Medieval Womens Choir: Recordings

River of Red - music by Hildegard of Bingen

Background

picture of hildegard

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was the tenth child of a German noble family. As was not uncommon with tenth-born children in the Middle Ages, her parents promised her to the Church. At the age of eight she was entrusted to the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg. There, a young woman, Jutta von Spanheim, lived a cloistered life in a room added to the monastery, with her followers. Hildegard joined this group and took the veil at age fifteen. In the Middle Ages, entering a monastery was often the only way a girl could be educated and fulfill any aspirations in science and the arts.

In 1136, when Jutta died, Hildegard took over as Superior. Around 1150 she founded her own monastery at Rupertsberg, in the Rhine Valley, over the protests of the abbot at Disibodenberg. By this time she had her own followers and had become an influential figure, which helps explain why her new foundation succeeded. She also founded a daughter house (a smaller convent related to and financially dependent on the main monastery) in Eibingen on the opposite bank of the Rhine.

Hildegard’s visions and her works

Even as a young girl Hildegard had visions. She described how, when she was in her early forties, she fell ill. She saw a great light and heard God’s voice telling her to write down what she saw in her visions. With the help of her secretary, Volmar, she recorded all of them. She also wrote down the poems she heard in her visions. Some of them included music, and these are the songs the Medieval Women’s Choir performs.

Besides the records of her visions she also wrote many books on theology and treatises on the medicinal qualities of minerals, herbs, vegetables and grains. (Her writings are still studied in German universities as part of the history of medicine. To this day, some practitioners use Hildegard’s healing methods.) She was also involved in politics and is said to have written letters to the Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, the Pope and numerous bishops, abbots, abbesses and noblemen, giving them her opinions of their actions. People came from all over to hear her sermons, and she herself undertook four extended missions during which she traveled all over Germany.

Hildegard’s Importance as a Woman Composer

In a time when art was created and performed in the service of the Church, and when the rule of humility required anonymity on the part of the creators, it is remarkable to find a woman writing and composing poems and music under her own name. She claimed to have had no formal training in music, and she denied being able to read or write music. It is likely that her secretary, Volmar, or one of the nuns in her convent wrote the music down. Whether she dictated the music, or only described it in general terms, and let them do the actual composing, we will never know.

Hildegard’s Musical Style

Listen for three characteristics of Hildegard’s musical style:

Her style is unique in its use of modes (the medieval equivalent of keys). She often combines more than one mode in a single piece, something rarely done by her male counterparts.
Another quality that sets her music apart is the wide range of her songs. Many of them use more than an octave and a half, a range larger than most untrained voices can comfortably sing.
Her music is also very formulaic. She often uses a characteristic opening figure of a fifth and an octave.

Assembling and reconstructing the music

medieval notation

Like most medieval composers, Hildegard wrote no instrumental music. Instrumentalists most likely did not read or write, and the music they played was learned from other players or improvised. Church authorities frowned on the use of instruments in the sanctuary, but Hildegard was a staunch defender of instruments as aids to worship. She ascribes many mystical qualities to flute, harp and fiddle.

Rarely was medieval music of any kind written down. As with folk music or jazz, musicians learned repertoire from other musicians and made it their own. In fact, much of it could not be properly written down, since it required a knowledge not just of notes but also of what we call ‘performance practice’: all the unwritten rules that govern how a song is performed in a certain style or region. When you learn from another musician, you learn these rules without being aware of them. This is part of the continuing tradition.

Although it makes sense that medieval music didn’t need to be written down to be passed from generation to generation of musicians, the absence of a written record is now the most challenging element in medieval music. The tradition has been interrupted. What we have inherited is only a portion of a rich legacy. To perform medieval music today, we must reinvent the pieces, the instruments, and the way the music might have sounded.

To make matters even more challenging, there are very few modern editions of Hildegard’s music, which is written in a medieval notation known as ‘neumes’. Although it is possible to read these notations, to the untrained eye they are like a foreign language. Sometimes the Medieval Women’s Choir reads from the neumes, but I always make an edition in modern notation as well. A major part of my job as director of the Choir is to create editions of songs that only exist in medieval notations of various styles.