Hildegard (2018)
Details
Description: Singer and electronics
Duration: 10'30"
Instrumentation: 3 kbd – sop – electronics(1): laptop, audio interface, Ableton software, 1 microphones, 2 PAs. Also available for: sop – electronics(1): laptop, audio interface, Ableton software, 1 microphones, 2 PAs, 1 MIDI keyboard.
Commission: Commissioned by Filthy Lucre
First performance: 24 February 2018, "Lingua Ignota" at Hackney Showroom, London. Filthy Lucre Ensemble with Josephine Stevenson (soprano)
Score link
Recording: Film by Paul Vernon
Programme Note
Hildegard of Bingen was a medieval mystic, philosopher, composer, botanist and much else besides. As Abbess of her own monastery, she led nuns in the creation devotional music, theatre and art. These were often inspired by her ecstatic visions of the divine, which she relates a number of theological works.
Hildegard created her own language, the Lingua Ignota, for which this event is named. Its glossary of beautiful words, and its elegant script seems to have been used to convey the mystery of divine revelation and to bind the nuns together in a esoteric community. These two chants are both works in which Hildegard employed her invented language. O Orzchis ecclesia uses several words from her lingua ignota to contribute to its dramatic exultation, while O virga mediatrix used aspects of Hildegard’s script, litturae ignotae, in its manuscript.
Both have been arranged with synthesiser accompaniment. We know little of how the songs were originally accompanied, though Hildegard mentions psalteries and monochords in other contexts in her manuscripts. These conspicuously modern arrangements are designed to play with the assumptions of performance practice of ancient music.
Of his film, director Paul Vernon says “Hildegard shows viewer a narrative of the mind that is primarily sensory, that uses duration and colour (or lack thereof) as a tool to build and reduce a visual palette. While making it, I would tell myself: ‘this is the beginning and the end, of the world, simultaneously, in this moment witnessed by Hildegard.’ Unhinged time and infinite possibility; reality, shapes, heaven, hell all blending in front of her eyes. My concept of the visions hold a balance between frightening, images mortal eyes don’t see, and an incalculable beauty. I wanted to try to discover these in the manipulation of common elements of the world: water, light, fire, skies, snow… perhaps.”
Description: Singer and electronics
Duration: 10'30"
Instrumentation: 3 kbd – sop – electronics(1): laptop, audio interface, Ableton software, 1 microphones, 2 PAs. Also available for: sop – electronics(1): laptop, audio interface, Ableton software, 1 microphones, 2 PAs, 1 MIDI keyboard.
Commission: Commissioned by Filthy Lucre
First performance: 24 February 2018, "Lingua Ignota" at Hackney Showroom, London. Filthy Lucre Ensemble with Josephine Stevenson (soprano)
Score link
Recording: Film by Paul Vernon
Programme Note
Hildegard of Bingen was a medieval mystic, philosopher, composer, botanist and much else besides. As Abbess of her own monastery, she led nuns in the creation devotional music, theatre and art. These were often inspired by her ecstatic visions of the divine, which she relates a number of theological works.
Hildegard created her own language, the Lingua Ignota, for which this event is named. Its glossary of beautiful words, and its elegant script seems to have been used to convey the mystery of divine revelation and to bind the nuns together in a esoteric community. These two chants are both works in which Hildegard employed her invented language. O Orzchis ecclesia uses several words from her lingua ignota to contribute to its dramatic exultation, while O virga mediatrix used aspects of Hildegard’s script, litturae ignotae, in its manuscript.
Both have been arranged with synthesiser accompaniment. We know little of how the songs were originally accompanied, though Hildegard mentions psalteries and monochords in other contexts in her manuscripts. These conspicuously modern arrangements are designed to play with the assumptions of performance practice of ancient music.
Of his film, director Paul Vernon says “Hildegard shows viewer a narrative of the mind that is primarily sensory, that uses duration and colour (or lack thereof) as a tool to build and reduce a visual palette. While making it, I would tell myself: ‘this is the beginning and the end, of the world, simultaneously, in this moment witnessed by Hildegard.’ Unhinged time and infinite possibility; reality, shapes, heaven, hell all blending in front of her eyes. My concept of the visions hold a balance between frightening, images mortal eyes don’t see, and an incalculable beauty. I wanted to try to discover these in the manipulation of common elements of the world: water, light, fire, skies, snow… perhaps.”
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