You can catch tantalising glimpses of it on YouTube. Contemporary dancers responding to Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s so-called Mystery, or Rosary, Sonatas (he gave no title; none was needed). As performed by the present artists, Gli Incogniti: violinist Amandine Beyer, gamba and violone player Baldomero Barciela, lutenist Francesco Romano and harpsichordist and organist Anna Fontana. Of course, I’d love to have seen such a performance myself – who wouldn’t? But to know the project exists is enough to feed the imagination with images twisting torsos and sweeping limbs as you listen to this remarkable reading of remarkable music.

And this is important. That such images could, even should, supplant those which Biber’s contemporaries would have meditated upon, one after the other, during their Rosary Month procession, as they fingered their rosary beads. The 15 mysteries in three cycles become 15 suites in three cycles: the Five Joyful Mysteries, the Five Sorrowful Mysteries and the Five Glorious Mysteries. All pertain to the life...