Over time, the brilliant uniqueness of Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber’s (1644-1704) instrumental music has become increasingly apparent to specialists and the general public alike. Long ignored and overshadowed by the Italian masters, this considerable body of work was composed between the 1670s when his first collection, The Rosary Sonatas, was probably written, and 1696, when his last work, Harmonia artificioso-ariosa, was published.
In the 17th century, instrumental music was at the bottom of the hierarchy of musical genres. It was recognised only for its functional roles, without any expressive value of its own: accompanying dance, supporting or paraphrasing song, or imitating the sounds of nature in a picturesque manner. As for the violin, still associated in part with the Bierfiddlers, those itinerant players of ill repute, it remained in a subordinate position to noble instruments such as the lute, organ, and harpsichord. However, from his very first collection, Biber, himself a virtuoso violinist, overturned these hierarchies: in his hands, the violin was nothing less than a sacred instrument capable of evoking, without the aid of words, the fifteen “mysteries” that serve as the basis for the rosary prayers, a central element in the devotion of his patron, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg.
Of these fifteen Rosary Sonatas, we will hear the tenth, which invites us to meditate on the sorrowful mystery of the Crucifixion, and the fourteenth, on the glorious mystery of the Assumption of the Virgin, in a tradition that may be linked to the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, whose first name Biber adopted. The composer uses the techniques of musical rhetoric: ascending melodies (anabasis) evoke the awakening of the Virgin in Sonata No.14, while descending melodies (catabasis) are associated with lamentation in Sonata No.10. He also uses the devices of representative music: if one wishes, one can hear a motif of hammering “nails” at the beginning of Sonata No.10 or a figuration of an earthquake in its conclusion.
But his art goes further: the rhythmic energy of dance becomes, in Biber’s work, a true vital and creative principle, which seems to generate the music live, under an optimistic and irresistible impulse. It is this energy that carries the Virgin to heaven in the great final “Aria” of Sonata No.14. This “spontaneous” creative force is further enhanced in Harmonia artificioso-ariosa by dazzling instrumental virtuosity, with voluble, inexhaustible violins that seem to narrate, in a language beyond the human, what words cannot express. Hence the almost “cosmogonic” dimension of this new instrumental music: violinist Patrick Bismuth even suggests seeing in the seven “Partiae” that make up Harmonia artificioso-ariosa a reference to the seven days of biblical creation. It is not incongruous to think, across the centuries, of Darius Milhaud’s ballet, La Création du monde (1923), in which dance is also an expression of creative energy.
The creative Word here would be the superhuman language of bows and strings, which shapes a world of sound whose other major characteristic must be emphasised: resonance. The technique of scordatura, which consists of tuning the four strings of the violin free manner – instead of the conventional G-D-A-E – produces an infinite variety of unusual and sympathetic resonances. Instrumental music seems to take its revenge here on vocal music, which is considered more noble: only instrumental music can imitate the abundant energy of the Creator and weave this world of echoes and resonances, in accordance with the classical vision of the harmony (harmonia) of the spheres. As musicologist Pierre Pascal rightly points out, Partia I first establishes a stable chord, which gradually begins to oscillate, initiating, like a clock pendulum, the creative movement of all things, with a rigor and formal coherence that rivals the musical development processes of the classical era to come.
The seemingly conventional process of variation is transformed into a demiurgic gesture, for example in the extraordinary Ciacona from Partia III. It reflects this desire to create much from little, but perhaps also refers to the fundamentally cyclical nature of time that governs the world and its creation: the alternation of evenings and mornings that allows for periodic renewal and the recharging of vital energy.
This ambition, then absolutely unprecedented in instrumental music for violin, never remains a simple artificial formal project (artificioso), but is always expressed in a communicative melodic jubilation (ariosa). One must listen to Biber again and again: it is enchanting, a powerful antidote to our disillusioned world, one of the pure sources of music.
