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BIBER

The Mystery Sonatas

Christina Day Martinson Boston Baroque Martin Pearlman 1

Credits Tracklist Programme note Biographies

Biber

The Mystery Sonatas CHRISTINA DAY MARTINSON BOSTON BAROQUE MARTIN PEARLMAN

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Assistant Recording Engineer John Weston Futura Productions

Executive Producer Miguel A. Rodriguez Boston Baroque Recording Producer and Editor Thomas C. Moore Five/Four Productions, Ltd.

Recording, Mix and Mastering Engineer Michael Bishop Five/Four Productions, Ltd.

Recorded at Futura Productions; Roslindale, Massachusetts, USA, on 12–17 March 2017

Cover Image Baroque violin photograph

by Kathy Wittman, Ball Square Films

Design stoempstudio.com

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120:21

Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644–1704) The Mystery Sonatas

CHRISTINA DAY MARTINSON violin BOSTON BAROQUE MARTIN PEARLMAN music director

The Joyful Mysteries

The Sorrowful Mysteries

1 — Sonata I in D minor

‘The Annunciation’ 5:28

Praeludium – Aria and 2 variations – Finale

6 — Sonata VI in C minor

‘The Agony in the Garden’ 8:13 Lamento

2 — Sonata II in A major ‘The Visitation’ 4:54

[Sonata] / Presto – Allamanda – Presto

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Sonata VII in F major ‘The Scourging of Jesus’ 9:03 Allamanda and variation – Sarabanda and 3 variations

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Sonata VIII in B flat major ‘The Crowning with Thorns’ 6:30 Sonata: Adagio / Presto – Gigue and 2 doubles

3 — Sonata III in B minor ‘The Nativity’ 6:51

[Sonata] / Presto – Courente and double – Adagio 4 — Sonata IV in D minor ‘The Presentation

of Jesus in the Temple’ 8:03

Ciacona with 12 variations 5 —

9 — Sonata IX in A minor

‘The Carrying of the Cross’ 7:14

Sonata – Courente and 2 doubles – Finale

Sonata V in A major ‘The Finding of Jesus in the Temple’ 7:06 Praeludium – Allamanda – Gigue – Sarabande and double

10 — Sonata X in G minor

‘The Crucifixion’ 9:01

Praeludium – Aria and 5 variations

The scordatura tunings of the violin’s open strings are played before each sonata.

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The Glorious Mysteries 16 — Passacaglia in G minor

for solo violin 7:47

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Sonata XI in G major ‘The Resurrection’ 8:02 Sonata – Hymn ‘Surrexit Christus hodie’ and variations

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Sonata XII in C major ‘The Ascension’ 7:01 Intrada – Aria tubicinum – Allemanda – Courante and double

13 — Sonata XIII in D minor

‘The Descent of the Holy Ghost’ 7:44

Sonata – Gavotte – Gigue – Sarabanda 14 — Sonata XIV in D major

‘The Assumption of the Virgin’ 8:20

[Sonata] – Arias 1 and 2 – Gigue 15 —

Sonata XV in C major ‘The Coronation of the Virgin’ 8:33 Sonata – Aria with 3 doubles – Canzona – Sarabanda and double

Performed on period instruments.

CHRISTINA DAY MARTINSON violin MARTIN PEARLMAN harpsichord / organ MICHAEL UNTERMAN cello MICHAEL LEOPOLD theorbo / guitar

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© Kathy Wittman

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Biber The Mystery Sonatas

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Notes by Martin Pearlman

Heinrich Biber’s Mystery (or Rosary) Sonatas is one of the most extraordinary sets of music in the violin repertoire. His experimentation with the instrument is unique, even to this day, and among Baroque works, the technical challenges of this music can only be compared to Bach’s unaccompanied music for the instrument. Beyond their technical challenges, hearing these sonatas as a collection can be an astonishingly powerful and deeply emotional experience.

Known as one of the greatest violinists of his time, Biber wrote not only avantgarde music for his own instrument but also many large and small-scale choral works, which only recently have begun to receive the attention they deserve. His choral output includes masses, requiems, motets and other works, some of them among the grandest church music of his time. (One polychoral mass attributed to him is scored for 53 voice parts!)

Heinrich Biber was born in Bohemia and worked early in his career at the courts of Graz and Kroměříž (now in the Czech Republic), but from the 1670’s until the end of his life, he was employed at the archbishop’s court in Salzburg. There he rose to the rank of Kapellmeister and was eventually granted a title of nobility by the emperor.

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The Mystery Sonatas survive in only a single manuscript dating from the 1670’s.

It is a beautifully copied volume comprising fifteen sonatas for violin and continuo plus a concluding Passacaglia for unaccompanied violin. Each of the fifteen sonatas depicts one of the mysteries of the rosary and is paired in the manuscript with an anonymous engraving illustrating the appropriate episode in the life of Jesus or Mary. The concluding Passacaglia, widely considered the greatest unaccompanied violin piece before Bach, shows an engraving of a guardian angel leading a child.

As with the spoken prayers of the rosary, the fifteen sonatas are grouped into three sets of five – five joyful mysteries, five sorrowful mysteries, and five glorious mysteries. The occasion for which these pieces were written is itself something of a mystery, although they may have been played during the month of October, which was dedicated to the celebration of the rosary. With devotion to the rosary particularly widespread in Europe at this time, Salzburg had a Confraternity of the Rosary, of which Biber’s employer, the Archbishop Maximilian Gandolf, was a member. Addressing the archbishop, Biber dedicated his collection ‘to the fifteen sacred mysteries, which you promote so fervently’.

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The sonatas do not tell the story of the lives of Jesus and Mary in any obvious way. Although there is occasional tone painting depicting dramatic moments, such as the fluttering of angels’ wings, the hammering of nails, or the earthquake, some listeners have wondered and some writers have speculated about exactly how the sonatas relate to their mysteries. Why, for example, is there sometimes a dance or virtuosic passage in the middle of a sorrowful part of the story? Rather than explicit storytelling, the music tends to provide us with moments of reflection, leaving each listener to find his or her own meaning.

Interestingly, the anguished Sonata X ‘The Crucifixion’ was reworked several years later into a secular version with titles related to a current event, the siege of Vienna, rather than the crucifixion.

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Biber’s technical experiments

It is perhaps not surprising that a virtuoso player like Biber would write technically challenging music. But these sonatas go far beyond normal virtuosic writing. Biber instructs the violinist to tune the strings differently from their conventional tuning, so that no two sonatas have the strings tuned to the same set of notes.

The effect of this ‘mistuning’ or scordatura is not only that the violinist can play chords that are normally impossible on the violin but, more importantly, that the instrument resonates differently for each sonata. Tuning strings higher creates greater tension on the instrument and more brilliance, and tuning them lower makes them sound darker. When the strings are tuned to the notes of a particular key, that key sounds more resonant, since the open strings vibrate sympathetically with the notes in that key.

For the player, having a different tuning for each sonata can be disorienting at first, not only because the fingers need to press down in slightly different places on the strings, but also because many of the notes that he or she is reading and fingering are not the ones that are actually sounding. Notes that are written as large leaps may actually sound close together in some tunings; and, as shown below, some tunings result in bizarre key signatures which include both sharps and flats, as well as accidentals in one octave but not in another. As a result, the usual conventions for reading music shift for each sonata.

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The most extreme altering of the strings occurs in Sonata XI ‘The Resurrection’.

In that one sonata, the middle two strings are crossed over each other both in the peg box and behind the bridge, so that one can literally see a cross on the violin. That places the thinner A string below the heavier D string, putting the strings out of order not only in their pitches but also in their feel. Violinists who spend years learning the feel of heavier strings in the lower range and gradually thinner ones as they go higher, have to adjust their instincts to balance chords with the strings out of order.

With all this retuning from one sonata to the next, the violin can become unstable and go quickly out of tune as strings are put under increased or reduced tension.

For that reason, our performance makes use of multiple violins, one violin being reserved only for the aforementioned Sonata XI ‘The Resurrection’.

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Key signatures and tunings of the open strings Sonata I in D minor ‘The Annunciation’ Normal violin tuning.

Sonata II in A major ‘The Visitation’ The lower strings are raised a whole step.

This creates open fifths in A major.

Sonata III in B minor ‘The Nativity’ Tuned in a B minor chord. The bottom three strings are raised, putting them under more tension. The top string is lowered for less tension than in the normal tuning.

