Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644-1704) was one of the great violinists of the seventeenth century, and one of the most imaginative composers of any era. Few details are known of the Bohemian-born composer’s early life; he is thought to have studied in Vienna with the great violinist Heinrich Schmelzer (who is credited with being the first non-Italian virtuoso), before taking work as a valet de chambre for the Bishop of Kromericz. His taking leave of this position was somewhat shocking, as he did so without the Bishop’s permission. In 1670 Biber entered the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg, Maximilian Gandolph von Khuenberg, who was an ardent practitioner of the Jesuit faith. The Jesuits felt that prayer was best accomplished through the use of all five senses; they commonly used music in their devotional practice as well as contemplation of visual imagery. Central to Jesuit meditation were the fifteen “Mysteries of the Rosary,” each a specific event in the life of Christ and/or the Virgin Mary. The Jesuits produced hundreds of books, known as psalters, which were essentially manuals for praying the Rosary. Psalters included biblical quotations, prayers, meditations, and engravings representing the mysteries. Biber’s Rosary Sonatas (also known as the Mystery Sonatas) survive in a beautiful manuscript from the 1670s; a title page is lacking, but each sonata is headed by a copper-plate engraving of the type found in the Jesuit psalters. The first fifteen engravings depict the mysteries of the Rosary, while the final one represents an angel holding the hand of a small child—it is thought that this work (the Passacaglia) may have been intended for the feast of the Guardian Angel which was celebrated on October 2. Every October in Salzburg, a series of Jesuit services was sponsored by the Confraternity of the Rosary (a group supported by the Archbishop), specifically for the meditation of the Rosary. These services were held in a lecture hall at the University of Salzburg, the Aula Academica, where fifteen paintings depicting the mysteries can still be found. It is likely that Biber’s sonatas were used for these services.

Even beyond their association with specific Catholic spiritual practice, the Rosary Sonatas certainly represent an artistic masterpiece; the collection is dazzling in its originality, virtuosity and depth. The sonatas represent an enormously varied array of affects, forms, and more revolutionary, tunings. The violin is normally tuned in fifths, G-D-A-E. Among the Rosary Sonatas, only the first and the final Passacaglia are tuned thus, and of the remaining fourteen sonatas, no two call for the same tuning. Each of the fifteen tunings offers the violinist an entirely different set of tone-colors and a different range of available chords; it is as though the violin becomes a new instrument with each sonata. Thus the experience of the cycle is one of unfolding violinistic mysteries, as well; nowhere else in the violin literature, before or since, is there found such a breath-taking exploration of the instrument’s possibilities.

While overall, these sonatas are meditative and abstract rather than programmatic, they do contain a number of more “literal” references to the scenes depicted in the engravings. The first sonata, the Annunciation, begins and ends with other-worldly cascades of fast notes which suggest the beating wings of the angel who appears, out of nowhere, to tell Mary of the coming miracle. The Sonata VI, written in a tuning which creates a somber, muted atmosphere, uses doleful chromatic lines to evoke Christ’s despair as he prays in the Garden of Gethsemene. In the Crucifixion Sonata (no. X), strong repeated notes suggest the hammering of nails, and the work’s stormy end has been associated with the earthquake which is said to have followed Christ’s death. The Resurrection Sonata (XI) is constructed using the most radical tuning of all: rather than being tuned in order of tessitura (low to high), the strings of the violin form two interlocking octaves, representing a symbolic cross. If, as has been surmised, the concluding Passacaglia is a reflection upon the Guardian Angel, surely the passacaglia form, in which a repeating “ground bass” is always present, is the perfect musical manifestation of such an abiding presence.