# Heinrich Biber



## science

I have and love: 

Biber's Rosary Sonatas
Biber's Missa Christae Resurgentis 
Biber's Requiem a 15

This is really good stuff!

I wonder, are there more great works by Biber? And, why isn't he more famous?


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## Delicious Manager

Early Baroque music has never been as well known as it should be. I too love Biber. His _Battalia_ is one of the earliest programmatic/representative pieces and is great fun - a sort-of 17th-century _1812 Overture_.

Other works to seek-out would be:

Litanies
Missa Salzburgensis
Mystery Sonatas

If you like Biber, you should also try:

Carlo Farina
Jean-Marie Leclair
Georg Muffat
Giovanni Pandolfi (Mealli) 
Johann Heinrich Schmelzer
Marco Uccelini (a strong influence on Biber)
Jan Dismas Zelenka


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## zoziejemaar

Delicious Manager said:


> Early Baroque music has never been as well known as it should be. I too love Biber. His _Battalia_ is one of the earliest programmatic/representative pieces and is great fun - a sort-of 17th-century _1812 Overture_.
> 
> Other works to seek-out would be:
> 
> Litanies
> Missa Salzburgensis
> Mystery Sonatas


Another Biber lover here!

Yes, the _Battalia_ is a very amusing work. There is no doubt you'll like this CD:








It combines the Battalia with some other works of Biber and with "The Tempest" of John Locke, a composer who is largely forgotten.

The Mystery Sonatas and the Rosary (Rosenkranz) Sonatas are actually the same.

The Missa Bruxellensis is impressive too, it can stand on a par with the Missa Salzburgensis.


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## science

Thanks to both of you!

Maybe we can make a Biber club.

The Zelenka is a wonderful recommendation. I have a little on a DHM disk along with some stuff by Pisendel (it was in the 50th anniversary box), but I've ordered the Trio Sonatas on ECM. I look forward to that a lot. 

I will look for Battalia. Do you guys have a particular recording that you like?


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## Bill H.

Also try:

Sonatae tam aris quam aulis servientes (12 sonatas for 5-8 instruments [trumpets, strings, and continuo] in various combinations) (1676) --this has an extraordinary sonata featuring a solo trumpet in a MINOR key, very unusual.

Some of his ceremonial trumpet works are very stirring--I like the Sonata Sancti Polycarpi, for 8 (or is it 9?) trumpets, timpani and continuo. You get a sense of that music in some of the larger liturgical works as well.

Harmonia artificioso-ariosa: diversi mode accordata (7 partias for 1 or 2 violins, 2 violas, 2 violas d'amore, and continuo in various combinations) (1696)

And don't forget the 8 Sonatas for Solo Violin and Continuo of ca. 1681--the recording by Romanesca is a classic.


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## zoziejemaar

science said:


> I will look for Battalia. Do you guys have a particular recording that you like?


The picture wasn't visible  . I had in mind the recording of Giardino Armonico: http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=8081

It's spirited enough to bring alive the battle field. It also has some other great Biber-like stuff, among which Zelenka.


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## Comus

This is my personal favorite:


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## HarpsichordConcerto

I have a number of CDs of Biber's music. The last one I bought was this.

Jodi Savall's group performing _Battalia a 10_ and _Requiem a 15_. A good recording and of course, great music.


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## StlukesguildOhio

While building upon my Baroque collection, I've become something of a Biber fanatic. Among my favorite discs I would include:























































***********


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## StlukesguildOhio




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## JSK

I'm currently working on Biber's passacaglia in G minor for solo violin, and it's absolutely fabulous.


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## Geronimo

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> I have a number of CDs of Biber's music. The last one I bought was this.
> 
> Jodi Savall's group performing _Battalia a 10_ and _Requiem a 15_. A good recording and of course, great music.


