Violin virtuoso and composer, Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644-1705) was one of the most significant composers of the High Baroque and, apart from Mozart, ranks as the most accomplished musician that called Salzburg home for much of his life. He was born in a small town in Bohemia where he spent the early years of his career.  In 1670 he entered service under the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg.  Biber far surpassed his contemporaries with his unmatched violin technique.  His compositions include sacred vocal works, partitas and sonatas for various instrumental combinations.

Biber wrote numerous works for string ensemble, including a battle scene for ten players as well as today’s Serenada a 5or Serenade for Five Instruments. The music unfolds as a series of different sections, and it is essentially a familiar model to those who know the Baroqeu dance suite. Here is an Allemande and Gavotte, for instance, as well as movements generically labeled Aria and Adagio. This quintet, however, comes with a surprise in the form of a Chaconne featuring the “Nightwatchman’s Song.” The story goes that the theme used in this lengthy variations-style movement comes from an actual Salzburg watchman’s call. Biber allows the voice to come through fully by allowing strings to only play pizzicato.

Born in 1959 in Pennsylvania and raised in Rhode Island, Sebastian Currier is a successful American composer of chamber and orchestral music, alongside works for choir and mixed media performance.  His credentials include a Doctor of Musical Arts from Juilliard, and the composer taught as a professor of music at Columbia University from 1999-2007.  He later maintained the position of artist-in-residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from July 2013 to July 2016.  Currier has collaborated with several prominent artists, including the world-renowned violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, who has recorded and premiered a handful of the composer’s works.  In 2007, Currier received the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his 2003 chamber work Static.

Today’s concert features the first and last movements from an approximately 16-minute piece entitled Night Time.  Commissioned by harpist Marie-Pierre Langlamet and violinist Jean-Claude Velin in 1998, Night Time has five movements: “Dusk,” “Sleepless,” “Vespers,” “Nightwind,” and “Starlight.” Each explores distinct atmospheres associated with the dark mysteries of night.  Each short movement capitalizes on the unique expressive capabilities and timbres of the harp and the violin.  As one Washington Post review puts it: “It is written so carefully and specifically for the two instruments that one cannot imagine it any other way; with form and content in perfect alignment, it could neither be blown up to symphonic proportions nor reduced to a piano arrangement.”  Enjoy Currier’s sparse yet immaculate evocations of the thrumming energy of nighttime.

English composer John Wilbye (1574-1638) was the son of a wealthy tanner in Norfolk. By the age of 24 had entered into service for the well-to-do Kytson family at Hengrave Hall.  Given his patrons’ interest in musical entertainment and the musical resources at his disposal at the residence, John spent almost 30 years there in service as a domestic musician.  During this period, he was able to dedicate time to the publication of two separate collections of madrigals, one in 1598 and the other in 1609.

“Draw On, Sweet Night” comes from Wilbye’s set published in 1609, and is one of the composer’s most famous works.  The six-part vocal texture creates a bittersweet atmosphere, in part, via marked shifts between major and minor tonalities throughout the work.  In this way, Wilbye’s setting of the text thus illustrates the way in which the poet’s melancholy is ever present yet tempered through his refuge in the silent companionship of night.  In this poetic universe, one is never truly alone at night, as demonstrated through the beautifully multilayered passage where both the night and the music itself come to “enfold” their listeners.

Austro-Hungarian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) is known best for his abandonment of Western European traditional tonality and his angular twelve-tone compositions.  Before developing his unique atonal, “serial” method of composing, however, Schoenberg spent several decades evolving his artistic voice. He acquired a mixture of formal and informal musical education through the help of peers and his own initiative.  His discovery of German poet Richard Dehmel in his twenties would prove particularly fruitful, inspiring the creation of several pieces for solo voice and what Schoenberg would consider to be the first ever “tone poem” for chamber ensemble: Verklärte Nacht or Transfigured Night.

Schoenberg composed Verklärte Nacht for string sextet in December 1899.  While not strictly programmatic – it does not follow a specific narrative sequence – the piece does evoke various emotional states inspired by Dehmel’s poem of the same name.  In the text, a couple stroll along in the moonlight.  The woman confesses to her lover that she is pregnant by another man.  Rather than upsetting him, the news appears to have a positive effect and strengthens his bond with the woman.  Schoenberg employs the use of string harmonics to “express the beauty of the moonlight.” He paints the anguish of the woman’s confession in a particularly turbulent passage, while expressing the serenity of the man’s reply in an uplifting, at times dancelike, extended episode in the second half of the work.  Although initially unsuccessful at its Vienna premiere in 1903, Verklärte Nachtbecame popular shortly thereafter. That change of fortune led the composer to arrange the piece for full string orchestra twice – first in 1917, then again in 1943.   Today’s performance features the original string sextet version.

Emily Masincup and Jason Stell, © 2025