Dance over Meditation: Biber's Mystery Sonatas
I can still remember the evening in my dorm room in 1994 when I’d just come back from a music store with a chance buy of something called the Rosenkranz-Sonaten by Reinhard Goebel and Musica Antiqua Köln. I plugged in my headphones and was taken to a new world. It was the album that inspired by online handle later that year, when I’d signed up for a new computer account on campus. I chose biberfan.
Each new recording I find of this music is often a special treat. Many times I treat the listening to the album as a type of aural-acoustic retreat. I know the pieces well so discovering departures from other performances, appreciating the continuo used, and how the performers use their rhetorical powers is always fascinating.
I was fortunate once to see Amandine Beyer perform with Gli Incogniti in Washington, D.C. I admired her recording of the Bach Sonatas and Partitas. This new release was something I’d been looking forward to, based on the performer’s past recordings, and because of the music itself.
There are several things to be touched upon in this review that I think readers may find interesting. I typically like to focus on performance and sound quality, and those here too have a place, but also the rationale for the dancer on the album’s cover. I can’t say precisely how much the collaboration with a dance troupe influenced the performances, but since Ms. Beyer mentions it in the booklet, we’ll spill just a little ink on this as well.
Sound Quality
I first auditioned this set on my main system, which is a two-speaker. full-range stereo setup, where I’m currently listening in near-field. The violin sounded somewhat artificially placed, to the right, almost as if the instrument had been recorded separately and mixed with the continuo instruments in such a way to appear on top, and out-front. When I changed to another album of the mystery sonatas, the effect was gone and the soundstage was appreciably wider and natural sounding.
My second audition was via my headphone system and I found the sound and stereo presentation far more natural sounding. I can’t speak to what contributed to my first thoughts, but I should like to try auditioning this again in that system in the light of day without my room-based DSP engaged. I will say, however, that the far-right presentation of the violin is also audible with headphones, although Ms. Beyer does not appear quite far right across all sonatas.
Both using headphones and in the two-channel speaker setup the continuo was pushed back, allowing the violin to sing up front, but without loss of detail; in fact on headphones the details are all preserved while giving the effect of depth.
Dance Music?
The performer mentions in the booklet a collaboration with dancers. She goes so far to call the pieces suites instead of sonatas. Two thoughts: the “pieces” come from a tradition of contrasting moods, which was called the stylus phantasticus. While these shifts in Biber did take on some titles, namely tempo directions, dance indications were also included: allemandes, gigues, courantes, sarabandes. When Yo-Yo Ma sponsored a set of video recordings in working with artists to help realize the Bach cello suites in different forms, including dance, the question was once again raised: was music inspired from dance meant to be danced to?
And when did de facto dance music disappear and become, as I’m assuming, as music inspired by dance?
I am not certain any musicologist has a clear and definitive answer. When the likes of Biber and later Telemann wrote their so-called music for the table, again we have to ask, was it actually intended to be performed while people feasted and partied? Or was it written in the style of music that once may have been performed while people feasted and partied? Or, in the case of Telemann, was this marketing to try and sell to the less sophisticated and wealthy a taste of what court life might have been like?
Again, I’m not any authority to say. But Beyer’s suggestion that Biber’s music is appropriate for dancing to is an interesting question, but one that is in opposition to other, contrasting ideas about this work. The liner notes here go so far to tell us more about the dedicatee’s devotion to the rosary, and the artwork that appeared on the walls, as is it did in the engravings beside each of these pieces. Was it music for meditation? Was it clearly conceived as religious or prayer music? Or, as they suggest, was it crafted to suit this theme, using borrowed, already-composed music to put together something serviceable for a particular occasion? I think it’s interesting they touch upon some of the writings of other contemporary musicians who have already recorded these works in an effort to better understand them and how they might be performed.
My immediate reaction when reading about the possibility of dance with these pieces was met with skepticism. Until I understand differently, I think the dance forms referenced in this instrumental music was simply that, references to rhythmic and tempo to help the performer with the performance. The dance names do appear, as it were, in place of other tempo indications such as adagio and presto or an even less precise indication such as sonata. Aside from the cover art, I can’t say what dancing to the Mystery Sonatas would even look like.
But Beyer does mention the collaboration and then I began to think about her interpretations.
Musical Performance
The recording that stands out to me as being more contemplative and slow was the one made some years ago on Harmonia Mundi by Manze and Egarr. In addition to treating the pieces as prayers, they dispensed with the menagerie of different continuo instruments, which in contemporary performances, for some reason have come along as an expectation. That performance was not my favorite because I thought some of the fire and virtuosic nature of Biber’s writing was underdeveloped. But maybe we needed a recording like that to, well, explore that idea.
Beyer, like many before her, uses a larger continuo team, with organ, harpsichord, lute, theorbo, violone, and gamba. Like others, too, they don’t all play at once, and I think as a team they do a good job in supporting her. The combination of color and texture is a luxury and their number, with the way the sound was engineered, never gets too loud or too obtrusive. Their contribution is satisfying and is done in good taste.
Beyer likewise uses a number of different violins. This is a requirement when playing these sonatas in succession as the scordatura tunings put demands on the instruments and strings. In order to play in tune throughout, different instruments are used each set up for the pieces based on Biber’s scordatura requirements. This practice has benefits and drawbacks: for us, as listeners, we don’t get to hear one instrument transformed by the different tunings, but instead get to hear that applied across, in this case, four different instruments. I had a difficult time pulling out any favorite among the instruments used across the album, all sounded good to my ears. The change in sound, however, is nakedly apparent at the start of the 13th sonata, The Descent. Beyer’s connection of the first iteration in this sonata’s opening and the second is one I haven’t heard before. This track is a great listen.