I just listened to this one and I really liked it. I should listen to more baroque music. It was a great discovery. Again. I love this board


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## jurianbai

it's seems like just when I need it, it will pop out by itself. Been tolded about this name last week by HC, I need every details about Biber. I am starting a campaign to collect 2nd-layer Baroque composers, specifically the violin concertos and sonatas.


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## Norse

I have the Salzburg Mass (the McCreesh/Archiv). I got it at a time when I was very into pompous and powerful baroque music (the choruses in Handel oratorios etc), and as such it doesn't get much better than this mass, which is a 53-part work, iirc. (Might be a kind of 'baroque record', if not, I would like to know what beats it) Be careful to check the volume before the mass starts, as you might get a shock.. 

A lot of chamber works have been mentioned already, but I would like to add the Serenada "der Nachtwächter" (also called "Nachtwächterlied"). It's the regular small ensemble suite, but includes (to my surprise the first time I heard it) a nightwatchman's song sung by a bass, accompanied by pizzicato only. I know it best from the recording below, where at the end of his song, the singer is slowly moving away from the microphone (at least that what it sounds like), which gives the impression that the nightwatchman is 'moving on into the night'. It's knida neat.


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## Guest

science said:


> Thanks to both of you!
> 
> Maybe we can make a Biber club.
> 
> The Zelenka is a wonderful recommendation. I have a little on a DHM disk along with some stuff by Pisendel (it was in the 50th anniversary box), but I've ordered the Trio Sonatas on ECM. I look forward to that a lot.
> 
> I will look for Battalia. Do you guys have a particular recording that you like?


I have the recording by Savall, and as with any of Savall's recordings, I highly recommend it. I have to admit that this is the only recording of Biber that I have, but have been considering pulling the trigger on getting the Manze/Egarr recording of the Rosary Sonatas for some time, as I have read exemplary reviews of them.


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## hocket

Most of the Biber stuff I have has already been mentioned, but I'd add that the recording of The Mystery Sonatas by Monica Huggett's La Sonnerie is also excellent as is John Holloway's Unam Ceylum (which rivals Manze's recording of similar material).

As for similar stuff I'd definitely check out Johann Jakob Walther and Johann Paul von Westhoff.


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## neoshredder

Loving his Violin Sonatas by Manze. Manze is such a great violin player. So crisp and clear.


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## Jared

well, you've posted all my Biber disk covers already... this is the only other one I own:


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## musicphotogAnimal

Another nod here for Jan Dismas Zelenka. I've listened to: 

Missa Dei Filii 
Litaniae Lauretanae

rec. Tafelmusik & Kammerchor Stuttgart. Cond. Frieder Bernius. 

Will look into several of the composers that were mentioned in this thread. Addicted to the Baroque period of classical music here.


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## msvadi

The sound on John Holloway's ECM recordings of Biber is absolutely gorgeous. His recording of Schemlzer is equally fantastic.


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## hocket

msvadi said:


> The sound on John Holloway's ECM recordings of Biber is absolutely gorgeous. His recording of Schemlzer is equally fantastic.


Yeah, and the Schmelzer disc has a great version of Bertali's chacony on it too. If I were picking my absolute desert island Biber records it'd come down to Holloway's Unam Ceylam or MAK's Harmonia Artificioso.


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## superhorn

Are you sure that's not Justin Biber ? 












:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:


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## mud

superhorn said:


> Are you sure that's not Justin Biber ?


With the Bieber hair, he looks more like one of the Beatles...










"Bibier"


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## neoshredder

Baby Baby Baby! No!  I got Biber fever.


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## millionrainbows

I don't know, maybe the reason he's not more famous is because this, his most important violin virtuoso music was discovered only 100 years ago. It's definitely _geigermusic;_ and the violin is subjected to different tunings for each sonata. Of course, this has a fancy term, scordatura.

For the Joyful Mystery Sonatas, the bias is towards the sharp keys, while the Sorrowful Mystery Sonatas emphasize the flat keys.

