Chapter 12
Hooked on Ecstasy:
Performance ‘Practice’ and the Reception
of the Music of Hildegard of Bingen
Jennifer Bain
Timothy McGee, who has worked for decades on early music and performance
practice issues as both a scholar and an active music director, reminds us that there
doubtless was much variation in the way early music was originally performed:
That there is no single ‘right way’ to perform a composition of any era is one
of the beauties of the art. At any one point in history one can find substantial
variations in the interpretation of the repertory, and this is as true of the early
centuries as of any other era.
We can assume that in the early centuries there was as much variety in the voices
and styles of delivery as there is today, but we shall probably never know for
certain what was considered to be a standard of beautiful vocal sound – or even
whether there was a standard.
Although we can never know for certain if we have arrived at even one of the
possible ‘historically correct’ interpretations, it is important – as McGee’s output has
demonstrated – that we at least attempt to locate and reproduce early performance
styles. The variety of interpretation and style of vocal production characteristic of
the Middle Ages and Renaissance, along with our inability to recover those styles
I wish to thank Maureen Epp, Simon Docking and William Flynn for providing
comments and criticism of earlier drafts of this essay, and David Hiley for sharing some
of his unpublished material and for planting the seed of this essay with a paper given at the
Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, University of Bristol, July 2002. Numerous
students and faculty at the Sydney Conservatorium and the University of New South Wales in
Sydney, Australia, also supplied valuable feedback at earlier presentations of this material. All
infelicities and errors that remain are, of course, my own. Funding for this project came in part
from a Research Development Fund Faculty Research Grant at Dalhousie University.
Quote is from Timothy J. McGee, Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Performer’s
Guide (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 4.
Ibid., 55.
Jerome and Elizabeth Roche, A Dictionary of Early Music: From the Troubadours
to Monteverdi (London: Faber Music, 1981); Ian D. Bent, ‘Hildegard of Bingen’, The New
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 1980), 8:553–56. Hildegard
does not appear at all in the 1906 and 1939 editions of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and
Musicians (though Leoninus and Perotinus make their first entry in 1939), but she does
finally enter in 1954. In the second edition of The New Grove, the revised Hildegard article
is twice as long and uses more recent research to provide a context for Hildegard. Ian D.
Bent and Marianne Pfau, ‘Hildegard of Bingen’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 2001), 11:493–99.
From Gothic Voices, A Feather on the Breath of God (audio recording). Hyperion
66039, 1982.
Oliver Sacks, ‘The Visions of Hildegard’, in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for
a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (New York: Touchstone Books, 1985), 166–70; Charles
Singer, ‘The Scientific Views and Visions of Saint Hildegard (1198–80)’, in Studies in the
History and Method of Science, ed. Charles Singer, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955;
first published 1917), 1–58.
Her Play of the Virtues (Ordo Virtutem [sic]) is unique in the history of medieval
music. There is no other liturgical drama of her era or before, that treats spiritual
Lina Eckenstein, Woman under Monasticism: Chapters on Saint-Lore and Convent
Life between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1896),
256–77. For further biographical information about Eckenstein, see Penelope Johnson,
‘Two Women Scholars Look at Medieval Nuns: Lina Eckenstein and Jo Ann McNamara’,
Magistra 3, no. 2 (1997): 30–47, especially 32–40.
Eckenstein, Woman under Monasticism, 270.
J. Ph. Schmelzeis, Das Leben und Wirken der heiligen Hildegardis nach den
Quellen dargestellt (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder’sche Verlagshandlung, 1879).
Although Upton ‘recovers’ the names of many female composers, the goal of his
book is to put forward the idea that the great contribution of women to music is in their role
as ‘muse’ to male composers and as performers and interpreters of music. George P. Upton,
Woman in Music, 6th ed. (Chicago: A.C. McClurg and Company, 1899).
10
Sophie Hutchinson Drinker, unpublished memoir, untitled typescript, 195, cited
by Ruth Solie in ‘Afterword: Sophie Drinker’s Achievement’, in Sophie Drinker, Music
and Women: The Story of Women in Their Relation to Music, reprint ed. (New York: The
Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 1995), 325.
11
Sophie Drinker, Music and Women: The Story of Women in their Relation to Music
(New York: Coward-McCann, 1948), especially 85–201.
For Drinker, the originality lies in the conception of the work as a morality play.
