The name is Biber: Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber

[Mandryka]

I'm starting to explore Evan Johnson's extrovert and rather fun recording of the Rosary sonatas, this comment about violin tuning caught my attention. We've discussed "well temperament" before, I'm not sure what it is really, some form of Kimberger system?

Temperaments & Tunings

For this recording, we chose two temperaments or tuning systems, both of which Biber might have used in Salz-burg. One is a well temperament, which permits playing in any key, but in which each key has a different color. Usually, the keys with fewer accidentals sound mellower, and those with more accidentals sound brighter. The other is a mean-tone termperament, in which the usable keys all have the same color, but some keys sound too out of tune to use.

In the first five "joyful" sonatas, well temperament enhances the excited or happy feelings because of the active sound of the frequent A and E major triads. The major thirds are quite wide and produce rapid beat frequencies. In Sonata III (Birth of Christ), the very stri-dent F sharp major dominant chord con-tributes to the strange feeling of pain. In contrast, Sonatas XI, XII, and XV (of the "glorious" group) sound more glowing and relaxed. The major third in the C ma-jor triad is beatless, and in the G major tri-ad almost so. These beatless thirds evoke the sound of trumpets in Sonata XII.

Our well temperament could have worked nicely for the "sorrowful" sona-tas also, but beats are more intrusive in an organ's denser sound than on a harpsi-chord, and a "fifth-comma" mean-tone temperament with close to pure major thirds seemed a good alternative. In this temperament, all the minor triads, which still beat a lot, contrast with all the major triads, which beat much less. This mean-tone temperament also provided an ex-pressive "wolf tone" (out of tune) effect for the B major chord in Sonata IX.

And this note showing their seriousness about instruments, which in my experience can pay dividends

Instruments Played In This Recording

We matched the tone qualities of each of the five violins to the color and charac-ter of each sonata. Before playing each  sonata, William L. Monical, of New York, adjusted the soundposts, so that each scordatura tuning would reinforce the character of its sonata. I am indebted to him for his advice and expertise in provid-ing these sound adjustments, as well as for loaning three of the violins used in this recording. I am also very grateful to Wil-liams College for the use of the Eberle violin.


Strings for the violins (pure gut, ex-cept for low G, Ab, and A, which are sil-ver-covered gut) were made by Damian Dlugolecki, of New York, whose extra help I very much appreciate. The violin bow, made by Stephen Marvin, of Toron-to, in 1982, is a copy of an early eighteenth century French bow.

The cello is an anonymous English instrument, ca. 1840, converted to ba-roque condition. The harpsichord is a Zuckerman copy of an early eighteenth century French double manual instrument, built by Louis Patterson, of Elm-hurst, Illinois, in 1980. The positive or-gan, built in 1985 by Gerrit C. Klop, of Garderen, Holland, was provided by Edward Brewer, of Leonia, New Jersey.