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Hildegard von Bingen - Sequentia (Ensemble) - Ordo Virtutum

1. Ordo virtutum (92:01)

Composer: Hildegard of Bingen (1098 - 1179)
Performer: Barbara Thornton (Voice)
Elizabeth Gaver: (Violin)
Benjamin Bagby :(Voice)
Genre: Classical Medieval Period
Date Written: 12th Century
Ensemble: Sequentia
Period : Medieval
Country: Germany
Recording: Studio
Venue: Basilica of Knechtsteden, Germany
Recording Date: 1997
Label:DHM Deutsche Harmonia Mundi
Notes Arranged: Barbara Thornton and Elizabeth Gaver
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Hildegard von Bingen was an abbess, visionary, poet, and composer. She lived at a
time when women were essentially invisible in a creative way, and ironically, the
fact that she was a nun actually gave her some leverage. In examining her life, it
is hard to believe that she lived in the 12th century. She was progressive in
thought and action, writing in detail about subjects as varied as female sexuality
and the sciences.

Her music, written in the plainchant tradition of a single vocal line, was inspired
by her mystical visions (later determined to be migraines) and devotion to
religion. The 'Ordo Virtutum,' or "play of the virtues," is another brilliant
installment in the Sequentia catalog of Hildegard's works. If you are familiar with
Sequentia and the music of Hildegard, this CD will be a welcome addition to your
library. If you are a new listener, you will experience the height of
professionalism in the performance, and realize what the current Hildegard
phenomenon is about. Read the detailed liner notes to insure a good understanding
of the work as a whole and how it was conceived. A sensational recording.

�Hildegard of Bingen (German: Hildegard von Bingen; Latin: Hildegardis Bingensis;

1098 � 17 September 1179), also known as Blessed Hildegard and Saint Hildegard, was
a German abbess, artist, author, counselor, linguist, naturalist, scientist,
philosopher, physician, herbalist, poet, activist, visionary, and composer. Elected
a magistra in 1136, she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen
in 1165.
She is the first composer with an extant biography. One of her works, the Ordo
Virtutum, has been called the first form, and possibly the origin, of opera.
She wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal texts, as well as letters,
liturgical songs, poems, and the first surviving morality play, while supervising
brilliant miniature illuminations.
At least one modern biographer described Hildegard of Bingen as a polymath.[
Biography
Hildegard's preaching toursHildegard was born into a family of free nobles in the
service of the counts of Sponheim, close relatives of the Hohenstaufen emperors.
She was the tenth child, sickly from birth. From the time she was very young,
Hildegard wrote, she experienced visions. In fact, the only surviving tale of
Hildegard's childhood involves a conversation that she held with her nurse.
Hildegard described an unborn calf as "white... marked with different colored spots
on its forehead, feet and back." The nurse, amazed with the detail of the young
child's account, told Hildegard's mother, who later rewarded her daughter with the
calf, whose appearance Hildegard had accurately predicted.[4]
Perhaps due to Hildegard's visions, or as a method of political positioning,
Hildegard's parents, Hildebert and Mechthilde, offered her as a tithe to the church
at the age of eight. Hildegard was placed in the care of Jutta, the sister of Count
Meinhard of Sponheim, just outside the Disibodenberg monastery in the Rhineland-
Palatinate region of what is now Germany. Jutta was enormously popular and acquired
many followers, such that a small nunnery sprang up around her.
Upon Jutta's death in 1136, Hildegard was unanimously elected as "magistra," or
leader of her sister community. The election would lead to the significant move,
executed in the midst of great opposition, of twenty members of her community to
her newly-formed monastery, Saint Rupertsberg at Bingen on the Rhine in 1150, where
Volmar served as provost.
Hildegard "became... reticent" regarding her visions, confiding only to Jutta, who
in turn told Volmar, Hildegard's tutor and, later, secretary and scribe. Throughout
her life, she continued to have many visions, and in 1141, Hildegard received a
call from God. "Write down that which you see and hear," the Divine Voice
instructed. Hildegard, hesitant to record her visions, soon became physically ill.
In her first theological text, 'Scivias, or "Know the Ways," Hildegard describes
her struggle within:
I didn�t immediately follow this command. Self-doubt made me hesitate. I analyzed
others� opinions of my decision and sifted through my own bad opinions of myself.
Finally, one day I discovered I was so sick I couldn�t get out of bed. Through this
illness, God taught me to listen better. Then, when my good friends Richardis and
Volmar urged me to write, I did. I started writing this book and received the
strength to finish it, somehow, in ten years. These visions weren�t fabricated by
my own imagination, nor are they anyone else�s. I saw these when I was in the
heavenly places. They are God�s mysteries. These are God�s secrets. I wrote them
down because a heavenly voice kept saying to me, 'See and speak! Hear and
write!'[5]
Hildegard's vivid description of the physical sensations which accompanied her
visions have been diagnosed by popular author Oliver Sacks as symptoms of migraine,
although no evidence exists that migraines could have produced such visions.
A vita of Hildegard was written by two monks, Godfrid and Theodoric (PL vol. 197).

