Nagekomen vakantiepost

At the height of the Middle Ages music for religious purposes was increasingly being composed by individuals, one of the most famous being the abbess, authoress, and mystic, St Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). She wrote a mystery play Ordo Virtutum (1158), a musical drama, one of the first ‘moralities’ ever written, depicting the fight for Anima (the Soul) between the Devil and 16 Virtues, including Caritas (alto) and Misericordia (soprano). Hildegard also composed many liturgical songs that were collected into a cycle called the Symphonia armoniae celestium revelationum. The songs from the Symphonia are set to Hildegard’s own texts and range from antiphons, hymns, and sequences, to responsories (e.g. ‘Columba aspexit’, ‘Ave generosa’, ‘O ignis spiritus’, ‘O Jerusalem’, ‘O Euchari’, ‘O viridissima virga’, ‘O Ecclesia’ ). Her music is monophonic, consisting of exactly one melodic line. Its style is characterized by soaring melodies that push the boundaries of the more staid ranges of traditional Gregorian chant, so that her music stands outside the normal practices of monophonic monastic chant. It both reflects 12th-century evolutions of chant and pushes those evolutions further in being highly melismatic, often with the recurrent melodic units. There is an intimate relationship between music and text in her compositions, whose rhetorical features are often more distinct than is common in contemporary chant. The reverence for the Virgin Mary reflected in her music shows how deeply influenced and inspired Hildegard and her community were: by the Virgin Mary and the Communion of Saints