A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hearing the heavenly symphony 171
and interpretation of her music and offfered an analysis of “Hildegard’s
manifesto,” the sequence O virga ac diadema.38
Several issues are contested in these essays, some of which we will
address in our case studies: the extent to which Hildegard’s music was
part of actual liturgical performance; cogent analytical strategies; interactions
between text and music; questions of performance practice; historical
and modern meanings of her music; and ways her music relates to her
thought in general and to the rest of her writings in particular.
Chronology and Compositional Layers in Hildegard’s Liturgical Music
Most of Hildegard’s surviving music grew out of her visionary response to
the liturgy, which allowed her to conceptualize her new song as an authentic
vision of the symphonia that brings heavenly and earthly worship together
in harmonia. Destined principally for liturgical use, her songs are transmitted
in text-only versions without liturgical rubrics, and as notated chants
with rubrics indicating feasts and genres. Their manuscript transmission
suggests several stages at which individual songs or groups of songs were
organized into larger collections, providing a series of dates when specifijic
songs are known to be extant. Evidence from Hildegard’s letters and other
historical sources suggests possible dates or occasions when songs were
initially produced. Combining both forms of evidence, we may approximate
dates or date ranges for the production of most of Hildegard’s songs,
providing a rough chronology of her liturgical music.
Written Sources
Some written sources support Hildegard’s claim that her songs had heavenly
and visionary origins. This is apparent early on when Hildegard
included a group of song texts and a short, text-only version of the Ordo
38 Stephen D’Evelyn, “Heaven as Performance and Participation in Hildegard of Bingen’s
Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum,” in Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages, eds.
Carolyn Muessig and Ad Putter (London, 2007), pp. 155–65; D’Evelyn, “Images of Music in
the Lyrics of Hildegard of Bingen,” in Poesía Latin Medieval (siglos V–XV): Actas del IV Congreso
del “Internationales Mittellateinerkomitee” Santiago de Compostela, 12–15 de septembre
de 2002, eds. Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz and José M. Díaz de Bustamente (Florence, 2005),
pp. 665–74; and Cecilia Panti, “A Woman’s Voice through the Centuries: Hildegard of
Bingen’s Music Today,” in The Past in the Present: A Multidisciplinary Approach, eds. Fabio
Mugnaini, Pádraig Ó Héalaí, and Tok Freeland Thompson (Catania, 2006), pp. 15–40.