The course will spend six weeks looking closely at the Mystery Sonatas by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber. One of the sessions will include a live performance with Andrus Madsen and Susanna Ogata. The Mystery Sonatas by Heinrich Biber are a set of 15 sonatas and an unaccompanied solo violin written by Passacaglia and dedicated to the Prince Bishop in Salzburg, Max Gandalph von Kuenberg. Each sonata in the set is a musical meditation upon the fifteen mysteries meant to be pondered during the practice of rosary devotion. During the 17th century the mysteries were divided into three sets of five, the "Joyful Mysteries," the "Sorrowful Mysteries," and the "Glorious Mysteries." It was not uncommon to arrange visual depictions of the fifteen mysteries in churches during the 13th-17th centuries as visual aids to Rosary meditation. Biber's Mystery Sonatas tackle the same mysteries with musical rather than visual depictions. Given its enigmatic nature, it may be that musical depictions come closer to the true spirit of mystery. The course will explore rosary devotion and meditative practice, and how it connects to Biber's music. It will also look closely at some of the unusual extended techniques, including scordatura, that Biber applies to the violin to evoke each mystery.