Sonata IV in D minor ‘The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple’ The bottom string is tuned up a step; the top string is tuned down a step. This creates open fifths of D. 9

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Sonata V in A major ‘The Finding of Jesus in the Temple’ The open strings form an A major chord.

The top string is tuned quite low.

Sonata VI in C minor ‘The Agony in the Garden’ This is the most dissonant tuning of these sonatas. This creates a new, dark sound for the beginning of the Sorrowful Mysteries.

The bottom strings are raised; the top strings are lowered. All four are tuned to notes in the C minor scale.

Sonata VII in F major ‘The Scourging of Jesus’ Tuned in an F major chord. Extreme tension results from the raised bottom strings. The top string is lower (i.e. slacker) than in the other sonatas.

Sonata VIII in B flat major ‘The Crowning with Thorns’ Tuned in a B flat major chord. There is greater tension on the bottom string than in any other sonata: it is raised a fifth which means the violin cannot play below D. The top string is lowered.

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Sonata IX in A minor ‘The Carrying of the Cross’ Tuned in an A minor chord. The bottom string is raised a fourth, thus creating considerable tension in the bass.

The top two strings are tuned normally.

Sonata X in G minor ‘The Crucifixion’ This is close to normal violin tuning. Only the top string is lowered a step to darken the sound and put the open strings within the key of G minor.

Sonata XI in G major ‘The Resurrection’ The middle two strings are crossed in the peg box and behind the bridge to represent a cross. The D string sounds higher, the A string lower. (See notes above.)

Sonata XII in C major ‘The Ascension’ Tuned in a C major chord. The bottom string is tuned very high, thus creating considerable tension. The top string is quite low, with less tension in the sound.

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Sonata XIII in D minor ‘The Descent of the Holy Ghost’ Open strings form a bright A major chord.

Sonata XIV in D major ‘The Assumption of the Virgin’ All notes are in D major scale. The bottom two strings are raised a step, the top string is lowered a step.

Sonata XV in C major ‘The Coronation of the Virgin’ All notes are in C major scale. The top three strings are lowered a step, thus creating less tension and a somewhat richer sound.

Passacaglia in G minor for solo violin We return to normal violin tuning that we have not heard since the first sonata of the set.

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Microphones: AEA R-88; Sanken CO-100K; Sennheiser MKH800 Microphone Preamplifiers: Integer Audio RMP1; Millennia Media HV3D Mix Monitored through: ATC SCM-150 Professional Monitors and Dangerous Monitor Controller Recorded, Mixed and Mastered using Five/Four REVEAL SDMTM Technology.

REVEAL Superior Dimension Music Technology is employed exclusively by Five/Four Productions to raise the standard of excellence in both music recording and the music listening experience.

Boston Baroque gratefully acknowledges the following contributions, whose generous support helped make this recording possible: Orchid Technologies, Engineering and Consulting Inc. Mortimer Charitable Trust

Special thanks to: DAVID FRIEND DANIEL LUDDEN PAUL NICKELSBERG RUTH & VICTOR McELHENY AMY MEYER FOUNDATION

© Julian Bullitt

TEE TAGGART & JACK TURNER

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© Kathy Wittman

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Christina Day Martinson violin

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‘A violinist’s sublime pilgrimage through Biber mysteries.’ Boston Globe

Christina Day Martinson serves as the Concertmaster for Boston Baroque.

Born in Saskatchewan, Canada, she has been a featured soloist with Boston Baroque, the Handel and Haydn Society, The Bach Ensemble, Tempesta di Mare, the Unicamp Symphony Orchestra in Brazil and the Philharmonisch Orkest Mozart in Amsterdam. A recipient of the Netherland-America Foundation Grant and Frank Huntington Beebe Award, Martinson holds degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, the Royal Conservatory in The Netherlands, and received her Master of Music in Historical Performance from Boston University.

