During the summer of 1670 Biber was sent to Absam to negotiate the sale of some violins for his ensemble with the famous constructor Jacob Stainer. Biber left the city and never returned. Instead of going to see Stainer he went to Salzburg, where he was able to enter the service of Maximilian Gandolph von Khuenburg, Archbishop of Salzburg. Liechtenstein was obviously offended, but as a result of his friendship with Archbishop Khuenburg, he decided not to retaliate and was content to wait six years for a document officially freeing Biber of his services to be produced. In order to ingratiate himself, the composer periodically sent works to Kromeriz, where the majority of his manuscripts are preserved. Both these compositions and those he offered his new patron—on many occasions the same work dedicated to both Liechtenstein and Khuenburg—mainly consisted of instrumental works. Andreas Hofer, the Kapellmeister he assisted until his death in 1684, commissioned the majority of his large-scale sacred works for the Cathedral.

Pleasure (the reader’s ‘hedonism’ Borges referred to) is undoubtedly present in Biber’s music. It is reflected in the composer and in his improvisations on the instrument, and confirmed in present-day performers and those who listen to his music.

Interpretations

The Life and Opinion of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman, published by Laurence Sterne in 1760, is a strange novel. Just after the beginning, it bursts into a digression that lasts for hundreds of pages. Sterne then tranquilly resumes the plot as if nothing had happened. For many years viewed as an absurdity or, at least, a crass error, the twentieth-century avant-garde found it a great precursor and began reading it (and interpreting it) as a literary masterpiece.

The idea of an interpretation being imposed on a work and even constructing it, is more accepted in the field of literature than in music. Today it would never occur to anyone to read Kafka’s letters as mere epistolary communications of more or less intimate news and thoughts. These letters have become literature themselves and the author’s original intention is of little importance. By contrast, many bad operas serias that could do well in theatres as comic operas, with their hilarious lamentations and absurd love-death scenes, have directly been left out of the repertory. Or—worse still— they continue circulating as operas serias! In this field, the composer’s intentions are still considered as undisputed and irreplaceable. In Tchaikovsky’s symphonies it is impossible to hear any of the content Tchaikovsky thought he put into them (not to mention his symphonic poems and all that failed description). However, discussions as to whether or not the composer was depressed at the time he wrote the Pathétique, if his death was intentional or not, and the possible relationship between these two issues have resulted in pages of scholarly discussion. The issue of to what degree a contemporary reading redefines a work is particularly relevant in the case of Biber, who was considered a great composer during the eighteenth century and is still considered so today, though for slightly different reasons.