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HILDEGARD
VON BINGEN
I sing a range of Early Medieval Music, including the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso X ("The Wise") and the Llibre Vermell de Monserrat, but my true love is the music of Hildegard von Bingen. THE PERSON If you go into a decent bookstore, you can usually find many books on Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179). There are books on her poetry, illustrations of her visions, her herbal medicine, her views on religion and cosmology, correspondence with popes. Many people now recognize her name. Margarethe von Trotta has recently made a feature film about Hildegard’s life called ‘Vision’. In short summary, Hildegard was a German abbess, author, counselor, linguist, naturalist, scientist, philosopher, physician, herbalist, ecologist, poet, visionary and composer. She corresponded with the pope and was one of the most important women of pre-Modern times. MUSIC Hildegard from a very early age grew up in a convent. She listened to and sang the chant that was current at the time. Plainchant had been around for many hundreds of years. It was codified by Pope Gregory 1st, around 600 AD. “Gregorian chant” was a mixture of “recitative” (dominated by a single pitch, called the “reciting tone”), and “free melody”, which was organized fairly tightly around eight “modes”. In fact, Hildegard was born in the year that the Cistercian movement started. Pushed by the influential churchman Bernard of Clairveaux, with whom Hildegard corresponded, the Cistercians worked to push religion back to the basics, working to simplify monastic life, architecture, and music. Chant, in their opinion, should be limited to roughly an octave range, “taking into consideration the aptitude not of lusty but average voices”. Hildegard’s music stands out as totally original for her times. Melody is freer than normal, lines are longer and less regular, and the vocal range is quite a bit wider. One antiphon, O Vos Angeli, asks its singer to sing two octaves and a fifth, from G below middle C to high D! In fact Bruce Holsinger in a recent book, theorizes that perhaps it was “Hildegard’s way of making her nuns suffer”, taking part in “the musical pain of the passion”. Cistercians criticized chant “having an endless range”,and used the term “arterias cruciantes or “crucifying the vocal chords”. As a voice teacher, I know that good vocal technique is necessary, so, hopefully, you will find Hildegard’s chant more pleasant than that! Another feature that sets apart Hildegard’s music is that it was written with her own poetry (O gloriosissimi lux vivens angeli) as words, using her own themes that are rooted in creation based theology rather than regular church orthodoxy. At risk of oversimplification, but you could say that Hildegard was concerned less with the crucified Christ and more with the Virgin, Mother and life ; God the Creator rather than God of the Divine Justice. And her music marvelously reflects the poetic ideas using melismatic lines, phrasing on open vowels, articulation of textual stresses. We now call this composition technique word-painting. MAIN THEMES IN HILDEGARD’S MUSIC AND POETRY (Music Examples with Modal References) Greening O nobilissima viriditas Ionian Wisdom O virtus Sapientie Phrygian God/Father O eterne Deus Mixolydian Virgin Mary Ave Generosa Aeolian/Phrygian Holy Spirit O ignis Spiritus paracliti Aeolian (Phrygian end) Queen of Heaven Caritas Dorian/Aeolian Other themes: Celestial Hierarchy, Patron Saints, Virgins, Ecclesia SURVIVING MANUSCRIPTS: Dendermonde Codex Reisencodex – includes the first morality play “ORDO VIRTUTUM” Good Recent Compilation: Hildegard Von Bingen: Lieder - Pudentiana Barth et al, 1969 Good Translations: Hildegard von Bingen: Symphonia - Barbara Newman, 1988 PERFORMANCE PRACTICE: INSTRUMENTS Two of the most vexing questions concerning music from this time arise from the fact that the only written record we have are single lines. Melodies. So the music of Hildegard is often performed like that, sung as a women’s solo or unison voices. However, Hildegard writes of