Hildegard of Bingen

From my early childhood, before my bones, nerves, and veins were fully strengthened, I have always seen this vision in my soul, even to the present time when I am more than seventy years old. In this vision, my soul, as God would have it, rises up high into the vault of heaven and into the changing sky and spreads itself out among different peoples, although they are far away from me in distant lands and places. And because I see them this way in my soul, I observe them in accord with the shifting of clouds and other created things. I do not hear them with my outward ears, nor do I perceive them by the thoughts of my own heart or by any combination of my five senses, but in my soul alone, while my outward eyes are open.
–from Hildegard’s letter to Guibert of Gembloux, which she wrote at the age of 77

Hildegard of Bingen (b.~ 1098 – d. 9/17/1179,) also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. She has been considered by a number of scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany. Hildegard is also known as the first “identifiable” female songwriter.

Early Life:

Hildegard’s parents were Mechtild of Merxheim-Nahet and Hildebert of Bermersheim, a family of the free lower nobility in the service of the Count Meginhard of Sponheim. Sickly from birth, Hildegard is traditionally considered their youngest and tenth child, although there are records of only seven older siblings. In her Vita, Hildegard states that from a very young age she experienced visions.

Somewhere between the ages of 8 to 14, perhaps because of Hildegard’s visions or as a method of political positioning, or both, Hildegard’s parents offered her as an oblate to the Benedictine monastery at Disibodenberg, which had been recently reformed in the Palatinate Forest.

Musical Beginnings:

In the monastery she learned to play the psaltery, a prototype of the zither. She also learned simple psalm musical notation there. At around the age of 40, when she was struck down with a mysterious illness, the power structure granted her and the nuns under her their own abbey, which I’m guessing gave her the freedom to develop her natural abilities.

Discography:

Attention in recent decades to women of the medieval Catholic Church has led to a great deal of popular interest in Hildegard’s music.

One of her better-known works, Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues), is a morality play. It is uncertain when some of Hildegard’s compositions were composed, though the Ordo Virtutum is thought to have been composed as early as 1151. It is an independent Latin morality play with music (82 songs); it does not supplement or pay homage to the Mass or the Office of a certain feast. It is, in fact, the earliest known surviving musical drama that is not attached to a liturgy.

In addition to the Ordo Virtutum, 69 musical compositions, each with its own original poetic text, survive, and at least four other texts are known, though their musical notation has been lost. This is one of the largest repertoires among medieval composers.

Her music is monophonic, consisting of exactly one melodic line. Its style has been said to be characterized by soaring melodies that can push the boundaries of traditional Gregorian chant and to stand outside the normal practices of monophonic monastic chant. Another feature of Hildegard’s music that both reflects the 12th-century evolution of chant, and pushes that evolution further, is that it is highly melismatic, defined by wiki as, “the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referred to as melismatic, as opposed to syllabic, in which each syllable of text is matched to a single note. An informal term for melisma is a vocal run.” It also often ran with recurrent melodic units.

Some things to share:

Hildegard also invented an alternative alphabet that some believed was a way to develop solidarity with the nuns at her abbey. I imagine a female with power at that time and place in history would find an alternate alphabet with which to communicate very useful, not to mention protective.

Official website: It’s funny to think that Hildegard would have her own website. There is a wealth of information to be found on this amazing individual out there.

Source: wikipedia