Another Great Composer from Salzburg

It’s music that’s both haunting and virtuosic, and until today, it was all that I knew of the composer, Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber.

Biber’s most famous composition is a passacaglia for solo violin, which, as you can hear below, is based on a repeating four note descending line. And remarkably, it stretches out at nine minutes plus, without ever managing to be boring. In fact, one writer states that it’s the best piece of solo violin music, with the exception of Bach’s chaconne.

Check it out, as played—brilliantly—by Andrew Manze. 

Well, it’s my year for hearing new music, so I had to ask myself—what’s up with von Biber?

He was born in 1644 in Wartenberg; little is known about his early life and education. He must have been, however, one hell of a violinist—even now his works are a challenge for violinists. And he was in the service of Prince Johann Seyfried von Eggenberg and the bishop of Olomouc, Karl II von Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn, whom he abandoned to go work for the archbishop of Salzburg. He lived there all his life, dying in 1704.

Of all of his music, von Biber is best known for the Rosary Sonatas. In the Catholic church, the tradition is to visit the fourteen stations of the cross, which highlight the most significant events in the lives of Jesus and Mary. So von Biber composed a sonata for each one of the stations; the music was meant to be a meditative aid to the mystery presented.

Here, in the clip below, is the second sonata, based on the visitation.

And to my mind, another and even greater work is his Harmonia artificioso-airosa. Here, von Biber uses scordatura, which involves tuning the violin differently than it normally is tuned. Why? Tuning a string lower than it normally is will darken the color of the sound, and vice versa.  

But the crowning work of Biber—from what I’ve heard—has got to be the Missa  Salisburgensis from 1682. It’s stunning music—filled with trumpets and timpani, as well as oboes and coronets. When it’s not majestic, it’s wrenchingly tender. How could I not have heard this work? It’s absolutely top-drawer!