Works
Attention in recent decades to women of the medieval church has led to a great deal
of popular interest in Hildegard, particularly of her music. Approximately eighty
compositions have survived, which is one of the largest repertoires among medieval
composers.
Among her better known works, 'Ordo Virtutum',' or "Play of the Virtues", is a
morality play. It is an example of a rare and early oratorio for women's voices,
with one male part, that of the Devil, who, because of his corrupted nature, cannot
sing. The oratorio was created, like much of Hildegard's music, for religious
ceremonial performance by the nuns of her abbeys.
Hildegard's music is described as monophonic; that is, consisting of exactly one
melodic line, designed for limited instrumental accompaniment and characterised by
soaring soprano vocalisations. Hildegard is the first composer whose biography is
known.
Alphabet by Hildegard von Bingen, Litterae ignotae, which she used for her language
Lingua IgnotaIn addition to music, Hildegard also wrote medical, botanical, and
geological treatises. She also invented an alternative alphabet. The text of her
writing and compositions reveals Hildegard's use of this form of modified medieval
Latin, encompassing many invented, conflated, and abridged words. Due to her
inventions of words for her lyrics and a constructed script, many conlangers look
upon her as a medieval precursor.
Accounts of Hildegard's visions were compiled into three books. The first, Scivias
("Know the Way") was completed in 1151. Liber vitae meritorum ("Book of Life's
Merits"), and De operatione Dei ("Of God's Activities") also known as Liber
divinorum operum ("Book of Divine Works") followed. In these volumes, works in
progress until her death in 1179, she first describes each vision, then interprets
them. The narrative of her visions was richly decorated under her direction, with
transcription assistance was provided by the monk Volmar and nun Richardis. The
book was celebrated in the Middle Ages and was later copied in Paris in 1513.
Mutterschaft aus dem Geiste und dem Wasser (Motherhood from the Spirit and the
Water), 1165Hildegard's visionary writings maintain that virginity is the highest
level of the spiritual life, however, she also wrote about the secular life,
including motherhood. She is the first woman to record a treatise of feminine
sexuality, providing scientific accounts of the female orgasm.
When a woman is making love with a man, a sense of heat in her brain, which brings
with it sensual delight, communicates the taste of that delight during the act and
summons forth the emission of the man's seed. And when the seed has fallen into its
place, that vehement heat descending from her brain draws the seed to itself and
holds it, and soon the woman's sexual organs contract, and all the parts that are
ready to open up during the time of menstruation now close, in the same way as a
strong man can hold something enclosed in his fist.
In addition, there are many instances, both in her letters and visions, which decry
the misuse of carnal pleasures. In Scivias Book II Vision Six.78,
God united man and woman, thus joining the strong to the weak, that each might
sustain the other. But these perverted adulterers change their virile strength into
perverse weakness, rejecting the proper male and female roles, and in their
wickedness they shamefully follow Satan, who in his pride sought to split and
divide Him Who is indivisible. They create in themselves by their wicked deeds a
strange and perverse adultery, and so appear polluted and shameful in my sight. . .
. . .a woman who takes up devilish ways and plays a male role in coupling with
another woman is most vile in My sight, and so is she who subjects herself to such
a one in this evil deed. . .
. . .And men who touch their own genital organ and emit their semen seriously
imperil their souls, for they excite themselves to distraction; they appear to Me
as impure animals devouring their own whelps, for they wickedly produce their semen
only for abusive pollution. . .
. . .When a person feels himself disturbed by bodily stimulation let him run to the
refuge of continence, and seize the shield of chastity, and thus defend himself
from uncleanness. (translation by Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop)

Significance
"Universal Man" illumination from Hildegard's Liber Divinorum Operum, 1165Hildegard
communicated with popes such as Eugene III and Anastasius IV, statesmen such as
Abbot Suger, German emperors such as Frederick I Barbarossa, and other notable
figures such as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who advanced her work, at the behest of
her abbot, Kuno, at the Synod of Trier in 1147 and 1148.
Many abbots and abbesses asked her for prayers and opinions on various matters. As
depicted on the map displayed to the right, she traveled widely during her four
preaching tours, the only woman to have done so during the Middle Ages. (see
Scivias, tr. Hart, Bishop, Newman)
Hildegard was one of the first souls for whom the canonization process was
officially applied, but the process took so long that four attempts at canonization
(the last was in 1244, under Pope Innocent IV) were not completed, and she remained
at the level of her beatification. She has been referred to as a saint by some,
nonetheless, particularly in contemporary Germany.
Hildegard's name was taken up in the Roman martyrology at the end of the sixteenth
century. Her feast day is September 17. Hildegard�s Parish and Pilgrimage Church
house the relics of Hildegard, including an altar encasing her earthly remains, in
Eibingen near R�desheim.
As Sister Judith Sutera, O.S.B., of Mount St. Scholastica explains:
For the first centuries, the �naming� and veneration of saints was an informal
process, occurring locally and operating locally. . . . When they began to codify,
between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, they did not go back and apply any
official process to those persons who were already widely recognized and venerated.
They simply �grandfathered in� anyone whose cult had been flourishing for 100 years
or more. So many quite famous, ancient, and even non-existent saints who have had
feast days and devotions since the apostolic era were never canonized per se.�

Audio CD (April 11, 1994)

Number of Discs: 2
Format: Import
Label: deutsche harmonia mundi
ASIN: B000001TWJ
Composer: Hildegard of Bingen
Performer: Cologne Sequentia Ensemble for Medieval Music, Carmen-Renate Koeper,
William Mockridge

Track listing
Disc 1
1 Ecce quadragesimo tertio (3:23)
2 Antiphon - O splendidissima gemma (5:04_
3 Prolog/Prologuw - Qui sunt hi, qui ut nubes? (2:14)
4 1. Szene/Scene One - O nos peregrine sumus (19:33)
5 2. Szene/Scene Two - Ego, Humilitas, regina, Virtutum (18:40)

Disc 2
1 Ego sum, amatrix simplicium morum (12:09)
2 3. Szene/Scene Three - Heu, heu, nos Virtutes plangamus (13:26
3 4. Szene/ Scene Four - Que es, aut unde venis? Finale (9:47)
4 Hoc audiant et intelligant omnes populi (0:47)
5 In principio omnes creature viruerunt (4:00)

Total Time: 92:01 Minutes

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