The Ecstatic Opulence of Hildegard von Bingen

A couple months ago Colorado Public Radio (CPR), our local classical radio station, presented a series about women composers. The names and music of many these women are unknown which is unfortunate because the music is excellent and the names are of ones who deserve better recognition by conductors, performers, and music stations. 

llumination from the Liber Scivias showing Hildegard receiving a vision and dictating to her scribe and secretary

I was pleased to hear CPR begin this series with one who is recognized as being the first woman composer of the Western world: Hildegard von Bingen. Although she lived from 1098 to 1179, Hildegard was a Renaissance woman of sorts. She was an abbess, a visionary, a theologian, a poet, a writer, an artist, a healer. These are all fascinating aspects of her life and well worth understanding, but what I wish to focus on here is Hildegard, the outstanding composer.

Hildegard not only wrote poetry, but she set her poems to music. Which came first for her? The poem? The music? Hildegard neither studied nor received any formal musical training. She simply, but magnificently set to chant her visions of God—what she saw and heard all around her—the music she saw in everything. Her music expressed her love of God, the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Mary, and various angels, apostles, and saints.  The question of which came first—music or poetry—didn’t matter for the two were one. 

While her music is described as monophonic monastic chant, a single melodic line, her music comes across to my ears as all-enveloping, especially when heard in a cathedral, or like setting, which causes the music of a few singers to sound as if the entire body of heavenly hosts were singing along. Some have called it “ecstatic opulence.” As was normal for her time, her scores do not indicate tempo or rhythm. Hildegard composed antiphons (short verses following a psalm) and votive antiphons (a longer piece sung at liturgies). She composed responsory pieces, sung during vigils, hymns during canonical hours but not at a mass, and sequences, a piece which is sung with between the Alleluia and a reading of the Gospel at a Mass.

Sadly, her music is relatively unknown except in certain parts of the monastic world, with Medieval and choral scholars, and among people who have no difficulty listening to chant music for hours. It wasn’t until Pope Benedict XVI canonized her in 2012, and named her a Doctor of the Church, did her music come to the forefront and began to be played by classical radio stations. Perhaps this is another reason why I thoroughly enjoy listening to All-Classical Portland for this station was playing Hildegard before she became known; they also have a way of suddenly surprising you with a couple of Hildegard’s pieces in the middle of day when things are out-of-control, nuts. A few minutes with her music, especially with either Oxford Camerata (Heavenly Revelations) or Sequentia (Canticles of Ecstasy), female or male voices, will reset your world from “out-of-control nuts” to ecstatic opulence.