The Impact and Music of Hildegard von Bingen In the Middle Ages

O’Brien 1 The Impact and Music of Hildegard von Bingen In the Middle Ages By John-Michael O’Brien Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) was an incredible woman, and a true pioneer in a myriad of fields. Known as the "Sybil of the Rhine," she was able to transcend the limitations on her sex during the Middle Ages through her visionary works of Christian theology, medicine, and most importantly, music. At a time when women were subordinate to men, both popes and kings frequently sought Hildegard out for her knowledge and wisdom in a multitude of fields. Hildegard’s life story is an inspirational account of how her music, spirituality, and intellect were able to overcome the social, cultural, religious, and gender barriers in the Middle Ages. From birth, Hildegard was destined to grow up in the house of God. Although she was born into a noble family in Bermersheim, Germany, Hildegard’s parents could not afford to feed and clothe their daughter. As was customary with the tenth child, Hildegard was consecrated to the Catholic Church at the mere age of eight. “Her parents set aside their daughter for the service of the church, and she was assigned to serve Jutta of Sponheim, an anchoress who had set up a cell next to the monastery of St. Disibod in the diocese of Mainz.”1 Jutta was born into a wealthy and powerful family, but willingly chose to reject all worldly possessions and temptations in order to dedicate her life to God. Under Jutta, Hildegard received a rudimentary education in which she learned Latin, the official language of the Catholic Church. Learning Latin was essential for Hildegard on a number of levels—she had to read the Vulgate Bible as well as chant 1 Harmless, William. Mystics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, 61. O’Brien 2 hundreds of psalms found in the Psalter. On a grander scale, the music Hildegard was exposed to at Latin Mass and other religious services of the church no doubt influenced her future compositions. While living at the anchorage attached to the Benedictine monastery at Disibodenberg, Hildegard received visions of divine inspiration at a very young age. Afraid to tell others, Hildegard confided her visions only to Jutta and to a monk named Volmar. After Jutta passed away in 1138, Hildegard was elected abbess of the anchorage, and the visions continued to become more vivid and intense. In 1141, she had a vision that changed the course of her life. And it came to pass ... when I was 42 years and 7 months old, that the heavens were opened and a blinding light of exceptional brilliance flowed through my entire brain. And so it kindled my whole heart and breast like a flame, not burning but warming... and suddenly I understood of the meaning of expositions of the books.2 Hildegard gained two things from her powerful vision: an instant understanding of the meaning of multiple religious texts, and a message from God telling her to write down everything she saw in her visions. For a number of years, Hildegard was reluctant to answer the call to write, feeling unsure and unworthy of the daunting task God had placed before her. But although I heard and saw these things, because of doubt and low opinion of myself and because of diverse sayings of men, I refused for a long time a call to write, not out of stubbornness but out of humility, until weighed down by a scourge of god, I fell onto a bed of sickness.3 2 Flanagan, Sabina. Hildegard of Bingen: A Visionary Life. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1999, 3. 3 Hart, Columba, and Jane Bishop. Hildegard of Bingen: Scivias. New York: Paulist Press, 1990, 60. O’Brien 3 During the Middle Ages, women were subservient to men, both in church and in society. Hildegard knew that if she was to be taken seriously in a patriarchal society, her visions had to be sanctioned by the Catholic Church. Therefore, she wrote several letters seeking the support and approval of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Eventually, word of her powerful visions reached Pope Eugenius (1145-1153). With papal imprimatur, Hildegard was able to overcome gender barriers within the Catholic Church and complete her writings. After describing 26 visions in her first work entitled Scivias (Know the Ways of the Lord), Hildegard quickly rose to fame throughout Germany and several other neighboring countries during the Middle Ages. In the year 1150, Hildegard moved her growing convent from Disibodenberg to Bingen, along the Rhine River. As her fame continued to spread, the well-known “Hildegard von Bingen” began to explore various fields of study including philosophy, cosmology, medicine, and most important, music. For Hildegard, music was an allinclusive entity. Her melodies and lyrics encompassed theories of religion, nature, love, science, and history. Hildegard wrote music copiously as no woman before her, and as she states in her autobiography, "I composed and chanted plainsong in praise of God and the saints even though I had never studied either musical notation