Hildegard
was one of ten children born to noble
parents in the village of Bemersheim in what is now western Germany. At the age
of eight she was placed in the care of Jutta of Spenheim, the abbess of a group
of nuns attached to the Benedictine monastery near Bingen. After Jutta's death
Hildegard became abbess, and shortly after, in 1141, she saw tongues of flames
descend upon her from the sky. From this time on she devoted her life to trying
to express her mystical visions through composition, poetry and play-writing.
By
virtue of her visionary experiences Hildegard was able to exercise a strength
and authority unusual for women at the time. Combining religious and diplomatic
activities, she made several missionary journeys through Germany over a period
of ten years. She was a prolific writer as well as an accomplished physician,
and her works reflected a close and creative alliance between science and the
arts. As well as writing on natural history and medicine, she composed much
lyrical poetry, and she recorded her prophetic and symbolic visions in her
manuscript Scivias. Her morality play, Ordo
virtutum, consists of a discourse on the virtues; 16 of these were
represented in performance by Hildegard's
nuns; the only male part - the Devil - was taken by her secretary.
Merging
her passions for poetry and music, Hildegard collected her compositions together
under the title Symphonia
armonie celestium revelationum (Symphony of the harmony of celestial
revelations). She
added to this work constantly over the years.
Hildegard
thought of herself as ‘a feather on the breath of God', a mystic rather than a
composer; most of her works involve deeply devotional religious texts set to
long, flowing melodies, mainly for solo voices. In the composition O Jerusalem
she likens Jerusalem to the nunnery that she founded at Rupertsberg, near
Bingen, on the site of a monastery that had been previously razed to the ground
by Normans. Hildegard died at Rupertsberg in the autumn of 1179.
Hildegard von Bingen-11,000 Virgins-Chants for the Feast of St Ursula
Sacred Music of the 12th Century
Sequences and Hymns