Martinson also serves as Associate Concertmaster for the Handel and Haydn Society and has performed as Concertmaster under conductors such as Roger Norrington, Richard Egarr, Bernard Labadie, Martin Pearlman, Nicholas McGegan, Laurence Cummings and Harry Christophers. Martinson’s performances of the complete Mystery Sonatas in 2012–13 were hailed by the Boston Globe as a Top 10 Performance of the Year in 2012 and chosen by Jeremy Eichler for his Top Concerts of 2013. ‘[Martinson’s] playing [featured] a fearless technique and, best of all, a delightful sense of spontaneity and imagination.’

(Boston Globe, 2013)

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Martinson has given chamber music recitals in Jordan Hall, Boston, Ishihara Hall, Japan, at the Thüringen Bachwochen in Germany, and at the Leuven Festival in Belgium. She recorded Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with Boston Baroque for Telarc. ‘This is story-telling par excellence, Martinson’s polished technique and elegant musicianship fired in the kiln of imagination to produce mind-pictures of such vividness that the Greek term ekphrasis, with all its rhetorical associations, hardly covers it.’ (Gramophone, 2009)

© Guanlong Cao

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Martin Pearlman harpsichord / organ

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© Patrick O’Connor

Martin Pearlman is one of America’s leading interpreters of Baroque and Classical music on period and modern instruments. Hailed for his ‘fresh, buoyant interpretations’ and ‘vivid realizations teeming with life’, he has been acclaimed for over 40 years in the orchestral, choral and operatic repertoire from Monteverdi to Beethoven.

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Pearlman founded Boston Baroque, North America’s first period-instrument orchestra, in 1973 and has been the Music Director and Conductor of both the orchestra and its chorus to the present day. Highlights of his work with Boston Baroque have featured the three Monteverdi operas, including his own performing versions of L’Incoronazione di Poppea and Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, a cycle of the nine Beethoven symphonies, series of Handel and Mozart operas, and American period-instrument premieres of works by Gluck and Rameau, among others. He is the only period-instrument conductor to have performed live at the internationally televised Grammy Awards and has guest conducted the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center, the Minnesota Orchestra, and other American modern-instrument orchestras.

As a harpsichordist, Pearlman has performed and recorded solo works and concertos in the United States and Europe. His major teachers on the instrument were Gustav Leonhardt and Ralph Kirkpatrick.

Pearlman is also a composer. His works include a comic opera on The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, the three-act Finnegans Wake: an Operoar based on James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, The Creation According to Orpheus for piano, harp, percussion and string orchestra, and music for three Samuel Beckett plays.

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Michael Unterman cello

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Michael Unterman enjoys a busy performing career on both modern and baroque cello. He currently serves as Principal Cello of Boston Baroque and performs with the Handel and Haydn Society, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, and New York Baroque Incorporated. Special performances have included recitals at the Vancouver Bach Festival and the Britten-Pears Institute in the United Kingdom, and appearances as Principal Cello with Les Arts Florissants and Pacific Baroque Orchestra. He was also a member of the Portland Baroque Orchestra, twice appearing as concerto soloist.

In 2014 Unterman earned a Master of Music in Historical Performance from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Phoebe Carrai, and performed with Juilliard415 under the direction of artists such as William Christie, Richard Egarr, Monica Huggett, Robert Mealy, Jordi Savall and Masaaki Suzuki. He has performed at the Tanglewood, Kneisel Hall, Banff and Birdfoot music festivals, and played under the batons of Sir Simon Rattle, James Levine, Bernard Haitink and Rafael FrĂźhbeck de Burgos.

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© Hannah Shields

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Michael Leopold theorbo / guitar

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Michael Leopold holds both an undergraduate degree in music and a master’s degree in historical plucked instruments from American Universities as well as a degree in lute and theorbo from L’Istituto di Musica Antica, Italy. He has performed both as a soloist and as an accompanist throughout Europe, Australia, Japan, South America, Mexico, Canada and the United States.

Leopold has played with a number of leading Italian early music groups, including Concerto Italiano, La Risonanza, La Venexiana and La Pietà de’ Turchini, and various American period-instrument ensembles. He has also collaborated with several orchestras and opera companies including Orchestra Verdi di Milano, Opera Australia, San Francisco Opera, Liceu Opera Barcelona, Los Angeles Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Washington National Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Nashville Symphony, Cincinnati Opera and Portland Opera. He has recorded for Stradivarius, Glossa, Naïve, Linn, Avie, Centaur and Naxos.

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© Daniele Gobbin

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