medieval.org
sequentia.org
Deutsche Harmonia Mundi / BMG 05472 77394 2 · 2 CDs
1998
medieval.org
sequentia.org
Deutsche Harmonia Mundi / BMG 05472 77394 2 · 2 CDs
1998
The recording was made in July 1997, only months after Barbara had undergone surgery for removal of a highly malignant brain tumor. She continued to work throughout the recording, and even while undergoing radiation treatments she recorded her final solo – the small part of Contemptus Mundi (World Rejection). — sequentia.org
Barbara Thornton
© Peter Dronke, 1997
Qui sunt hi? © Barbara Thornton, 1997
Descriptions based on
© Barbara Thornton, 1982, 1997
© Barbara Thornton, 1982, 1997
The instrumental music included in this production of Ordo Virtutum
serves almost exclusively as commentary on the action in the play,
rather than as actual accompaniment of the sung texts. The instrumental
pieces are based on modal motivic material taken from Ordo Virtutum
and from other works by Hildegard, and are not conceived as paraphrases
of her compositions, but as expressions of a possible parallel
instrumental tradition. The opening piece, representing the wandering,
embodied souls, and the lament before scene 3 are both in e-mode and
convey Elizabeth Gaver, 1997
Benjamin Bagby, 1997
CD 1
ORDO VIRTUTUM
Prolog
1. Qui sunt hi, qui ut nubes? [2:24]
2. Prozessionsmusik fuer die leibhaften Seelen [2:29]
instrumental
Szene 1.
3. O nos peregrine sumus [2:24]
4. Prozessionsmusik der Anima [2:59]
instrumental
5. O dulcis divinitas [2:11]
6. Prozessionsmusik der Anima [0:46]
instrumental
7. O gravis labor [9:40]
8. Tanz [1:59]
instrumental
Szene 2.
9. Ego Humilitas [24:26]
10. Tanz [1:49]
instrumental
CD 2
Interlude
Symphonia
11. O quam magnum miraculum [4:33]
Lydia Heather Knutson, ensemble
Symphonia
12. O felix anima [4:29]
Nancy Mayer, ensemble
Symphonia
13. O quam mirabilis [3:13]
Janet Youngdahl, Norbert Rodenkirchen
ORDO VIRTUTUM
(Forts.)
14. Klageweise [2:18]
instrumental
Szene 3.
15. Heu! Heu! nos virtutes plangamus [13:03]
Szene 4.
16. Que es, aut unde venis? [9:07]
Finale
17. In principio [4:08]
SEQUENTIA, Ensemble für Musik des Mittelalters
Barbara Thornton & Benjamin Bagby
Das Frauenvokalensemble von Sequentia
• Vox feminae
Barbara Thornton
Rebecca Bain — Caritas, Innocentia, Verecundia
Pamela Dellal — Felix Anima, Infelix Anima
Suzanne Ehly — Spes, Amor Celestis
Ellen Hargis — Scientia Dei
Maria Jonas — Timor Dei
Lydia Heather Knuthson — Victoria
Nancy Mayer— Fides, Disciplina, Patientia
Marianne Nielsen — Castitas, Discretio
Lena Suzanne Norin — Humilitas
Barbara Thornton — Contemptus Mundi
Janet Youngdahl — Obedientia, Misericordia
Franz-Joseph Heumannskämper — Diabolus
Patriarchen und Propheten:
Das Mannervokalensemble von Sequentia
• Sons of Thunder
Benjamin Bagby
Benjamin Bagby, John Fleagle, Stephen Grant, Paul Guttry,
William Hite, Frank Kelley, Mark McSweeney, Eric Mentzel
• das Instrumentalensemble von Sequentia
Elizabeth Gaver
Elizabeth Gaver, mittelalterliche Fidel
Rachel Evans, mittelalterliche Fidel
Robert Mealy, mittelalterliche Fidel
Norbert Rodenkirchen, mittelalterliche Flöte
Benjamin Bagby, Organistrum
• Sons of Thunder, Benjamin Bagby, dir.
