different tuning. This changes the instrument's resonance and makes possible chords and colours that ordinary tuning cannot produce. In the Resurrection sonata, two of the middle strings are even crossed over each other, which gives the piece its strange, ringing sound.

Biber spent most of his career in Salzburg in the service of the Prince-Archbishop. He was known there as one of the leading violin virtuosos of his age. His output goes well beyond solo violin music, though. It includes:

• The Sonatae violino solo of 1681, eight sonatas that show his virtuosic writing in standard tuning.
• Ensemble works such as the Battalia, a programmatic piece that imitates soldiers, drunken singing and battle. It uses effects that sound startlingly modern, including paper placed under the strings of the double bass.
• Large sacred works, among them a grand Requiem and the polychoral Missa Salisburgensis, which is now generally attributed to him and was written for multiple choirs and instrumental groups.
• The Harmonia artificioso-ariosa, a collection of partitas for two instruments and continuo, several of which also use scordatura.

When choosing recordings, it helps to compare performers on period instruments. Gut strings and Baroque bows bring out the textures Biber had in mind, and different violinists take very different approaches to ornamentation and tempo. Our recordings page offers listening suggestions. To see how these pieces fit into his career, the works overview and biography give fuller context.