MusicaNova Orchestra performs on Sept. 19, 2021, at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix.
Heinrich Biber (1644-1704), a violin virtuoso, was one of the great innovators of his time. His violin and viola writing extended the technical limits of the instruments, and he experimented with various tunings of the strings. Virtually all his Mystery Sonatas tune the violin in nonstandard ways.
In Battalia, he experimented with new sounds and combinations of sounds in ways that were shocking for the times. Baroque composers often used the idea of war or battle for musical experimentation, but no one took it as far as Biber.
The second movement describes a bunch of drunks in a pub singing in four different keys simultaneously. “Here dissonance is everywhere, for the drunks are accustomed to bellow out different songs,” Biber noted in the score.
To imitate cannon shots, the strings play a pizzicato that snaps against the fingerboard – known today as “the Bartok pizzicato,” which tells you which century we associate the effect with! Biber has the bass player place a piece of paper between the strings to imitate a snare drum, while the solo violin imitates a fife. He makes use of the col legno effect, where the players use the wood rather than the hair of the bow to produce a rattling sound.
The music is richly evocative, painting as colorful a picture as possible of the battle before ending with a lament, as Biber was not trying to glorify war.
