01	Sonata I In C						04:38
	02	Sonata Ii In D						04:17
	03	Sonata Iii In G Minor						05:22
	04	Sonata Iv In C						04:25
	05	Sonata V In E Minor						05:53
	06	Sonata Vi In F						04:56
	07	Sonata Vii In C						05:30
	08	Sonata Viii In G						05:32
	09	Sonata Ix In B Flat						04:46
	10	Sonata X In G Minor						05:07
	11	Sonata Xi In A						04:13
	12	Sonata Xii In C						04:49

The Parley Of Instruments Roy Goodman and Peter Holman dir Hyperion records CDA66145 Recorded 21,22,23 May 1983


Parley of Instruments
Credits All Credits (69)
Ensemble (57)
Orchestra (8)

Biography
The Parley of Instruments is an English early music ensemble specializing in string chamber music of the Renaissance and Baroque. Named after a series of concerts given in London in 1676, the modern Parley of Instruments was founded by Peter Holman and Roy Goodman in 1979. The core of the ensemble consists of Judy Tarling and Theresa Caudle (violins), Mark Caudle (bass viol, bass violin and cello), and Holman (harpsichord and chamber organ). The ensemble was among the first to perform on Renaissance violins modeled on late sixteenth century instruments. The Parley has enlarged to form a Classical period orchestra and has even recorded some nineteenth century English music on period instruments. -- Robert Adelson




Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber
Country Bohemia
Birth Aug 12, 1644 in Wartenberg, Czechoslovakia
Death May 3, 1704 in Salzburg, Austria
Period Baroque

Biography
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber is considered to have been the finest violinist of the seventeenth century. He was also a leading composer, and produced a number of works -- most notably his sonatas for violin -- that remain in the performing repertory.
Biber was born in the town of Wartenberg (now Straz). Little is known of his background or education, although he is believed to have studied in Vienna with the eminent German violinist Johann Heinrich Schmelzer. He began his career playing violin and gamba in the aristocratic courts of Moravia, and is known to have assumed a post in the band belonging to Count Karl of Liechtenstein-Castelcorno at Kromeriz. In 1670, he abandoned this position without permission, and joined the Kapelle in Salzburg, being named Kapellmeister there in 1684. His brilliance and virtuosity on the violin made Biber one of the most renowned soloists in Europe, and in 1690 Emperor Leopold I added the aristocratic prefix "von" to his name. He died at age 59 in Salzburg.

Biber's compositions stand as some of the most startlingly advanced music of the Baroque era. Biber's manuscripts and publications record violin improvisations in unprecedented detail; in his Sonata Representativa, one will find Biber's instrumental impressions of cuckoos, frogs, cats, and marching musketeers. These are supplied with a simple ground bass that provides plenty of room for the soloist to stretch out and show off, but are written at such a high level of difficulty that few violinists attempt to master them. In his "Mystery", or "Rosenkranz" sonatas, Biber makes extensive use of scordatura, violin re-tunings that change the tonal character of the instrument and make "impossible" figurations possible.

Biber was clearly influenced by the Musurgia Universalis, a theoretical work written by German Jesuit scientist and mathematician Athanasius Kircher. First published in 1650, Kircher draws parallels between musical tones, planetary motion, and psychological states of being. Biber's music is strongly effective emotionally, and in works of a programmatic character, such as his orchestral piece Battalia, he attempts to combine both a literal and subjective listening experience. In Battalia, the orchestra is required to play several marching songs in different keys at once -- in a manner similar to the music of Charles Ives -- to indicate eager soldiers of various regiments leading off to battle. A soft, hushed passage at the end of the work represents the result, a somber tableau of battlefield dead.

Biber also composed a number of sacred vocal works; most of these reside easily within the required strictures of the Church. A standout piece is his 15-part Requiem, an expressive and harmonically adventurous mass that eschews the sobriety of the text in favor of glorious antiphonal choral textures. Along those same lines, musicologists have established that the anonymous, huge 54-part Missa Salisburgensis is also likely the work of von Biber. -- David Lewis



Work(s)
Composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber

Description
Biber, renowned as a violin virtuoso, and also skilled at the bass and viola da gamba, wrote many of his finest compositions for this instrument. He was a Kapellmeister who trained singers for whom he generated magnificent choral works, and also a court composer. He also composed three operas (of which only one, Chi la dura la vince, 1687, is extant), and approximately 15 school dramas.
The Fifteen Mystery (or Rosary) Sonatas with Passacaglia for violin & bass continuo, completed about 1676, combine ecstatic quasi-improvisatory playing with secular dance forms, the whole beautifully transformed into religious tone poems. In 14 of these 16 pieces, Biber employs alternate tuning known as scordatura, introduced by Biagio Marini, which allows for new sympathetic resonances with richer sonorities, multiple stops, and unusual timbres. The Guardian Angel passacaglia is a thrilling series of written improvisations built over 65 repetitions of a simple four-note descending figure.

Biber's eight virtuoso Sonate violino solo with basso continuo (1681) feature extended pitch range and bowing techniques, polyphonic passages, and amazingly uninhibited variations. The "Sonata violino solo representativa" employs bird and animal imitations. The brilliant seven scordatura partitas, Harmonia artificiosa-ariosa: diversi mode accordata (1696) for two instruments and bass, are earthy dances and variations of vastly contrasting tempi and style.

Biber's ensemble music is as fine and varied as his solo works: the Sonata S. Polycarpi for eight trumpets and timpani, the Sonate Tam Aris Quam Aulis Servientes (1676), 12 alternately fiery and lyrical Venetian-style sonatas for strings and trumpets serviceable "for altar and table," and the Fidicunium Sacro-Profanum for strings and basso continuo (1682) with its strongly contrasting lively and profound sections.

Biber's sacred compositions are impressive sonic landscapes, like the Requiem in F minor, the brilliant Missa Sancti Henrici for five soloists, five chorus parts, brass, timpani, strings and continuo, the 53-part Missa Salisburgensis recently realized by 50 voices in six choirs with soloists, strings, oboes, recorders, dulcian, cornets, sackbut, bassoon, five trombones, six clarino trumpets, timpani, and four church organs, the Missa Bruxellensis, the 32-part Vesperae longiores ac breviores una cum litanis Lauretanis, the Missa Alleluja, and the elaborate motet Laetatus sum.

Besides many Balletti and Arien, Biber's many programmatic pieces include the Battalia а 10 which depicts a battlefield with many amazing effects: col legno battuta (hitting the strings with the wood of the bow), a drunken section in which eight different tunes in different keys (!) are all played at once, and paper attached to a string of the violin to imitate a drum. The Serenada "Nightwatchman's Call" is for a beery-voiced bass vocalist announcing the time of day in friendly little poems accompanied by strings played like lutes. The Sonata а 6 known as the Peasants Procession to Church depicts young and old in differing tempi gradually assembling, and a humble chant fading as the worshipers enter the church. A happy, lively dance indicates the peasants have moved to the village tavern. -- "Blue Gene" Tyranny