Fresco depicting the Assumption of Mary Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Performed by Anne Loeser (baroque violin), Jane Young (baroque cello), Bethany Angus (harpsichord)
The fourth Glorious Mystery is The Assumption of Mary into Heaven. Here we step into new territory. All of the previous thirteen Mysteries of the Rosary are meditations on events which took place on earth and are recorded in the Gospels written within a hundred years or so of those events. From The Assumption onwards we are dealing with events which are believed to have taken place in heaven and there is no record of them in the Bible. There is no contemporaneous account of how, or even if, Mary died before her Assumption into Heaven.
Biber's Assumption of Mary into Heaven is in D major. Its scordatura is relatively benign: the two lower strings are raised a tone, and the highest string dropped a tone, giving us A-E-A-D.
The Assumption of Mary into Heaven begins with an improvisational introduction with no tempo marking. This is followed by an Aria with variations. To start with, the Aria is rather Sarabande-like but as the variations increase in intricacy, the Sarabande aspect is lost and the whole thing eventually falls over into a really joyously celebratory Gigue. As The Assumption is completed and Mary disappears from sight, so too does the violin.
Programme note by Gregory Hill.
Producer/engineer: David McCaw