Benjamin Bagby, John Fleagle, Stephen Grant, Paul Guttry, William Hite,
Frank Kelley, Marc McSweeney, Eric Mentzel - Patriarchen & Propheten
• Instrumentalensemble, Elizabeth Gaver, dir.
Elizabeth Gaver, Rachel Evans, Robert Mealymittelalterliche Fideln
Robert Nordenkirchenmittelalterliche Flöte
Benjamin Bagby, Organistrum
Quellen zur Musik
Die folgende Handschrift diente zur Vorbereitung dieser Aufnahme:
Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek, MS 2 (“Riesenkodex”):
fol. 478vb-481vb (Ordo Virtutum);
470vb (O felix anima);
466rb-va (O quam mirabilis);
467rb-va (O quam magnum).
Wir danken Herrn Dr. Wolfgang Podehl und seinen Mitarbeitern von der
Hessischen Landesbibliothek.
Bearbeitungen der Aufführungstexte von Ordo Virtutum und Symphoniae
nach den Originalhandschriften: Barbara Thornton.
Bearbeitung und Umsetzung der Instrumentalmusik: Elizabeth Gaver
Textquellen
Alle Textbearbeitungen und englischen Übersetzungen: Peter Dronke,
Cambridge.
lnstrumente
Fünfsaitige Fidel (Gaver): Richard Earle (Basel, 1988)
Fünfsaitige Fidel (Evans): Rainer Ullreich (Wien, 1991)
Fünfsaitige Fidel (Mealy): Karl Dennis, (Rhode Island USA, 1993)
Flöte: Neidhart Bousset (Berlin, 1994)
Organistrum: Alan Crumpler (Leominster, GB, 1982)
Der Dank des Ensembles Sequentia gebührt folgenden Personen:
Barbara Stühlmeyer, Dr. Ursula Haehn, Dr. Harry Fuhrmann, Prof.
Dr. Ditmar Terhaag, Prof. Dr. Rainer Eckhardt.
(P)+ © 1998 BMG Entertainment
A&R direction: Nicola Kremer
Recorded in the Basilica of Knechtsteden, Germany, 29 June - 5 July 1997
Produced by: Elizabeth Ostrow
Executive producers: Jon Aaron (USA), Joachim Kühn (Germany)
Production assistant (Germany): Rent Schildgen
Sound engineer: John Newton (soundmirror, Boston MA, USA)
Editor: Jeff Baust
Front cover picture: Hildegard von Bingen: Scivias, Tafel 6 / Schau 14
„Treue in der Versuchung”, Abtei St Hildegard, Eibingen
Cover design: BMG Mola/A. Döhring
Text editing: Dr. Jens Markowsky
All rights reserved
DHM deutsche harmonia mundi / BMG Classics
The Context of the Ordo Virtutum
The “Play of the Virtues” is the earliest datable work
among Hildegard's surviving compositions. Her autobiographical notes
intimate that recurrent illnesses, as well as fear of ridicule, long
prevented her from writing, perhaps till as late as her fortieth year
(1137/38). But she is known to have composed sacred music and poetry at
least from the 1140s onwards, and parts of the Ordo, more
ambitious in scope than any of her lyrics, are cited and adapted
towards the close of her first visionary prose work, Scivias,
which she tells that she completed in 1151. Most of Hildegard's other
prolific writings — further lyrics as well as her vast corpus of
letters giving spiritual advice, her later visionary works, moral and
cosmological, and her medical and botanical discussions — belong
to the later part of her life, between 1151 and her death in 1179.
While the mid-twelfth century was a time of fertile experiment with
dramatic forms in France, Germany and England, Italy and Spain,
Hildegard's play stands apart from all else in the period by deploying
a cast of allegorical characters (anticipating the later
“morality-plays”), and inventing a plot which, while
spiritual in orientation, owes nothing to the stories in the Bible or
to saints' lives. Her language in the play is admittedly steeped in
biblical Latin — especially that of the Song of Songs, Isaiah,
and John's Apocalypse, three of the texts richest in striking images
and expressions. Yet she extends and transmutes these in daring ways,
to achieve effects both of intellectual compression and of soaring
lyricism that are almost unparalleled in her time. For the idea of
depicting conflicts between personified forces, Hildegard was probably
indebted to a poem much loved and often illustrated in the Middle Ages,
the Psychomachia of the Spanish Christian poet Prudentius
(ca.400); the idea of opening with a chorus of patriarchs and poets,
whose words are a foreshadowing (umbra) of the play's course,
probably came to her from one of the “prophet plays” (ordines
prophetarum) which were composed, particularly in France, in the
eleventh century and later. Yet neither such plays nor Prudentius poem
can begin to account for the individuality of Hildegard's language and
its music, or for the wholly unpredictable dramatic plot, which must
have kept its first audience in suspense. They could not have known
whether Anima's defiance of the Virtues — who represent
not only moral qualities but the forces by which the universe is shaped
and ordered — would end in her adherence to Satan or in her
anguished return, or again, whether Satan's renewed onslaught on her
and the Virtues, after that return, would end in his victory or in a
final reintegration of Virtues and human souls.
Where should we picture that first audience? The likeliest occasion for
the original performance, in my view, was the festive consecration of
Hildegard's convent on the Rupertberg (1 May, 1152), when the
Archbishop and clergy of Mainz will have been present, as well as the
aristocratic families of the nuns who formed Hildegard's community. The
number of these nuns (20) corresponds well with that of the female cast
required by the play, to whom a small male chorus of patriarchs and
prophets (probably from Mainz cathedral) and one other man, to take the
strident, non-singing rôle of Diabolus, must have been added.
This last may well have been Hildegard's secretary, Volmar: constantly
present in the convent, he could most readily have taken part in the
rehearsals. While one cannot rule out that the Ordo was first
performed somewhat in the manner of an oratorio, the unique richness of
detail in the costumes of the Virtues, as they are depicted in the
illuminations of Scivias, suggests that in the play too they may well
have been costumed; and the many movements alluded to in the text,
especially in scene 2 (“come to me...”, “with ardent
longing we run to you”), hardly suggest a static “concert
performance”.
While the vocal music for the play is meticulously recorded in the
Wiesbaden manuscript, this contains no instrumental notation and no
reference to accompanying instruments. That these were, however, used
to accompany sacred music, and played a vital part in the musical life
of Hildegard's Rupertsberg, is clear from a number of testimonies.
Already in a brilliant tenth-century Aquitanian sequence, O Muse
Sicelides (“You Muses from Sicily”), each strophe
summons one or more groups in the choir to sing and one or more
musicians to play: the instruments used in the performance of this
virtuoso piece are, explicitly, lyre, harp, portable organ, tambourine,
horn and flute. Even if instrumentation on the Rupertsberg was rather
less ambitious than this, the spiritual importance of instrumental as
well as vocal music to Hildegard and her community emerges vividly in
her impassioned letter of 1178 to the prelates of Mainz, when her
convent, in conflict with Mainz, was punished by being denied the
sacraments and the right to sing the liturgy. Holy prophets, such as
David and Salomon, she writes, “not only composed psalms and
canticles to be sung... but invented musical instruments of diverse
kinds with this in view, by which the songs could be expressed in
multitudinous sounds, so that the listeners, aroused and made adept
outwardly, might be nurtured within by the forms and qualities of the
instruments, as well as by the meaning of the words performed with
them”. That is why, “in accordance with the material
composition and quality of instruments, we can best transform and shape
the performance of our inner being towards praises of the
Creator”.
The principal manuscript for the Ordo Virtutum is the
“giant codex” (Riesenkodex), today in Wiesbaden, which
presents a vast, though by no means complete, collection of Hildegard's
writings. This codex was copied and assembled on the Rupertsberg,
probably at the instigation of Hildegard's last secretary, Guibert of
Gembloux, in the closing years of her life (1177-79). The fact that the
leaf preceding the Symphonia, which contains part of a letter
written to the convent soon after Hildegard's death (17 September,
1179), is a single leaf which was inserted into the manuscript
subsequently, makes me think it likeliest that the Symphonia
and Ordo were already in place in 1179. It is quite possible
that the Ordo was likewise copied in the missing pages of the Symphonia
in the Dendermonde manuscript (ca. 1175, sent from the Rupertsberg to
the Belgian abbey of Villers); and there still exists a much later
Rhenish copy of the play with its music, made in 1487, in the
manuscript British Library Add. 15102. But the scant preservation of
the play — in the Rhineland and perhaps also in Belgium —
gives no indication of its imaginative stature and power. Medieval
plays rarely exist in several copies. At all events, along with the
vernacular Anglo-Norman dramas Le mystère d'Adam and La
seinte resurreccion, the south German Ludus de Antichristo,
and the first large-scale plays of Christ's Passion in the Tyrol and in
southern Italy, Hildegard's Ordo belongs among the summits of what is
justly called “the Renaissance of the twelfth century”.
Who are these characters, and what have they got to do with the human
soul?
The depiction of the Virtutes (positive Powers, or Virtues) in
full combat against the Vices was a widespread literary and
illustrative conceit in Hildegard's time. One could say that the human
soul in this play confronts a series of female allegorical figures in a
cycle of initiation, whereby, at the end, the soul finds itself in
utter service to its Creator. [The images presented here are taken
largely from Hildegard's own works (see end of essay for sources), and
the Virtues, or Powers, are also described here with their modal
realizations in the musical structure of Ordo Virtutum.]
The Patriarchs and Prophets' lines represent the low,
questioning voices of Old Testament men. Beginning in plagal d-mode,
they are answered by the Virtues in the authentic d-mode of optimism in
the spirit of the New Testament. The men express their unending
wonderment and awe, changing to e-mode when confronted with the
presence of the feminine Powers.
The Embodied Souls are divine sparks which become lodged in
human bodies and thereby begin the drama of becoming human beings.
Through this process, man must pay homage to his earthly and to his
heavenly nature, making his incarnate life one of longing and exile.
This is heard in both the instruments and voices in e-mode.
...the first man...became a living soul; and the last...a
life-giving spirit (I Corinthians 15:45)
Felix Anima is the contrast to the merely embodied soul: the
happy soul burns in the fire of profound acknowledgement when given
life. She is not of the body, she is the fundament of the body, like
sap in a tree. The Infelix Anima, on the other hand, has two
natures, two wings. They are joined because they cannot be separated,
for as long as human beings abide in the shadow of death, they are
bereft of the the heavenly garment they lost through Adam, and are
available to the doings of the Devil. The Devil, the Virtues, and
Anima's mode seem to move in a disorderly fashion between e- and
d-modes.
Hildegard's Diabolus (Devil) is not a smooth Mephistopheles,
but an arrogant tempter who has already suffered defeat by the
archangel Gabriel, as described in the Biblical Apocalypse. In Gehenna
he lives bound up in chains in eternal Nothingness, from which immobile
point he is able to exude poisons to embodied souls on their journey.
In Hildegard's world he is incorporated by a “shouting
voice”, not by singing.
Scientia Dei (Knowledge of God) is introduced beyond the Ordo
cycle as a beautiful knowledge appearing in people: as a white cloud
which passes through human minds as swiftly as air. She sings in a very
continuous, insistent, and infinitely sweet e-mode to remind the Soul
that she and Scientia recognize Nature's true reality: “What you
see is divine!”.
Now the actual Ordo begins, progressing through the modalities
and tessiturae of its cycle, and rests in perfect calm at the end.
Hildegard discusses these Powers, “God's strongest
workers”, in all of her works, and each time with a different
spirit. The modes of these next seven Powers go between e- and d-modes.
Whosoever, therefore, shall humble himself as this little child, the
same is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven. (Matthew 18:4)
Humilitas (Humility): She who is the queen of the Virtues is the
central paradox of the drama: Hildegard describes her clothing as
“cheese-like”, not reflecting; her luminosity is streaming
out from within. And as hills are protected from excessive rains by
valleys, so are humans protected from evil by humbleness. She reveals
herself in the childlike quality of being human, who as yet knows no
pride, hatred, or passion of sin. She wears a royal crown.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not
charity, I am become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. (I
Corinthians 13:1).
Caritas (Charity) is the essential New Testament figure: she
wears clothing of an air-like, intense color of a hyacinth. She is the
sky who nourishes greenness and brings flowers to mature fruit, and has
been taught to pour out the clearest of streams.
Timor Dei (Fear of God) expresses the fearsomeness of perceiving
that there truly is a fearsome God. In Hildegard's illustrations she is
shown to be supernaturally large in size, shrouded from head to foot in
a shadowy garment, and covered with fiery-red eyes of wisdom.
Obedientia (Obedience) is a youthful-looking character bound in
shackles representing an unquestioning willingness. At the time when
God created all things she was an eye, watching how, in contrast to
herself, the first angel came to life; but his works didn't live, since
he wanted to be something he was not.
Fides (Faith): for those with Obedience, she shows belief in
what one does through faithfully fulfilled deeds, in addition to what
one learns by wisdom and admonition. She wears red to symbolize
perseverance and the martyrdom of blood.
Spes (Hope) is a youthful woman whose life is not on earth, but
who is hidden in heavenly places until the time of the eternal reward.
Thus she is clad in a pallid-colored tunic, and wearily awaits the
coming of her longed-for desire, because she has not yet been rewarded.
Castitas (Chastity) is formed with an inviolable, beautiful, and
sure integrity: She is dressed more brilliantly and purely than
crystal, shining resplendently as sunlight reflecting on water. And the
overshadowing wings of the Spirit mean that she can fly through the
Devil's snares, one after another.
Two Powers follow, still in e- and d-modes: the one the youngest, the
other perhaps the oldest of the series:
Innocentia (innocence) is quintessentially child-like:
unknowing, untried, untempted.
Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall the moon withdraw
itself, for the Lord will be thy everlasting light, and the days of thy
mourning shall be ended. (Is. 60:20)
Contemptus Mundi (World-rejection) stands within a wheel which
revolves without ceasing, within which she remains motionless in
rejection of worldly things. So we live in childish simplicity and a
state of innocence.
The next five Powers express human senses, which work together with the
person to bear fruit:
Amor Caelestis (Heavenly Love) must exist in people before
anything else. In response to Worldly Love, she provides all the
contrasting spiritual joys in life and is related to the force behind
all growth, expressing celestial harmonies in human sentiments.
Disciplina (Discipline) stands youthfully, but is very serious,
as she fears reverently and does not try to wield her own power. Her
lusts are disciplined by contrition.
Verecundia (Shamefastedness) appears to blush and drive away all
confusions. She covers her face with her white sleeve, protecting her
inner consciousness against filthiness.
...to give light to those who live in darkness and in the shadow dark
as death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1:79)
Misericordia (Mercy) is like the sweetest plant, growing in the
air with moisture and green. She is the power to help the truly needy.
Her head is veiled in a womanly fashion, and to the pure protection of
this veil she brings back lost souls from out of the exile of death.
Death is swallowed up in Victory! O Death, where is thy sting? O
grave, where is thy victory? (I Corinthinians 15:55)
Victoria (Victory) shows herself to the people like lightning
which is partly seen and partly concealed; for the mysteries of the
Creator are sometimes understood and sometimes unknown. Victoria
defeated the ancient serpent who had exalted himself over his head and
bound the human race by a thousand evil deeds like a chain.
The last two Powers are grouped perhaps to represent mystery and peace:
Discretio (Discretion) is the mother of Virtues. Upon her bosom
she carries some tiny stones, jewels of all kinds, which she looks at
very carefully and diligently as a merchant looks over his goods. She
both divides and gathers; she separates every creature into its innate
quality, but holds each of them together in Nature.
Patientia (Patience) conquers with long, hard endurance worldly
misery, fierce and detaining in its secular pride; she is dressed in
great sweetness, wrapping her head in the manner of a wife, in fearful
and loving honor. She carries a crown upon a cushion.
Hildegard's Scivias (Know the Ways), Columba Hart & Jane
Bishop, transl., New York, 1990;
Liber Vitae Meritorum (Book of the Rewards of Life), Bruce W.
Hozeski, transl., New York, 1994; and
De Operatione Dei (Book of Divine Works), Robert Cunningham,
transl., Santa Fe, 1987.
