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Donald Macleod explores the music, and what little is known of the life, of Baroque master Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. Today, the focus is on Biber’s magnificent Salzburg Mass.

For many years after its score turned up in a Salzburg grocer’s, the Missa Salisburgensis wasn’t regarded as a work by Biber. The scholars of the Salzburg Mozarteum, to whom the choirmaster who made the momentous discovery took the score for identification, attributed it to one Orazio Benevoli and dated it to 1628, when, it was supposed, the mass was performed at a service for the consecration of the new Salzburg Cathedral. It was not until the 1970s that the attribution to Benevoli was contested, when it was spotted that the watermarks on the score’s paper placed it much later in the century. Further musicological detective-work followed, and nowadays most scholars concur that the Missa Salisburgensis is without doubt the work of Biber, and that it was composed for the service that marked the high-point of a grand eight-day festival not in 1628 but in 1682, when the city celebrated the 1100th anniversary of the founding of the diocese of Salzburg. Our performance was recorded in the monumental space where it was first heard – that of Salzburg Cathedral, rebuilt to its original design after a single Allied bomb destroyed its colossal dome in 1944.

Balletti a 6 (1. Sonata)
Clemencic Consort
René Clemencic, director

Missa Salisburgensis (Kyrie, Gloria)
The Amsterdam Baroque Choir and Orchestra
Ton Koopman, conductor

Sonata a 7
Jaap ter Linden, cello
Albert Rasi, Michele Zeoli, violone
Stephen Keavy, Jonathan Impett, Michael Harrison, Robert Vanryne, David Hendry, Mark Bennet, trumpet
Martin Ansink, timpani
Ton Koopman, conductor

Missa Salisburgensis (Credo)
The Amsterdam Baroque Choir and Orchestra
Ton Koopman, conductor

Sonata Sancti Polycarpi
Jaap ter Linden, cello
Albert Rasi, Michele Zeoli, violone
Stephen Keavy, Jonathan Impett, Michael Harrison, William O’Sullivan, Robert Vanryne, David Hendry, Simon Gabriel, Mark Bennet, trumpet
Martin Ansink, timpani
Ton Koopman, conductor

Missa Salisburgensis (Sanctus, Agnus Dei)
The Amsterdam Baroque Choir and Orchestra
Ton Koopman, conductor

Producer: Chris Barstow for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales