Hildegard of Bingen was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, and visionary who lived from 1098-1179. She experienced visions from a young age and was encouraged to record them. At age 8 she was enclosed as a nun where she learned to read, write, and play music. Her extensive works included visions, letters, natural sciences, an invented language, and over 70 musical compositions of liturgical chants and a morality play. Her musical style featured soaring melodies outside the range of typical chant with recurring melodic units that closely matched the text.

1. Music in History:
Medieval/Renaissance Composers
Hildegard von Bingen
1098-1179

2. Hildegard von Bingen
• Hildegard's exact date of birth is uncertain.
• She was born around the year 1098 to Mechtild of
Merxheim-Nahet and Hildebert of Bermersheim, a
family of the free lower nobility in the service of the
Count Meginhard of Sponheim.
• Sickly from birth, Hildegard is traditionally considered
their youngest and tenth child, although there are
records of seven older siblings.
• In her Vita, Hildegard states that from a very young age
she had experienced visions.

3. Hildegard von Bingen
• Perhaps due to Hildegard's visions, or as a method of political
positioning, Hildegard's parents offered her as an oblate (a nun) to
the church.
• The date of Hildegard's enclosure in the church is the subject of a
contentious debate.
• Her Vita says she was enclosed with an older nun, Jutta, at the age
of eight.
• However, Jutta's enclosure date is known to be in 1112, when
Hildegard would have been fourteen.
• Some scholars speculate that Hildegard was placed in the care of
Jutta, the daughter of Count Stephan II of Sponheim, at the age of
eight, and the two women were enclosed together six years later.
• The written record of the Life of Jutta indicates that Hildegard likely
assisted her in reciting the Psalms, working in the garden, and
tending to the sick.

4. Hildegard von Bingen
• In any case, Hildegard and Jutta were enclosed at Disibodenberg in the
Palatinate Forest in what is now Germany.
• Jutta was also a visionary and thus attracted many followers who came to
visit her at the enclosure.
• Hildegard tells us that Jutta taught her to read and write, but that she was
unlearned and therefore incapable of teaching Hildegard Biblical
interpretation.
• Hildegard and Jutta most likely prayed, meditated, read scriptures such as
the psalter, and did handwork during the hours of the Divine Office.
• This might have been a time when Hildegard learned how to play the ten-
stringed psaltery.
• Volmar, a frequent visitor, may have taught Hildegard simple psalm
notation.
• The time she studied music could have been the beginning of the
compositions she would later create.

5. Hildegard von Bingen
• Hildegard says that she first saw "The Shade of the Living Light" at
the age of three, and by the age of five she began to understand
that she was experiencing visions.
• She used the term 'visio' to this feature of her experience, and
recognized that it was a gift that she could not explain to others.
• Hildegard explained that she saw all things in the light of God
through the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.
• Hildegard was hesitant to share her visions, confiding only to Jutta,
who in turn told Volmar, Hildegard's tutor and, later, secretary.
• Throughout her life, she continued to have many visions, and in
1141, at the age of 42, Hildegard received a vision she believed to
be an instruction from God, to "write down that which you see and
hear."

6. Hildegard von Bingen
• Hildegard's works include:
– Three great volumes of visionary theology.
– A variety of musical compositions for use in liturgy, as well as
the musical morality play Ordo Virtutum
– One of the largest bodies of letters (nearly 400) to survive from
the Middle Ages, addressed to correspondents ranging from
Popes to Emperors to abbots and abbesses, and including
records of many of the sermons she preached in the 1160s and
1170s.
– Two volumes of material on natural medicine and cures; an
invented language called the Lingua ignota ("unknown
language“)
– Various minor works, including a gospel commentary and two
works of hagiography.

7. Music of Hildegard von Bingen
• Attention in recent decades to women of the medieval Church has led to a great
deal of popular interest in Hildegard, particularly her music.
• In addition to the Ordo Virtutum, sixty-nine musical compositions, each with its
own original poetic text, survive, and at least four other texts are known, though
their musical notation has been lost.
• This is one of the largest repertoires among medieval composers.
• One of her better known works, Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues), is a morality
play.
• It is unsure when some of Hildegard’s compositions were composed, though the
Ordo Virtutum is thought to have been composed as early as 1151.
• The morality play consists of monophonic melodies for the Anima (human soul)
and 16 Virtues.
• There is also one speaking part for the Devil.
• Scholars assert that the role of the Devil would have been played by Volmar, while
Hildegard's nuns would have played the parts of Anima and the Virtues.

8. Music of Hildegard von Bingen
• In addition to the Ordo Virtutum Hildegard 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 text and range
from antiphons, hymns, and sequences, to responsories.
• Her music is described as monophonic.
• Hildegard's compositional style is characterized by soaring melodies, often
well outside of the normal range of chant at the time.
• Additionally, scholars such as Margot Fassler and Marianna Richert Pfau
describe Hildegard's music as highly melismatic, often with recurrent
melodic units, and also note her close attention to the relationship
between music and text, which was a rare occurrence in monastic chant of
the 12th century.
• Hildegard of Bingen’s songs are left open for rhythmic interpretation
because of the use of neumes without a staff.