And although she continues her discussion of Hildegard by mentioning other
musical compositions and suggests that one of Hildegard’s sequences, ‘“O virga
[ac] diadema,” is still sung in the village church at Bingen and in other convents’,
she does not describe the music at all.13
Although many accounts in French and German appeared in the late nineteenth
century, descriptions of Hildegard’s music in English really began in the 1980s after
recordings started to appear in earnest, most notably after Gothic Voices produced
A Feather on the Breath of God.14 It is perhaps not surprising that as a visionary,
Hildegard has been described as an ‘ecstatic’. The terms, though, are not interchangeable;
Hildegard insisted that her visions never occurred in ecstasy, but rather while she
was awake.15 But as an adjectival description of her music, the word ecstatic appears
frequently in musical scholarship, in textbook descriptions of her music, and in reviews,
programme notes and CD liner notes. What follows is a sampling:
12
Ibid., 200.
13
Ibid.
14
See note 4, above.
15
See Hildegard’s letter to Guibert of Gembloux (no. 103R) in L. Van Acker, ed.,
Hildegardis Bingensis: Epistolarium, Pars Secunda, Corpus Christianorum: continuatio
medievalis, 91A (Tournhout: Brepols, 1993), 261–62; and in English translation in Joseph
L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman, The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen (New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998), 2:23 and 25, n. 3. I would like to thank Dr William T. Flynn
of Leeds University for graciously directing me to this passage.
16
Describing Anonymous 4, Hildegard von Bingen: 11,000 Virgins: Chants for the Feast
of Saint Ursula (audio recording) Deutsche Harmonia Mundi HMU 907200, 1997. Excerpted
from Tower Records, http://www.towerrecords.com/product.aspx?pfid=2896988 (accessed 19
May 2004). Italics here and in the following quotations have been added for emphasis.
In the twelfth century, accounts of Ursula and her virgin army not only inspired
Hildegard to write the ecstatic chants included in this program, but they also
may have kindled certain visions of the mystic Elisabeth of Schönau … .
– CD liner notes, 11,000 Virgins by Anonymous 418
The chants composed by Hildegard have ecstatic passages that may include
leaps of an octave (eight notes) or more.
– Maureen McCarthy Draper, The Nature of
Music: Beauty, Sound, and Healing 19
Sheer musical excellence … Mr. Keene drew an intensity from his singers that
effectively tapped into both the meditative and ecstatic currents of the music.
– New York Times review20
This week’s program places the ecstatic works Hildegard composed for Ursula’s
feast day in their original liturgical setting so that modern listeners can, in the
words of Anonymous 4’s Susan Hellauer, ‘experience the powerful impression
they made on their first hearers, both as evocations of the holy events they
commemorate, and as pure works of art’.
– Minnesota Public Radio21
Her melodic contours are consistently original; being based on mystical visions,
they usually have an ecstatic quality.
– Todd McComb, Classical Net website22
17
June Boyce-Tillman, ‘Hildegard of Bingen at 900: The Eye of a Woman’, Musical
Times 1865 (Winter 1998): 34.
18
Marsha Genensky and Johanna Maria Rose, ‘The Legend of St. Ursula’, CD liner
notes, Anonymous 4, Hildegard von Bingen: 11,000 Virgins, 9.
19
Maureen McCarthy Draper, The Nature of Music: Beauty, Sound, and Healing
(New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001), 112.
20
The New York Times review of Voices of Ascension, From Chant to Renaissance,
Delos DE 3174, 1995. Excerpted from Delos, http://www.delosmus.com/item/de31/de3174.
html (accessed 19 May 2004).
21
Minnesota Public Radio description of broadcast for 13 August 2000. Excerpted
from Saint Paul Sunday, http://saintpaulsunday.publicradio.org/listings/shows00_08.htm
(accessed 19 May 2004).
22
Todd McComb, excerpted from ClassicalNet, http://www.classical.net/music/
comp.lst/hildgard.html (accessed 19 May 2004).
But, above all, the liberation of Hildegard’s free and ecstatic melodies from the
accretions so foolishly added in so many present-day faddish treatments allows
these melodies to soar on their own terms.
– American Record Guide review25
The medieval German nun, Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179), and the
contemporary American composer, Patricia Van Ness (b.1951), not only penned
these richly symbolic texts, but composed a kind of music at once ecstatic and
sublimely spiritual.
– CD liner notes, Sapphire Night by Tapestry26
Two CDs even carry references to ecstasy in their titles: Sequentia’s Canticles of
Ecstasy (1994) and the Coro Hildegard von Bingen’s Ecstatic Chants (1998).27
It is worth asking how Hildegard’s music came to be associated so strongly
with this ‘ecstatic’ label. In many of these excerpts, the ‘ecstasy’ is attributed to
the wide melodic range and ‘soaring’ passages in individual chants. Indeed, it is
typical of descriptions of Hildegard’s music to mention a wide range and large
leaps as indicative of her melodic style. In the liner notes of one CD, the author
23
Description of Oxford Girls Choir programme, ‘Sibyl of the Rhine – The Life and
Music of Hildegard of Bingen’, performed at Holy Redeemer Church, Chelsea (24 October
1999), and Sarum College, Salisbury (26 October 1999), directed by Richard Vendome and
Penelope Martin-Smith. Excerpted from Oxford Girls Choir, http://www.oxfordgirlschoir.
co.uk/events/hildegard1999.pdf (accessed 10 June 2004).
24
Joseph Kerman and Gary Tomlinson, Listen, Brief 4th ed. (Boston and New York:
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000), 51.
25
Barker, review of Sinfonye, Aurora: The Complete Hildegard von Bingen, Volume
Two, Celestial Harmonies 13128, 2000.
Excerpted from Celestial Hamonies, http://www.harmonies.com/reviews/arg.htm
(accessed 10 June 2004).
26
Tapestry, Sapphire Night (audio recording), MDG 344 1193–2, 2003, CD booklet, 4.
27
Sequentia, Canticles of Ecstasy (audio recording), Deutsche Harmonia Mundi
05472 77320 2, 1994; Coro Hildegard von Bingen, Hildegard von Bingen: Ecstatic Chants
(audio recording), Fine Tune 1130-2, 1998.
10th 9 30
11 th
21 (40%)
54
(72%)
12th 15 24
13 th
9 (32%)
14th 8
15th 2
16th 0 11 11
17th 0 (15%) (15%)
18th 0
19th 1
Even if we include the eight chants that encompass an octave plus a seventh, the
group of works that include a range of two to two and one-half octaves represents
just 15 per cent of Hildegard’s output. In fact, while no works of Hildegard span
less than an octave (unlike earlier chant repertory), more than 50 per cent of her
works fall into the range of an octave to an eleventh, a range readily accepted
28
David Preiser, in Rosa Lamoreaux-Hesperus, Luminous Spirit: Chants of Hildegard
von Bingen (audio recording), KOCH 3–7443–2, 1998, CD booklet, 10.
29
Barbara Newman, Introduction to Saint Hildegard of Bingen: Symphonia, a Critical
Edition of the ‘Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum [Symphony of the Harmony of
Celestial Revelations]’ (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988), 28.
30
Joseph Gmelch, Die Kompositionen der heil. Hildegard: Nach dem großen
Hildegardkodex in Wiesbaden phototypisch veröffentlicht (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1913),
18–22. Gmelch enumerates 69 individual chants plus the Ordo virtutum, but he provides separate
ranges for each of the six antiphons included under ‘45. Studium divinitatis’ and for each of the
two antiphons included under ‘46. Deus enim’. The individual chants thus number 75 in total.
You should remember, furthermore, that authentic modes scarcely go more than
one note below their finals, as is shown by the testimony of the chants generally
used … . [The authentic modes] go up an octave or ninth or even a tenth.31
By including the note below the final, Guido suggests, the authentic modes
regularly may occupy a range of a ninth to an eleventh. The plagal mode, he states,
can occupy a ninth or a tenth:
Plagal modes, however, go down and up a fifth. Yet the sixth above is also
allowed by the authorities, as are the ninth and tenth in authentic modes.32
However, you will find a number of chants in which the low and the high are
so intermingled that one cannot make out whether they should be assigned to
authentic or plagal.33
Such chants might then occupy ranges greater than a tenth or eleventh.
Around 1100, the theorist John, whom Claude Palisca identifies as part of
a Germanic group including Berno of Reichenau and Hermannus Contractus,34
31
Guido of Arezzo, ‘Micrologus’, in Hucbald, Guido and John on Music: Three
Medieval Treatises, ed. with introductions Claude V. Palisca, trans. Warren Babb (New
Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1978), 69.
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid.
34
Palisca’s reasons are many. In Hucbald, Guido and John, he argues that John shows
an acquaintance with the interval notation of Hermannus Contractus (91); explains the
Romanic letters, the litterae significativae, ‘rarely encountered outside Southern Germany
and Metz’ (91); uses Greek names, which is ‘more characteristic of German authors than
Italians or French’(91); cites rare chants that seem to come from the Hartker Antiphonal
(92); cites the didactic chants of Hermannus (92); and names Berno and Hermannus (93). He
argues that Berno and Hermannus were probably little known outside of Germanic regions,
All the authentic modes regularly ascend an octave – that is, a diapason – above
their finals, and, by way of license, a ninth or tenth … All the plagal modes,
however, ascend as far as a fifth, that is, a diapente, from the final, and by way of
license they add the sixth … . On the other hand, all the plagal modes descend a
fourth, that is, a diatessaron, or even a fifth from the final by rule.35
because 11 of the 13 manuscripts that contain Berno’s treatise originated in German areas
(93) and Hermannus’s treatise survives in only two copies today (94).
35
John, ‘On Music (De musica)’, Hucbald, Guido and John, 122–23.
36
See Marchetto of Padua, Lucidarium, ed. and trans. Jan Herlinger (Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press, 1985): 379–89, for his discussion of modal range.
37
Marchetto’s final category, mingled, refers to chants that occupy two entirely
different modes, i.e. that are not the plagal and authentic of each other (389–91).
38
Newman, Symphonia, 29.
39
This connection between Hermannus and Hildegard was first made in 1911 when
Johannes May compared Hildegard’s O clarissima mater with the Marian antiphon Salve
regina, which he ascribes to Hermannus (‘Klingen diese Akkorde nicht wie eine Variation des
Salve Regina, das ein Jahrhundert früher der Monch Herimann der Lahme auf der Reichenau
gesungen hat?’). Although that attribution no longer stands (see note 40, below), Salve regina
– like many chants found in the repertories of both Hildegard and Hermannus – emphasizes
the final and its fifth, demonstrated even in its opening gesture (for further connections with
Marian antiphons see Margot Fassler, who convincingly presents Hildegard’s O nobilissima
viriditas as a reworking of Ave regina celorum). More recently, William Flynn compares
Hildegard’s O frondens virga with Hermannus’s Gaudeat tota virgo mater ecclesia and
shows how Hildegard ‘could have [been] deeply influenced’ by Hermannus Contractus
in both his theoretical and musical practices. I am indebted to William Flynn for sharing
with me his unpublished manuscript ‘Hildegard’s music in context: The compositions
and theory of Hermannus Contractus?’ and for directing me to Fassler’s discussion of Ave
regina celorum. Johannes May, Die heilige Hildegard von Bingen, Aus dem Orden des
heiligen Benedikt, 1098–1179: Ein Lebensbild (Munich: Verlag Josef Kösel & Friedrich
Pustet, 1911), 211; and Margot Fassler, ‘Composer and Dramatist: “Melodious Singing
and the Freshness of Remorse”’, in Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and her
World, ed. Barbara Newman (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1998), 152–54, 166–68.
40
Beyond the three Historiae for which David Hiley has prepared editions (Wolfgang,
2002; Afra, 2004; and the forthcoming Magnus), Hiley cites only three music-didactic pieces
and five sequences that can be attributed certainly to Hermannus, and confirms the controversy
that surrounds the ascription of the Marian antiphons Salve regina and Alma redemptoris
mater to Hermannus. See Hermannus Contractus (1013–54), Historia sancti Wolfgangi
episcopi ratisbonensis, ed. and introduction David Hiley (Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval
Music, 2002), xxv; and Historia sanctae Afrae martyris Augustensis, ed. and introduction
David Hiley and Walter Berschin (Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2004).
41
Andrew Hughes, Style and Symbol, Medieval Music: 800–1453 (Ottawa: Institute
of Mediaeval Music, 1989), xxi.
42
In a series of articles and editions, Hiley has done much to reverse the trend of
neglecting Office chants: in addition to the editions mentioned in note 40, above, Hiley
has also published ‘The Regensburg Offices for St. Emmeram, St. Wolfgang and St.
Denis’, Musica Antiqua X. 10th International Musicological Congress ‘Musica Antiqua
Europae Orientalis’ Bydgoszcz, September 7th–11th 1994 (Bydogoszcz: Filharmonia,1994),
299–312; Historia Sancti Emmerammi Arnoldi Vohburgensis circa 1030, Wissenschaftliche
Abhandlungen/Musicological Studies 65/2 (Ottawa: Institute for Mediaeval Music, 1996);
‘Die Gesänge des Offiziums in Festivitate Sanctorum Septem Fratrum in der Ottobeurer
Handschrift München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 9921, um 1150’, in Artes liberales:
Karlheinz Schlager zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Marcel Dobberstein, Eichstätter Abhandlungen
zur Musikwissenschaft 13 (Tutzing: H. Schneider, 1998), 13–35; ‘Das Wolfgang-Offizium
des Hermannus Contractus – Zum Wechselspiel von Modustheorie und Gesangspraxis in
der Mitte des XI. Jahrhunderts’, in Die Offizien des Mittelalters: Dichtung und Musik, ed.
Walter Berschin and David Hiley, Regensburger Studien zur Musikgeschichte 1 (Tutzing:
Schneider, 1999), 129–42; ‘The Historia of St. Julian of Le Mans by Letald of Micy: Some
Comments and Questions about a North French Office of the Early Eleventh Century’, in
The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages: Methodology and Source Studies, Regional
Developments, Hagiography. Written in Honor of Professor Ruth Steiner, ed. Margot E.
Fassler and Rebecca A. Baltzer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 444–62; ‘The
Music of Prose Offices in Honour of English Saints’, Plainsong and Medieval Music 10
(2001): 23–37; and ‘Die Afra-Gesänge des Hermannus Contractus. Liturgische Melodien
und die Harmonie des Universums’, in Hl. Afra. Eine frühchristliche Märtyrerin in
Geschichte, Kunst und Kult, ed. Manfred Weitlauff and Melanie Thierbach (Lindenberg:
J. Fink, 2004), 112–19.
43
Hiley attributes the 36 melodies of the Historia Sancti Wolfgangi Episcopi Ratisbonensis
to Hermannus ‘with complete certainty’. ‘Hiley, introduction to Hermannus Contractus, Historia
sancti Wolfgangi, xxii.
44
Hiley and Berschin, introduction to Hermannus Contractus, Historia sanctae Afrae, 5.
45
Hiley, ‘Das Wolfgang-Offizium des Hermannus Contractus’, 131: ‘diese Einteilung
der Gesangsphrasen in von Quinten bzw. Quarten umrissene Segmente ist für viele Gesänge
der Afra- und Wolfgang-Offizien nicht nur charakteristisch, sondern wird geradezu betont’
(all translations mine).
[T]here are motives which leaving and returning to the tonic merely play about
it; analogous motives appear on the dominant. Others move from the tonic to the
dominant; these are obviously especially important as elements of construction.
Again others lead from the dominant to the tonic … .49
Leaps of fifths are used often as opening gestures, typically when the chant begins
with the exclamation ‘O’, or with the salutation, ‘Ave’, but appear throughout her
46
Ibid., 141: ‘Die Mehrheit der einzelnen Worte bzw. kleinen Phrasen endet auch auf
diesen Tönen.’
47
Ibid., 139: ‘Das Responsorium Prudens economus aus dem Wolfgang-Offizium
schwingt viel energischer zwischen diesen zwei Haupt-tönen … und zielt häufiger als im
alten Repertoire auf das hohe f und sogar g.’
48
Ibid., 141: ‘dieses Charakteristikum keineswegs auf die Gesänge Hermanns
beschränkt. Die Erfahrung mit anderen Offizien des 10.–12. Jahrhundert bestätigt jedoch,
daß Hermannus weiter als seine Zeitgenossen in diese Richtung gegangen ist, und es liegt
nahe, dies auf seine musiktheoretische Beschäftigung zurückzuführen.’
49
Ludwik Bronarski, Die Lieder der hl. Hildegard: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte
der geistlichen Musik des Mittelalters (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1922), 49: ‘es
gibt Motive, welche von der Tonika ausgehend und mit ihr schließend, diese lediglich
umspielen; analoge Motive erscheinen auf der Dominante; andere gehen von der Tonika aus
und wenden sich zur Dominante, diese sind natürlich als constructive Elemente besonders
wichtig; wieder andere führen von der Dominante zur Tonika’. Jennifer Bain, ‘Selected
Antiphons of Hildegard von Bingen: Notation and Structural Design’ (MA thesis, McGill
University, 1995), 19–21.
