JAVS Spring 2024

Featured Article

2023 Dalton Winner The Mystery (Rosary) Sonatas by H.I.F. Biber: Construction of a Complete Edition for Viola and Basso Continuo by Gabriel Forero

basso continuo (premiered live in April 2023), as well as a description of the procedure followed to complete this transcription. 1

Introduction Heinrich Ignaz Biber (1644-1704) was a Bohemian virtuoso violinist and composer with a very rich catalog, among which a collection consisting of 15 sonatas for violin and continuo and a final Passagalia for violin solo stand out. This collection is currently known as the Rosary Sonatas or Mystery Sonatas due to the presence of different engravings at the beginning of each work, which depict the different mysteries of the rosary according to the Christian tradition. This document summarizes the creation of the first known complete transcription of these sonatas for viola and continuo. To accomplish that task, it was necessary to analyze the context of the work and the composer, the original manuscript, and the different published editions in order to find reliable material from which to build an accurate transcription for viola. Understanding the criteria of each of the different editions, and comparing the manuscript with these other sources, a new violin edition has been prepared that seeks to represent the contents of the manuscript as faithfully as possible from a scholarly and historical perspective. This document shortly presents the current progress of this ongoing research that resulted in a new complete edition of these Mystery (Rosary) Sonatas for violin and basso continuo, a critical commentary which explains the different challenges faced in the process of deciphering the manuscript and the editorial choices made for this edition. Finally, and based on this new violin edition, this document provides a description of the editorial procedures used to create the first known complete edition of the same collection of sonatas for viola and

PART 1: THE COMPOSER AND THE WORK

Biber 2 Bohemian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644-1704) was one of the most outstanding violin virtuosos of the Baroque era. He started his musical training quite young, and at the age of 24 he earned his first position as valet and musician to the Bishop of Olomouc, in the Moravian town of Kroměříž. He left without permission in 1670, at the age of 26, to enter the service of the Prince-Archbishop Maximilian Gandolph, Count of Kuenburg, first as a court violinist, where he spent most of his life. In this place, he rose all the way from valet to kapellmeister, and by the end of his time in Salzburg he had at his disposal large instrumental and choral forces, for whom he wrote sonatas, concertos, large scale works, operas, and music dramas. Manuscript’s First Page Of the Rosary Sonatas, only one original score has survived: the manuscript dedicated to Prince-Archbishop Maximilian Gandolph, and written by a skilled calligrapher. It cannot be entirely ruled out that Biber himself wrote the manuscript, but most probably he entrusted the task to a court copyist. Biber may have decided on a calligraphed manuscript because in this way he did not have to consider the restrictions to which violin music was subjected in the usual typographic

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 40, No. 1, Spring 2024

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