I: D minor, the tuning is the normal G-D-A-E in fifths.
II: A major: E-E-A-E
III: B minor: B-F#-B-D
IV: D minor: A-D-A-D
V: C minor: Eb-Eb-G-D
VI: F major: C-F-A-C
VII: Bb major: D-F-Bb-D
IX: A minor: C-E-A-E
X: G minor: G-D-A-D
XI: G major: G-G-D (lower)-D
XII: C major: C-E-G-C
XIII: D minor: A-E-C#-E
XIV: D major: A-E-A-D
XV: C major: G-C-G-D
XVI: G minor: G-D-A-E

Another weird thing about these is that they're notated _as if the violin were tuned normally,_ which presents another challenge to the violinist.

John Holloway, and others I've heard, play without vibrato. I couldn't imagine Itzhak Perlman playing this.

Note the range of tunings; the sharp keys go C-G-D-A-E-B, within a certain range. This was before well-tempering (or equal-tempering) had taken effect, so the range stops at a certain point.


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## obwan

I must say that I'm not much of a fan of Justin Biber.


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## Guest

Biber wrote one of the earliest examples of "program" music in his "Battalia" and you'll hear everything here from muscat shots to drunken revelling from the soldiers. It's wonderful!!






This piece was composed in 1673 when the instrumental (orchestral) ensemble was not yet 100 years old as a musical medium. "Battalia" is yet still highly modal and absolutely packed with dissonance.


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## Ukko

"Muscat" shots"? Whachu been drinking, Missy?


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## Guest

Hilltroll72 said:


> "Muscat" shots"? Whachu been drinking, Missy?


Yeah, THAT. Dunno how to spell those things which came out of very old guns.


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## Ingélou

*Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber von Bibern* (1644-1704) wrote the *Mystery Sonatas* for violin & continuo - also called the *Rosary Sonatas* - in 1676. They have never been forgotten but were not often performed because of the level of difficulty for the violinist.

*Elisabeth Wallfisch* performs *The Assumption* brilliantly in this short clip:






And here is a longer YouTube sampler by *Reinhard Goebel* that I have just discovered & hope to persuade Taggart to buy (don't tell him yet). It is celestial! 






I do hope other TC members with more knowledge than myself will be posting below!


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## Taggart

Not a lot more knowledge, just a good use of Wiki and Grove. This is Biber engraved by Paulus Seel for Biber's Sonatae Violino solo (1681)










Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber von Bibern (12 August 1644 (baptised) - 3 May 1704) was a Bohemian-Austrian composer and violinist. Born in the small Bohemian town of Wartenberg (Stráž pod Ralskem), Biber worked at Graz and Kroměříž before he illegally left his Kroměříž employer (Prince-Bishop Carl Liechtenstein-Castelcorno) and settled in Salzburg. He remained there for the rest of his life, publishing much of his music but apparently seldom, if ever, giving concert tours.

Biber had 11 children, only four of whom survived childhood: his sons Anton Heinrich (1679-1742) and Karl Heinrich (1681-1749) and his daughters Maria Cäcilia (b 1674) and Anna Magdalena (1677-1742). They were all musically gifted and received a good musical education from their father. Both sons were violinists at the Salzburg court, and Karl Heinrich , the more gifted of the two, rose to become deputy Kapellmeister in 1714 and Kapellmeister in 1743. Biber's daughter Anna Magdalena entered the Benedictine convent of Nonnberg in 1696. A fine alto singer and violinist, Maria Rosa Henrica (the name taken by Anna Magdalena in religious life) became mistress of the novices in her convent, and was appointed director of its choir and Kapelle in 1727. Biber composed and directed his Missa S Henrici for her investiture as a nun on 15 July 1697. As a singing teacher, Maria Rosa Henrica made use of her father's manual, the Singfundament. Her elder sister Maria Cäcilia was also a nun, in the convent of S Clara in Merano.