or singing."4 Just like her incredible visions, Hildegard’s innate musical ability also appears to be a gift from God. With no formal training, the only musical exposure Hildegard had was during her youth, in which she listened to the monks chant the Divine Office eight times a day. 4 Owen, Nick. Suffragans from Suffragettes. Leicester, UK: Matador, 2016, 111. O’Brien 4 Hildegard was a musical pioneer in every sense of the word. She wrote the world’s first musical drama, entitled Ordo Virtutum or The Ritual of Virtues. Hildegard also wrote 77 chants compiled into a cycle she called The Symphony of the Harmony of the Heavenly Relations. Within this cycle, Hildegard composed four different types of liturgical music. The most prevalent musical form she utilized was the Antiphon. These are usually one lined pieces set to text that were sung before and after a psalm. The second largest type of chant found in the cycle was the Responsorial. These chants were sung after a scripture lesson in which a cantor or a small portion of the choir sang the verse(s) while the entire choir or congregation responded with the refrain. Hildegard also used Sequences as another compositional form. These dramatic pieces are sung during Mass in between the Alleluia and the Gospel, and are full of vivid imagery and details. Although most Sequences follow a specific rhyme scheme, Hildegard’s sequences do not. Hymns are also found in her cycle, and were typically used for adoration and prayer. Although the chants found in The Symphony of the Harmony of the Heavenly Relations were extremely common liturgical forms, Hildegard’s compositional approach and techniques were truly extraordinary and progressive for the time. Hildegard of Bingen epitomizes what it means to be unique and free—this directly correlates with how innovative her music truly was. Just as Hildegard was free of social, religious, and gender constraints, her music deviated from the musical restraints of the time period. Relative to most chants of her day, Hildegard’s musical compositions had a very large range. Plainchant melodies also never utilized intervals larger than a second or third. Hildegard’s music often employed leaps of fourths and fifths moving in either upward or downward motion. Her melodies are also more angular than the O’Brien 5 Romanesque curves found in most other plainchant melodies of the time. Lastly, she implemented both neumatic (two or three notes per syllable) and melismatic (three or more notes per syllable) passages into her compositions in order to accent form, vitalize line phrasing, and to develop complex melodic structure. The excerpt above is an Antiphon from Hildegard’s cycle The Symphony of the Harmony of the Heavenly Relations. Many of her unique compositional techniques are prevalent in this chant. In the opening of “O virtus Sapientiae,” Hildegard employs a leap of a fifth followed by a leap of a fourth, both of which are ascending. Immediately after the two leaps, there is a slow, descending line that is extremely wide in range. This Antiphon also utilizes neumatic and melismatic phrasing, a characteristic Hildegard often used in her music. Hildegard von Bingen was a very powerful and expressive woman. Her musical compositions deviated away from the Romanesque curves of most plainchant melodies, and set the tone for change in both sacred and secular music. It seems as though O’Brien 6 Hildegard sought to bring Heaven and Earth together through the use of extreme register, soaring lines, and unique phrasing. Many of Hildegard’s compositional techniques will not be implemented and realized until the Renaissance Period—she was a true musical genius with ideas decades ahead of her time. An influential theorist, visionary, leader, and composer, Hildegard of Bingen was able to utilize her intellect and spirituality to transcend social, political, and gender barriers during the Middle Ages. O’Brien 7 Bibliography Ashe, Geoffrey. Encyclopedia of Prophecy. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2001. Burkholder, J. Peter, and Claude V. Palisca. Norton Anthology of Western Music. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010. Deen, Edith. Great Women of the Christian Faith. New York: Harper and Row, 1959. Edgington, Susan, and Sarah Lambert. Gendering the Crusades. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Flanagan, Sabina. Hildegard of Bingen: A Visionary Life. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1999. Harmless, William. Mystics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Hart, Columba, and Jane Bishop. Hildegard of Bingen: Scivias. New York: Paulist Press, 1990. Holsinger, Bruce W. Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Neuls-Bates, Carol. Women in Music: An Anthology of Source Readings from the Middle Ages to the Present. New York: Harper & Row, 1982. Newman, Barbara. Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Owen, Nick. Suffragans from Suffragettes. Leicester, UK: Matador, 2016. Winter, Jonah, and Jeanette Winter. The Secret World of Hildegard. New York, NY: A.A. Levine, 2007.