50
Before Hiley’s editions and analyses of Hermannus appeared, I had described
already the importance of the final, fifth and octave in Hildegard’s music in detailed
analytical discussions of five of her antiphons in my master’s thesis, particularly in chs 3
and 4. Bain, ‘Selected Antiphons of Hildegard von Bingen’, 31–73, examples on 82–97.
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Given the similarities of range and melodic style in the music of Hildegard
and Hermannus, we must return to and expand our first question.51 Why does
Hildegard’s music retain the descriptor ‘ecstatic’ but not Hermannus’s? Since
modern editions of Hermannus’s music appeared only recently, it might seem an
unfair question. But Hildegard’s current reputation began with Gothic Voices’
inaugural recording, A Feather on the Breath of God, which debuted well ahead
of any accessible editions of Hildegard’s music in modern notation, and continued
with the numerous recordings of Sequentia Ensemble. Without the personal appeal
of Hildegard as a prolific and strong-willed female visionary and composer,
51
‘D’ refers to the Hildegard manuscript Dendermonde, St.-Pieters & Paulusabdij,
MS. Cod. 9, available in facsimile edition as Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia Harmoniae
Caelestium Revelationum, introduction Peter van Poucke (Peer: Alamire, 1991), while
‘R’ refers to the Hildegard manuscript Wiesbaden, Landesbibliothek, Handschrift 2
(‘Riesencodex’), available in facsimile edition as Hildegard von Bingen, Lieder: Faksimile
Riesencodex (Hs. 2) der Hessischen Landesbibliothek Wiesbaden, fol. 466–481v, ed. Lorenz
Welker with commentary by Michael Klaper (Reichert Verlag, 1998).
(a)
(b)
(c)
Hermannus likely will never receive the attention that Hildegard has from the
recording industry. Despite Gothic Voices’ director Christopher Page’s assertion
in the liner notes that ‘Hildegard’s writing suggests a quiet mastery that controls
ecstasy and shuns delirium’,53 his performance choices arguably created the
ecstatic quality associated with Hildegard’s music. Daniel Leech-Wilkinson has
claimed that ‘nothing since Riemann has so much reshaped the performance and
perception of medieval music as the work, and above all the recordings of Gothic
52
All transcriptions of Hermannus are taken from Hermannus Contractus, Historia
sancti Wolfgangi episcopi ratisbonensis, ed. David Hiley
53
Christopher Page, liner notes to Gothic Voices, A Feather on the Breath of God, 5.
54
Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, The Modern Invention of Medieval Music: Scholarship,
Ideology, Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 111.
St Benoît du Lac, a monastery in Quebec (regionally famous now for its cheese).55
In 1960, the Aachen Cathedral Choir and Symphony Orchestra released a recording
that included their (rather dreadful) arrangement and performance of O virga ac
diadema, while the nuns in Rüdesheim at the modern Hildegard Abbey released
recordings under the direction of Cecilia Bonn in 1972 and under Immaculata
Ritscher in 1979.56 As Weber indicates, ‘they sing Hildegard’s music in a style
55
Jerome Weber, “Hildegard Regarded and Recorded,” Early Music America 1, no.1
(1995): 40. Monks of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, Québec, Canada, Chants grégoriens, Cantilènes
Sacrées 109 (audio recording; 78 rpm), 1948.
56
Aachen Cathedral Choir, Sacred Music of the Masters (audio recording), Columbia
C–80102, 1960; Caecilia Bonn and Schola der Benediktinerinnenabtei Rüdesheim-
Eibingen, Psallite (audio recording), PEX 138/250973, 1972; and M. Immaculata Ritscher
and Schola der Benediktinerinnenabtei St. Hildegard, Hildegard: Symphoniae harmoniae
caelestium revelationum (audio recording), Bayer 100 116, 1979.
