The subject of this post was part of a separate thread (tithe child), but I just wanted to thank DP White, Doper extraordinaire, for recommending her music to me.
Hildegard was a composer who was born in the year 1098 and as DP says, “her music ‘rocks’”. It’s tough for me to categorize, but the nearest thing I have in my collection is Chant. The CD I bought today is by Vision and is entitled The Music of Hildegard Von Bingen.
For DP, and those of you who know her music already, can you recommend others?
My tastes in music range far and wide, but I am always thrilled when I find something (someone) new. Thanks
DP!
Quasi
Symphoniae
Ordo Virtutum
Technically they are not Chants (Gregorian or otherwise)
Hildegard did a little bit of everything and during the Middle Ages was, however odd it sounds, a Rennaisance woman in a world of men.
Other worthwhile music
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is stunning and IMHO the best piece of music ever written
Grateful Dead, Greyfolded trippy!
Layla
Abbey Road
Achtung Baby
are some of my favorites
[slight hyjack] In Oliver Sack’s * The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat *, Sacks talks about how Hildegard’s relgious “visions” were textbook migrane headaches. She saw auras, and thought she was seeing Jesus, when, according to Sacks, she was really just suffering from lack of bloodflow to the brain. Ouch. [/slight hyjack]
If you like Medieval plainchant then try Ludus Danielis, a sort of twelfth century opera about the life of the prophet Daniel written by some anonymous students in a monastery in France.
Another contemporaneous style of Medieval sacred music was called Organum–perhaps because a church organ accompanied the singers. It’s based on Gregorian chant but uses different simultaneous melodies and adds a time signature. The two main composers in this style were Leoninus and Petronius.
The fourteenth century Ars Nova movement took the organum idea to a dizzying extreme: sometimes a dozen different lines of counterpoint sustained simultaneously for twenty minutes. Philippe de Vitry and Guillaume de Machaut were the leading composers. Like Hildegard von Bingen, Machaut was also a prominent poet.
Finding good recordings of this music takes some sleuthing. Unfortunately my copies are nearly twenty years old. Thank goodness we now have the Internet.
Anonymous four have a CD with music that Hilegard Von Bingen wrote four the Feast of Saint Ursula. I beleive it is called 1000 virgins. It is simply divine. I have seen Anonymous four perform and they are spectacular.
I was first introduced to HvB 13 years ago, and the album I got, A Feather on the Breath of God has been played many, many times since. scampering gremlin mentioned Machaut, and this recording of his Messe de Notre Dame is also quite wonderful.
Actually, it’s 11,000 Virgins – and it’s wonderful indeed, as is Feather on the Breath of God.
Voices of Ascension has done a recording of Hildegard’s music, too. I haven’t heard it, but their other albums are great, so it’s worth checking out.