- Biber Violin Sonatas

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The musicians are:
Michael Sand: violin
Phebe Craig: harpsichord
John Dornenburg, viola da gamba.

Praised by Isaac Stern as making "a most convincing argument for the Baroque violin", MICHAEL SAND has become one of the leading Baroque violinists in America. A founding member and first musical director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra of San Francisco, Mr. Sand is also the director of Arcangeli Baroque Strings, a string ensemble dedicated to the concerto grosso repertoire. In great demand as a guest musical director and lecturer, he has led performances of numerous chamber orchestras throughout this country and abroad, including Israel, Canada, and Australia. He plays with the chamber ensembles Musical Assembly, is director of the New York State Baroque and appears with many local Bay Area early music groups. Mr. Sand has recorded for Meridian, Harmonia Mundi (France and the United States), Arts and Music, KATastroPHE, Wildboar, and Titanic. He teaches at the University of California at Davis and at the SFEMS Baroque Music Workshop.

Originally from Colorado, Phebe Craig spent her student years in Berlin, Brussels and San Francisco. She has earned a reputation as a versatile chamber musician and recitalist and has performed and recorded with many early music ensembles. As a specialist in basso continuo realization she has accompanied many prominent early music soloists, and has produced a series of play-along CDs for Baroque music. She has appeared at the Carmel Bach Festival, the Regensburg Tage Alter Music, and the Berkeley Early Music Festival. In addition to performing with many local ensembles, Craig also belongs to New York State Baroque. She teaches at the University of California at Davis and is the Director of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music and Dance Workshop.

John Dornenburg teaches viola da gamba on the faculty at Stanford University and lectures at California State University at Sacramento. In the San Francisco Bay Area he can be heard with Music's Re-creation, Sex Chordae Consort of Viols, Arcangeli Baroque Strings, Magnificat, and the American Bach Soloists

Liner Notes:

One outcome of the Catholic Counter-Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries was a new movement in Roman Catholic mysticism. For a circle of religious writers, of whom the Spanish St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) is the best known, the goal was to illuminate the mysteries of the faith and create an emotional state of mind open to the mystical experience. El Greco (1541-1614) translated this movement into painting, taking as his subjects moments of mystical apotheosis and depicting them in an otherworldly and ecstatic style. And H.I.F. Biber (1644-1704) created this same emotional state of mind through the transcendent mysticism of him music.

The outstanding non-Italian violinist of the century, Biber was born in Bohemia of German descent. He went first into the service of Count Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn of Olomouc, then entered the chapel of the Archbishop of Salzburg, where he remained for the rest of his life, rising to the posts of Kapellmeister and Dean of the Choirboy School. In 1681, Biber published a volume of eight sonatas in Nuremberg including the Sonata No. 6 in C minor which opens this recording. His 15 Mystery or Rosary Sonatas, dating from about 1676, were not published; they survive in an ornate manuscript, in which each sonata is preceded by an engraving depicting an event in the life of Jesus or Mary. (Some of these medallions are reproduced on the cover of this CD.) It is possible that these pieces were meant for performance as postludes for October services at Salzburg Cathedral: October 7 is the Feast of the Rosary. Biber's reputation as a violinist survived into the late 18th century, when the English historian Charles Burney described him thus: "...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." In addition to solo violin music, Biber composed operas and other dramatic works, sacred vocal music, and instrumental music for ensembles of various types.

Though not as influential as Corelli, whose sonatas became the universal model, Biber's compositions for violin are the work of a master who fully understood the technical and expressive possibilities of his instrument and had a flair for highly descriptive music. But the technique with which Biber is most strongly associated is the device known as scordatura. Scordatura, the Italian word for 'mistuning,' means that the violin is tuned in ways other than the standard fifths: G D A E. It is originally a folk fiddling device, and folk fiddlers all over the world use standard scordatura tunings such as A D A D or G C G C as a way to gear the violin towards a specific key and make the double-stops easier.

Of the 15 sonatas in the Rosary collection, only Sonata 1, The Annunciation, uses the standard violin tuning. The other 14 are all in scordatura. Some of the scordaturas require the change of only a single string, such as the G D A D used in The Crucifixion, but some require the change of three strings, like The Assumption of Mary -- A E A D, or even all four, like The Ascension, tuned C E G C.

Interestingly, the c minor sonata from 1681 begins in the standard tuning, but requires the performer to retune his E string down to D halfway through! This retuning is followed by a Gavotte with variations which, despite the French origin of the dance, retains a definite flavor of Bohemian folk music.

But Biber's use of scordatura goes far deeper than being a means of facilitating double-stops. (They are almost impossible in the standard tuning.) For a more important effect of scordatura is to endow the violin with maximum resonance in one specific key, which both narrows the focus of the violin's 'voice' and deepens its emotional impact. Each retuning changes the violin's sonority--to an almost mystical extent--and give the player a sense of playing on a new and different instrument.

The Rosary Sonatas are not program music in the 19th-century sense, like the tone poems of Richard Strauss. They are a manifestation of Roman Catholic mysticism, and as such their goal is to personalize the believer's relationship with Christ through meditation on his life and suffering. Just as each of the 15 beads of the rosary represents an event in the New Testament story, each of the Rosary Sonatas represents a meditation on that event.

Some of Biber's musical imagery is specific and graphic, most noticeably in The Crucifixion, where the three notes in the opening measure represent making the sign of the cross (both visually, on the page, and in action, as the violinist bows them), while the rhythm of the dotted triplets in the measure which follows represents both the word "kreu-zi-ge" -- crucify -- and the sound of the hammer striking the nails. Bach used the same dotted triplets to set "kreuzige" in the St. John Passion.

Similarly Christ's entrance into heaven in The Ascension is royally heralded by trumpet calls and stately marches. But sometimes Biber's imagery is merely emotive, like the joyful gigue that concludes The Assumption of Mary, a tune similar in appeal to an Irish gig accompanying Mary as she dances off to heaven at the end of her earthly life. Few composers have accomplished the non-linear and almost trance-like quality that marks much of Biber's music, particularly in the quasi-fantasia preludiums that open The Annunciation, The Crucifixion, and The Assumption of Mary. In our own time, perhaps only Messaien has come close.