much like that of Solesmes’;57 certainly in their third recording in 1997, under the
direction of Johannes Berchmans Göschl, the Schola der Benediktinerinnenabtei
St Hildegard uses a Solesmes style, in which they group notes rhythmically in
twos and threes and hold notes at the end of phrases a little longer, but with no
great rhythmic variety or display of virtuosic technique.58 In the accompanying
CD booklet, Göschl directly addresses the subject of rhythmic interpretation and
virtuosic performance, and repeatedly takes issue with the ‘showy virtuosity’ that
results often from a mensural approach to rhythm.59 Rejecting also the authenticity
of an equal-value approach to rhythm, he suggests that it is at least a better reflection
of ‘the spiritual dimensions inherent in Hildegard’s songs’.60 Göschl’s objection
to virtuosity is above all an objection to the notion that professionally trained
voices are necessary for the performance of Hildegard’s music: ‘to postulate that
the Hildegard songs were originally performed with professional polish, would
be to deny the real conditions prevailing in convents, then or at the present
time’.61 While agreeing that professional voices are not necessary – although they
produce beautiful and engaging renditions – I suggest that these performances by
professional singers have had a profound effect on the way Hildegard’s music has
been disseminated and received. Despite Hildegard’s clear historical significance,
rather than Hildegard herself it is Gothic Voices and Sequentia who have created
57
Weber, ‘Hildegard Regarded and Recorded’, 40.
58
The ‘Solesmes style’ is that advocated by Dom André Mocquereau (1849–1930),
outlined in great detail at the beginning of the Solesmes editions (described by Richard Crocker
as an approach that is ‘personal’ rather than ‘philological’ – see his Introduction to Gregorian
Chant (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 166). Rhythmic marks appear in the
Solesmes editions, most significantly a horizontal line above a note (an episema) that indicates
a slight lengthening, while a short vertical stroke below a note (an ictus) indicates where ‘beat’
1 is in a group of two or three. The result aurally is a sense of a series of varied accents.
59
Johannes Göschl, in Schola der Benediktinerinnenabtei, Hildegard von Bingen:
O Vis Aeternitatis (audio recording), Ars Musici, AM 1203–2, CD booklet, 23. He describes
the ‘sophisticated virtuosity’ of the ‘many-faceted mensural approach’ (22) and advocates
‘avoiding virtuosic presentation’ (23). Concluding that it is ‘improbable that Hildegard
the composer envisaged her songs being performed with showy virtuosity’ (23), he states
strongly that, ‘[t]rue mysticism and showmanship are two quite different worlds, mutually
exclusive’ (24). His approach is to ‘endeavour to reconstruct the vocal aesthetics of
Gregorian chant by applying the basic principles of Gregorian semiology’ (26).
60
Ibid., 23.
61
Ibid., 24.
62
Leech-Wilkinson, The Modern Invention, 113–15.
63
Ibid., 114.
64
For further discussion of a wide variety of Hildegard recordings, especially in
relation to their marketing, see Jennifer Bain, ‘Hildegard on 34th Street: Chant in the
Marketplace’, Echo: A Music-Centered Journal 6, no.1 (2004), http://www.echo.ucla.edu/
volume6-issue1/bain/bain1.html (accessed 24 November 2005).
65
Sequentia, Ordo virtutum (audio recording), Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 77051–2–RG,
1982; Symphoniae (audio recording), Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 77020–2–RG, 1985; Canticles
of Ecstasy (see note 27); Voice of the Blood (audio recording), Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 05472
77346 2, 1995; O Jerusalem (audio recording), Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 05472 77353 2,
1997; and Saints (audio recording), Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 05472 77378 2, 1998.
66
Since 1984, for example, Sequentia has given a two-week summer workshop
annually at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
67
Voices of Ascension, From Chant to Renaissance (audio recording), Delos DE
3174, 1995.
68
Tapestry, Sapphire Night (see note 26).
69
An initial exploration of late chant style contextualizing Hildegard and Hermannus
but looking at office repertory from the centuries beyond can be found in Jennifer Bain,
‘Hildegard, Hermannus and Late Chant Style’, Journal of Music Theory 52/1 (forthcoming).
See also Barbara Stühlmeyer’s comparison of Hildegard’s musical style with other twelfth-
century office repertoire in Die Gesänge der Hildegard von Bingen: Eine musikologische,
theologische und kulturhistorische Untersuchung (Hildesheim; Zürich; New York: Georg
Olms Verlag, 2003), 191–291.
70
Bruce W. Holsinger, ‘Sine Tactu Viri: The Musical Somatics of Hildegard of
Bingen’, in Music, Body and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 87–136.