If consistently good violin sound is one constant in this album, so too is Beyer’s approach to the music. In direct contrast to Andrew Manze, she treats this music as virtuosic music, pushed to the extreme with her choices in tempo. For those longing for a reading of these works with the accelerator pushed down hard, this is the one.
The second track of the 6th sonata, Agony in the Garden, is marked without tempo indication, but it’s a slow movement, for sure. She’s not so wholly fixated on going fast all the time. This is an example where Biber wants the performer to slow down and Beyer does just that, but once the sixteenth notes come in, it’s fireworks time. She does an excellent, consistent job too, at strong articulation when it seems rhetorically sensible to do so. In the conclusion of the same sonata, big double stops are done fortissimo, with ample space between each one, and one could imagine the reverb of such a gesture in a less intimate space such as a church or cathedral.
The double stopping in the Guigue (sic.) of the 8th sonata, the Crowning with Thorns, is done with such clean articulation. The pulse of the music is relentless, propelling the music into even more difficult territory. There are at times I imagine how someone could dance to some of this music, as fast as it’s played, but that’s really not my concern. The music under Beyer’s fingers never sounds too rushed or messy for the tempos chosen; even when I think some breathing might work in one spot or another, she’s there with the technical demands to make her solutions work admirably.
There are some solutions that frankly I haven’t heard before. The first double of the courante in the 9th sonata, The Carrying of the Cross, is played quite delicately and with a more delicate volume before the second, which is a blur of notes. Again, admirable articulation throughout that’s consistent and played cleanly.
Beyer seems to hold back a bit in the conclusion of the same sonata, until the penultimate harmonic resolution. Which, compared to the opening of the 10th sonata, seems appropriately held back, given the subject of the opening in the Crucifixtion sonata.
The opening of this album, performing the Annunciation sonata, Beyer runs through the notes as such a pace we can’t help but be both impressed with her technical charms but also rhetorical promises of what’s to be found as we keep listening. The organ in the continuo in the opening is satisfying too, for at least how its lower register has been captured.
My one big disappointment with their performances takes place where the third track starts. The big landing on this long-held note in the build up to the end seems like it comes in too quickly, as if it was edited this way. There’s such a delicious build-up in the 2nd track and then I want to take a big breath for that bass note to hit, but it comes just too quickly.
Perhaps one of the more challenging pieces for performers to find the feel for, in my estimation, is the 15th sonata, the Coronation of Mary. I like Beyer’s performance of the Aria and the resulting variations. I found the push in tempo in the second variation satisfying in a way that other performances have left me wanting.
The liner notes make mention of the last piece, the so-called Guardian Angel, and where it’s more appropriate to hear this piece—at the beginning? The solo piece, written for a violin tuned without scordatura, is often played nowadays even outside the context of the challenges that lay before it, as its hard to see a connection between this piece, the works by Westhoff, and ending with the sonatas and partitas by Bach. Whether Bach had this as a model for his Ciaconna is unknown, but the piece does take us through a similar road of emotional contrasts. Perhaps, as its played by one single person, it’s easier for us to conceive of this piece as a prayer in music. It starts humbly with the descent of just four notes but what follows is not nearly as humble. Like the Bach ciaconna, it can be played humbly or titled toward highlighting the piece’s virtuosic details. I think Beyer’s reading here doesn’t betray the humble, meditative nature of the piece but she also doesn’t shy from showcasing her and Biber’s virtuosic flair. It’s a fitting solution to a double-album that’s extremely polished, almost singularly-focused on a musical profile highlighting the music’s extreme virtuosic challenges with flair and technical acuity.
Final Thoughts
These pieces are among the most astounding treasures from the baroque written for violin with continuo. Their form, invention, and technical challenges are unique artifacts of what the role of music could become in the hands of the period’s most talented practitioners of musical art. We are truly lucky to have so many recordings of these works today, and that we have a generation of historically-oriented performers who each want to bring these to life in their own way is a testament to the music’s power over of us, to inspire us, whether toward a religious end, to a more personal, spiritual end, or who knows, as something to dance to?
I’m still not convinced how this music might be interpreted through dance or how Beyer’s performance was influenced by dance. But how she herself is inspired shouldn’t ultimately matter with musical results like this. I am glad she and her band were inspired and that they made this recording. It is outstanding in so many ways.
What I like most is how Beyer’s left her own imprint on this music, taking us in a few new directions. I think her solutions work. Both Beyer and her band are in top form, technically, and their drive to highlight this music’s bizarre and ultimately fanciful writing with consistent high energy is the hallmark of this recording.
As a fan of Biber’s music, I won’t tell you this is the album to get or the one that rises above the rest. The truth is I still enjoy the meditative space that Hélène Schmitt gives us in her reading, or the seemingly alchemistic (er, colorful) solutions chosen by Lina Tur Bonet, or the lean and close production by Huggett and Sonnerie. I know there’s another album out for release in another month, as well. I will say that new recordings either bring us new things or they don’t, and this one does. I think my reservations about sound stage and presentation aside, this album becomes very easy on the ears with headphones or after extended listening on speakers and then the music really is left front and center. Beyer and Gli Incogniti deliver on making this music their own, with transparency and technical brilliance. I heard some of these pieces in a new way and for that I’m grateful to have this new recording available to us.
