Heinrich Biber, a 17th- century Bohemian Catholic, took the Psalmist’s exhortation to “sing unto the Lord a new song” further than most other composers of Western music.
Biber’s innovations included a set of Rosary Sonatas, also known as the Mystery Sonatas, 15 short pieces for violin and continuo, with a final work for solo violin.
Unpublished until after their rediscovery in the late 19th century, these Rosary Sonatas required that the violin be retuned for 14 of the 16 individual pieces, making performance of the set a fantastic technical challenge. It is not even practical for a violinist to try to play through all of them on a single instrument, given the number of retunings needed.