HILDEGARD VON BINGEN
(1098—1179)
Hildegard von Bingen, the legendary visionary, prophetissa teutonica,
and “sibyl of the Rhine”, was one of the most important
figures in the history of the Middle Ages, along with such women as
Eleanor of Aquitaine, Catherine of Siena, and Heloise.
Bom in 1098 to the noble family of Hildebert of Gut Bermersheim near
Alzey in Rhinehessen, she exhibited exceptional gifts as a young girl.
At the age of eight, her spiritual training was assumed by Jutta von
Spanheim at the nearby cloister of Disibodenberg. There, she was
instructed in the rules of the Benedictine Order (Regula Benedicti),
the liturgy, and in the various artes liberales. In 1136, upon
the death of her mentor Jutta, she was elected by the nuns as magistra
of the convent. Against the wishes of the abbot of Disibodenberg,
Hildegard succeeded in founding an independant convent on the
Rupertsberg, near Bingen, the construction of which she personally
directed. In 1152, the Archbishop of Mainz dedicated the cloister
church at Rupertsberg.
Throughout Hildegard's life, she was continually plagued by illnesses.
In 1141, she tells us, these afflictions receded and gave way to a
series of religious visions. With the help of Volmar, her secretary,
and the nun Richardis, Hildegard was able to record these visions in
the book Scivias (Engl. “Know the Ways”, Ger.
“Wisse die Wege”). The most important manuscript of this
work, the Rupertsberger Codex, was completed in ca. 1165 in the famous
monastic scriptorium. It contains painted miniatures which depict the
visions she described. In her lifetime, she was to complete two other
books of visions (one with miniatures), and thirteen other works in the
fields of theology, medicine, and the physical sciences. In addition,
she wrote over 300 letters, the stories of saints' lives, nearly eighty
vocal compositions, poetry, and the musical drama, Ordo Virtutum.
Upon hearing excerpts from Scivias at the Synod of 1147, Pope
Eugenius III recognized Hildegard von Bingen as a true visionary and
prophet. During her lifetime, her fame spread beyond the Rhineland. She
corresponded with kings, popes, archbishops, and such celebrities as
Friedrich Barbarossa and Bernard de Clairvaux, responding to
theological questions, making prophecies, and functioning as spiritual
guide to the powerful. Despite her delicate health, she made four
ambitious preaching voyages to such diverse places as Mainz,
Würzburg, Cologne, Trier and Metz. One speaks of Hildegard von
Bingen's world view, or cosmos, as being constructed according to the
neo-Platonic, feminist and patristic norms upon which accepted 12th
century ecclesiastical education was based. To Hildegard, the universe
of her visions was not constructed, but rather revealed. She was not a
scholastic; she was a true visionary and prophet.
Although highly educated and undoubtedly well-indoctrinated in the
intellectual traditions of her day, she presented herself above all as
a person operating not through her own knowledge, but as the instrumentum
of God's will. “The words I speak come from no human mouth; I saw
and heard them in visions sent to me... God moves where He wills, and
not to the glory of earthly man. I am ever filled with fear and
trembling. I have no confidence in my own capacities - I reach out my
hand to God that He may carry me along as a feather is borne
weightlessly by the wind”.
She calls herself simplex homo, humilis forma, a childlike,
delicate woman, yet her works are infused with extraordinary power and
unity of conception. Her creations must be seen as resulting from her
her personal, mystical experiences of God's revealed realm, and any
musical concept of Ordo Virtutum must acknowledge this astounding
proposition.
The content of Ordo virtutum
The Ordo Virtutum of Hildegard von Bingen is thematically bound
to her major theological work Scivias. In this large vision
cycle, Hildegard reveals a mystic universe in which the history and
workings of cosmic forces often take the form of allegorical figures.
The musical play which she wrote brings these allegorical figures to
life — we see them operating on behalf of the human soul in its
earthly struggle against the temptations of the devil. The play opens
with the Patriarchs and Prophets, symbols of the Old Testament, filled
with wonder as they regard the Virtues, for they bear the loving
message of the New Testament. The protagonist of the play is the human
Soul, the earthly theater for the confrontation of heavenly forces,
portrayed by Virtues, and the base world, symbolized by the Devil. We
see her first clothed in the pure white robes of blessedness, beginning
her ascent to the level of the Virtues. Yet, before she has been
received by the heavenly dwellers, the Devil gains her attention, and
suddenly her deeply dual nature becomes more than she can bear. In
disgust she throws off her white robes and embraces the Devil,
responding to his promises of renown in the world.