Burney wrote: 'of all the violin players of the last century Biber seems to have been the best, and his solos are the most difficult and most fanciful of any music I have seen of the same period'. When Burney saw the Biber sonatas, 100 years after they had been written, interest in them was mainly historical. Quite early in the 18th century German violinists had turned towards the more formal and fully tonal compositions of Corelli and his followers. Burney's opinion of Biber was based mainly upon the Sonatae violino solo, eight sonatas for violin and continuo published in 1681. These sonatas are elaborately developed, show a keen sense of formal structure and are completely uninhibited in their virtuosity. While they differ from one another to some extent in form and choice of movements, sets of variations are to be found in all of them. It was in the free preludes, in equally free and elaborate finales, in brilliant passage-work over ostinato basses and in polyphonic passages (in which multiple stops seem never to have been a problem) that Biber was able to give full rein to a formidable violin technique. In range he was able to reach the 6th and 7th positions and return from them with an ease and abandon which set him apart even from his only peer, Johann Jakob Walther. (In both left-hand technique and bowing these two men from the north far outstripped their Italian contemporaries.) Although Biber achieved his greatest technical brilliance in the sonatas with normal tuning, two of the Sonatae violino solo require scordatura.

In contrast to the sonatas of 1681, in which conventional tuning by 5ths is the rule rather than the exception, 14 of the 16 Mystery (or Rosary) Sonatas for violin and bass (completed about 1676) require scordatura. These works were not printed; in the one surviving manuscript each sonata is identified by an engraving depicting one of the 15 Mysteries of the Rosary. The remaining work, the Passacaglia for unaccompanied violin, is prefixed by a picture of a guardian angel and child. Biber probably performed these sonatas as postludes to services during October, the month specially devoted to the Rosary Mysteries at Salzburg Cathedral. The Passacaglia may have been written for performance at a special 'Feast of the Guardian Angel' falling on 2 October. The tuning chosen for each Mystery Sonata, shown in ex.2, helps to set the mood by providing for special tone-colours, rich sonorities and many multiple stops not ordinarily obtainable on the violin. Only occasionally does the chosen scordatura contribute to a clearly descriptive or programmatic passage. In these sonatas there are many dance movements, highly stylized forms which the composer moulded to his expressive purposes. As in many of his other works, the more conventional distinctions between church and chamber sonata are not observed. Like the Sonatae violino solo, the Mystery Sonatas include many sets of variations, all with strict ostinato basses. The unaccompanied Passacaglia, built on 65 repetitions of the descending tetrachord (g′-f′-e♭′-d′), is a monumental polyphonic piece, the oustanding work of its type before the Bach Chaconne.

In his sacred music Biber was capable of writing a cappella masses as well as huge concerted works for solo and ripieno voices with large orchestra. The Missa quadragesimalis is in pure a cappellastyle; although it is provided with a figured bass it may be performed just as well without it. As a composer of his own time Biber's strong sense of late 17th-century tone-colour may be heard in the full vocal and orchestral sound of the Requiem in F minor.

Between 1679 and 1699 Biber wrote three operas and at least 15 school dramas. The only extant work is the opera Chi la dura la vince, a beautiful leather-bound copy of which was dedicated to Archbishop Johann Ernsthun. The opera was probably composed in 1690-92. It is less advanced than the Viennese operas of the time. Biber used an incipient form of da capo aria when that form was fully developed in Vienna. The school dramas were produced at the Benedictine University in Salzburg. The librettos that remain indicate that some of them had so many musical scenes that they might possibly be classified as operas with dialogue.

There have been very few composers of the first rank - and Biber must be counted in the first rank of his time - who were so completely outstanding in their instrumental virtuosity. Fortunately his virtuosity as a violin composer was at the service of a splendid musical mind. He had a gift for melody and was a master of counterpoint - and that mastery had its effect, even in the most fanciful of his violin preludes. As a composer of sacred music and instrumental ensemble music he was at least the equal of his Viennese contemporaries; as a virtuoso and composer for the violin his position is unique and of historic importance.

