UBI ES

HILDEGARD VON BINGEN

Born in 1098 in the small nobility of Rhineland, Hildegard von Bingen is “visited” from an early age by visions.
Her family is destined for religious life and, at the age of eight, she is entrusted to Jutta von Spanheim with whom she will live until the disappearance of the latter. She took the veil in 1112, at the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenburg, a small community of nuns under the control of the Benedictine monks. At the death of her friend and trainer, Jutta, she is 38 years old and becomes superior of the community. In 1141, Hildegard began writing her first work, Scivias, where she described her visions, “a reflection of the Living Light” after receiving the support of her friends and permission from the bishop of Mainz.

In her youth, she learned enough Latin to read the Bible and recite the psalms, but regretted not having received more advanced training. It would have been interesting to know the contents of the library of the monastery, unfortunately it was destroyed during the following centuries. In her writings, she declares herself an uneducated woman, which, however, these formal writings deny. She does not claim any merit in musical composition either, but calls herself the humble interpreter of God, which, incidentally, has the advantage of giving an “explanation” to the fact that a woman was able to create such a work. . One wonders then more about the origin of this work than on the work itself. It will take a synod to rule on his case and not less than four attempts at canonizations.

She is not without musical training. Like all monks and nuns, she knows by heart the immense liturgical repertoire. At the time of her first compositions, she attends the divine service and sings several hours a day for dozens of years.

She composes extensively between 1151 and 1158, her creativity seems limitless. 77 songs are grouped under the title Symphoniae Harmoniae Celestium Revelationum and an Ordo virtutum liturgical drama. She writes the text and the music and its originality is already celebrated during her lifetime. For her, music is a supreme instrument at the service of God, capable of harmonizing humanity and orienting it on the spiritual path to the unity to which it aspires. It expresses life, in all the depth of its mystery. It can not be detached from the rest of his work and it is in this light that one squeezes its beauty. Hundreds of times in her various writings, she uses music as a metaphor to illuminate spiritual truths.

Her music is essentially theological, philosophical, connected to cosmology. For her, the voice, mixed with body and soul, sings God on earth, it is the highest form of all human activity, a mirror of celestial harmonies and angelic choruses. The place of singing in the church was often controversial. One opposes the intelligibility of the verb and the lyrical enjoyment. Many times we condemn the song because it denatures the Word, the word of God, and often it was associated with pleasure, sin, so the woman. A woman composer and singer represents a great transgression, it is easy to imagine.
In an exchange of letters, Hildegard gives music a fundamental function of recalling a lost original state and the power to ignite devotion through emotion. The song has nothing to do with the devil, it does not disturb the senses but carries the soul to God.
The monastery provides her with an ideal situation with a script writer and experienced copyists, qualified interpreters and liturgical occasions to sing his music.

The majority of the Symphoniae Harmoniae’s pieces are antiphons; usually short pieces, of freely composed text flanking a psalm. Her melodies are unlike any other and the Latin she uses is marked by great freedom of syntax and difficult to translate. Everything at home tries to push back the limits of ordinary language.

Unlike the limited expanse of most songs in his day, Hildegard’s music is spread over a very wide range. She uses the extremes of the voice, as if to connect heaven and earth. She is still original in the abundant use of large intervals, her writing seems animated by the momentum of the Gothic to the sky. Large melodramatic passages highlight the architecture of the rooms. Many of them are in the mid mode which allows a wide range of expression. Complex mode where each of the degrees can take a relative importance in the composition. She expresses a deep lyricism. The ancients called it “Mysticus”.

There are two main handwritten sources: the Codex Dendermonde and Codex Riesen as well as four other manuscripts containing fragments.
The manuscript Dendermonde was copied in Rupertsberg in the 1170s and it is likely that Hildegard herself supervised it. Several folios of the Symphonia are missing. The Riesencodex was copied in the 1180s, right after Hildegard’s death in 1179. The Rupertsberg nuns probably made it as part of their request for canonization because it contains all her theological writings, 75 songs of the Symphonia and the Ordo Virtutum.

Laurence Brisset

Extract

La fleur du dimanche, 29 September 2017