The Virtues suffer in the loss of every soul, and lament loudly over
the Devil's victory. Though he hurls insults at them, he cannot harm
them. The Virtues then move together, celebrating their blessedness.
Each of them introduces herself through an appropriate type of music,
and the collective Virtues answer, praising her. The soul returns from
her experiences in the world, downtrodden, wounded and embittered. She
calls out to the Virtues, for now she is too weak to come to them
unaided. They raise her up, and she now accepts the white robes of
immortality from them. The Devil finds himself confounded in his plans
for this soul, and makes one last appeal to join him, but the soul will
have nothing to do with him. This constitutes a victory for the
Virtues, and Victoria swoops down upon him and binds him up. The drama
is resolved in the general singing of the hymn composed by Hildegard,
“In principio” (“In the beginning”).
a sense of searching and rumination. The texture of the three fiddles
in unison dissolves with the addition of canon and slight melodic
variations. The remaining three instrumental pieces are in d-mode and
are more direct and dance-like in character. The first serves as a
processional, accompanying Anima as she approaches the Virtues to begin
her dialogue with them. The second and third pieces are interludes
between the scenes, and the increasing tempo and complexity of these
dances expresses Anima's emotionally-charged confrontation with both
the Virtues and the Devil.
This is a completely new recording of Ordo Virtutum, made in
commemoration of both the 900th anniversary of Hildegard von Bingen's
birth year (1098), and also in celebration of Sequentia's 20th year of
existence. During most of the past two decades, our ensemble has
returned again and again to Hildegard's music. The history of
Sequentia's involvement with her music drama Ordo Virtutum is
long and complex, having its roots in a proposal we brought to the West
German Radio (WDR) in the autumn of 1980. Our initial idea, which was
to produce the first complete recording of Hildegard's masterpiece,
found its way to the receptive ears of Klaus L. Neumann (Early Music
Dept. / Alte Musik Abteilung) and Alfred Krings (Hauptabteilung
Musik / Music Division), where a vast and idealistic project was
subsequently visualized: a recording, live-broadcast theatrical
performances, and a film for television. In the subsequent year of
planning, it was decided to begin the project with a series of long
initial rehearsal/study periods in Cologne which would culminate in an
interdisciplinary symposium on Ordo Virtutum, hosted by the
WDR. It was at this symposium that we began our long collaborations
with both the musicologist Leo Treitler, and the philologist Peter
Dronke, whose editions and translations of Hildegard's texts have
formed the basis of our work from the very beginning. The initial 2-LP
recording — made in co-production between the WDR and Deutsche
Harmonia Mundi — was linked to a fully-staged production of the
drama, which was given its live-broadcast premiere in May, 1982 in the
newly-restored 12th century church of Gross St-Martin in Cologne. Later
that year a TV film production in Germany was followed by performances
in Europe, including at the first Utrecht Early Music Festival. After
the release of the LP (which was later remastered for CD in 1987 and
reissued in 1991), there was an enormous demand for live performances,
and several tours of Ordo Virtutum followed in both Europe and
North America. In all, four different theatrical productions of the
work were mounted between 1984 and 1991, whereby the demands of touring
led to stagings which sometimes had little in common with the initial,
opulent WDR production. And yet we felt as the years passed that we had
gained a knowledge and depth of experience in Hildegard's work which we
could not have hoped to achieve in 1981-2. Following this new
recording, which was made in precisely the same location as the initial
production (the romanesque basilica in Knechtsteden, near Cologne) the
work will be completely re-staged during Hildegard's anniversary year
(1998) and again our long relationship with this complex work will
evolve in mysterious ways. It will certainly be revealing to listen to
Sequentia's two recordings of Ordo Virtutum, made 15 years
apart, as proof that Hildegard's music and texts transcend all our
attempts to mould it into our own time and circumstances.