(Mostly Grove)


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## Ukko

Ingenue said:


> *Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber von Bibern* (1644-1704) wrote the *Mystery Sonatas* for violin & continuo - also called the *Rosary Sonatas* - in 1676. They have never been forgotten but were not often performed because of the level of difficulty for the violinist.
> 
> *Elisabeth Wallfisch* performs *The Assumption* brilliantly in this short clip:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And here is a longer YouTube sampler by *Reinhard Goebel* that I have just discovered & hope to persuade Taggart to buy (don't tell him yet). It is celestial!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I do hope other TC members with more knowledge than myself will be posting below!


I have sent Taggart a message via the ether to buy the Manze - and to bat you on the head with the box before handing it to you.


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## Taggart

We've just ordered the Manze - we've got a lot of his other stuff- so thanks for that. Ingenue has cleverly arranged her fiddle lesson for the day it's due to arrive - and will be giving me a wide berth - especially as one of the other Manze CD's we got had a massive Harmonmia Mundi catalogue in it - about three times the size of the CD and quite heavy.


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## Ukko

That 'wide berth' can't be maintained for long... the bat can out wait her.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Biber might just be my favorite Baroque composer after the usual suspects (Bach, Handel and Vivaldi). I have three recordings of the Mystery (Rosary) Sonatas: Holloway, Manze, and Wallfisch. I enjoy all three immensely. Wallfisch's may be my current favorite... but then she has the advantage of being the most recently acquired and most recently listened to. Be sure to explore Biber's other violin sonatas as well. I became quite hooked on them about a year or two ago when I made a concerted effort to explore works of the baroque violin (Tartini, Corelli, Vivaldi, Rebel, Pandolfi, Uccelini, Fux, Schmelzer, Buxtehude, Westhoff, Walther, etc...). 

You should make a concerted effort to explore Biber's choral works as well.


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## Ingélou

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Biber might just be my favorite Baroque composer after the usual suspects (Bach, Handel and Vivaldi). I have three recordings of the Mystery (Rosary) Sonatas: Holloway, Manze, and Wallfisch. I enjoy all three immensely. Wallfisch's may be my current favorite... but then she has the advantage of being the most recently acquired and most recently listened to. Be sure to explore Biber's other violin sonatas as well. I became quite hooked on them about a year or two ago when I made a concerted effort to explore works of the baroque violin (Tartini, Corelli, Vivaldi, Rebel, Pandolfi, Uccelini, Fux, Schmelzer, Buxtehude, Westhoff, Walther, etc...).
> 
> You should make a concerted effort to explore Biber's choral works as well.


@ StLukesguildohio - Thanks for your post above, with names I can check out. Riches await me. :tiphat:

@Hilltroll - Thanks for suggesting the Manze. Other suggestion not so helpful. Still, Taggart is not half so skilled with the bat as I am at bowling him out!


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## neoshredder

Who doesn't have Biber fever? Great stuff. So melodic.


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## science

View attachment 43351


This is pretty good stuff too. One way to appreciate this is to think, before you listen, what you expect a seventeenth-century sonata to act like, and then contrast that to what Biber's do. He really was a pretty inventive guy!


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## Calcium

Gunar Letzbor's relatively recent recording of Biber's Fidicinium Sacro-Profanum is a definite keeper. It's much more arresting and affecting than either the Purcell Quartet or Plantier.


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## Vesteralen

I happened to be reading the entry on Biber in the AMG this morning, which prompted me to find this old thread.

I thought what I read was quite noteworthy because it seemed to make a case for Biber as an innovator of the first rank.

With all the discussions we've had on this site about "greatness", it would seem that innovation should be a part of that discussion. And yet, though it's plain from this thread that Biber has his fans, I think it's another instance perhaps of historical popularity sending some really worth names off into the dead ends of music history.

Personally, I'm looking forward to getting to know more about this composer.


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## drfaustus

The international review is extoling this recording:


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## Dim7

...................


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