the harp and the ten stringed psaltery. She wrote about “clashing cymbals and cymbals of jubilation as well as other musical instruments which men of wisdom and zeal have invented, because all arts pertaining to things useful and necessary for mankind have been created by the breath that God sent into man’s body”. Sadly, we’ll never know for sure. When I perform Hildegard I almost always use musicians; wood flutes, drones on viols, violin, sruti, swar sangham, and occasionally subtle hand drums. In fact, I occasionally like to liven up the colours with world melodic instruments on drones and decorations. The rehearsal experience is a collective collaboration between instrumentalists and the singer. First, the rhythm of the Latin words and poetic phrases are practiced to bring out the natural flow of the text within the melodies. Instrumentalists play tonic or reciting tone, preludes, interludes at the endings of verses, postludes. They also can ornament or decorate within the phrase when the singer takes a breath, or play in perfect 4th, 5ths or unisons with the singer on important word phrases. The tonal centre can move at cadences to the subtonic or supertonic. Decisions are usually made and practiced during rehearsals. The text is the guide, the mode is the color and the phrases flow in circular or wave like motion, reflecting the poetic ideas. In some cases a regular pulse is heard, but in most cases Hildegard’s compositions are in free rhythm. MONODY The other question is: if Hildegard did allow instruments, she ever envisioned her music played with more than just the melody? Could there have been a second line? Even harmonic accompaniment? There were examples of two line writing in the mid-twelfth century by Herrad of Landsberg, another abbess further up the Rhine, but this was not common. The famous early Notre-Dame School Polyphony was just beginning at the end of the 12th century. I sometimes treat Hildegard’s scores as something similar to jazz lead sheets: melodies and modes that can have some instrumental improvisation based on thematic material of the chant. |
NEWS
& UPCOMING
EVENTS '"Meditation
in Motion"
Hildegard von Bingen Feast Day Concert & Labyrinth Walk Sponsored by the Toronto Community Labyrinth Network  8:00pm
on Friday, Sept.17, 2010
Holy Trinity Church, Toronto Tickets in advance for $15 (cash) at Wonderworks (www.gowonderworks.com) or $20 at the door. Five Performance Videos Recently Uploaded to YouTube ....Link to Videos Four Podcast Soundfiles Krystina was recently part of the team which posted four music files designed to enhance the experience of walking a labyrinth: Earth, Wind, Fire & Water. Also suitable for meditation, each file is approx. 10 min. long, available as free download to iPods or to listen to on your computer: Click or Left Click the name to isten - Right Click and choose "Save as" or "Download as" to downloatd. EARTH : Nature soundscape with birds, frogs, drum and flute WIND : Desert winds with mallets, flute and voice FIRE : Symphony of Tibetan bowls and metallic chimes WATER : Gentle waves with plucked drone, flute and voice Musicians: Ann-Marie Boudreau, Michael Franklin, Krystina Lewicki Producer: Robert Lewicki ©2010 RECENT EVENTS "...you were otherworldly, magical and immensely talented, sending out waves of Hildegardian energy that I will never forget." -Michael Kramer, Classical 96.3FM Host  -WholeNote Magazine, Sept.2009 Issue Past CONCERTS: -May'10-Miracles Concert & Labyrinth Walk, Metropolitan United Church -Sept'09- Hildegard Feast Day Concert & Labyrinth Walk: Church of the Holy Trinity -Wonderworks Fleishman Gallery Concert Series: May'08, Dec'08, April'09 Hildegard, Cantigas de Santa Maria, Llibre Vermell de Monserrat Past HILDEGARD MASSES -Nov'09- St. Vincent de Paul Church -Sept'09- St. George-the-Martyr Church Past PERFORMANCES -Sept'09- Toronto Early Music Fair Libre Vermell, Cantigas de Santa Maria -Feb/March'09-Toronto Opera Repertoire Carmen (Bizet), Cenerentola (Rossini), Orfeo ed Euridice (Gluck) -Sept'08- Toronto Early Music Fair Hildegard von Bingen |
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