A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hearing the heavenly symphony 177
from diffferent visions, they may well have been conceived independently
and only later linked. Thus, their presentation as two separate songs in
the later notated sources may reflect an earlier state of the texts than the
one extant in Scivias.
O vos angeli exists in two fully notated versions (Dendermonde,
fol. 159r–v, and Riesenkodex, fol. 468va–b). Rubrics in both sources indicate
the song’s genre (Responsorium) and its form, marking the verse
and the incipit of the repetendum. They do not specify a liturgical occasion;
as in Scivias, the song receives the simple rubric De angelis (“about
the angels”), perhaps indicating its appropriateness for multiple votive
offfijices and for specifijic feasts like that of St Michael and All Angels (for
which Gregory’s homily was often excerpted for matins). It may be signifijicant
that the dedication of the Disibodenberg monastery took place
on this feast in 1143, and that its old Augustinian church was rededicated
(date unknown) as a chapel to St Michael and All Angels. O vos angeli
certainly falls into the category of prolix responsories used as responses
to the readings at matins (and sung at lauds and vespers on major feasts),
or as processional chants sung stationally at appropriate altars on votive
and festal occasions.
It is impossible to determine the extent to which the notated music of
O vos angeli, fijirst extant in Dendermonde (25 years after the completion
of Scivias), represents the music Hildegard claimed to have heard in her
vision. Although evidence suggests that the fijixing of her music in pitchsecure
notation may have been a project of Hildegard’s fijinal years, her
songs may have existed in a variety of notated forms before then, including
non-diastematic neumes similar to those in the regional manuscript
Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek 103.53 Furthermore, Hildegard’s late disavowal of
technical knowledge about neumes and chant in an autobiographical portion
of her vita (c.1177) cannot be taken at face value. In saying, “I brought
forth chant with melody although I had never learned neumes or chant,”54
Hildegard asserted that her ability to produce song came before she had
learned notation or music theory. Although this statement may be read
as a humility topos similar to that found in her other texts (especially the
prologue to Scivias), it is important to note that in her disavowals of technical
knowledge of the arts, Hildegard carefully and accurately used their
53 See Chapter 8 in this volume, “Hildegard as Musical Hagiographer: Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek,
Ms. 103 and Her Songs for Saints Disibod and Ursula.”
54 V. Hild., 2.2, p. 24: “Sed et cantum cum melodia in laudem Dei et sanctorum absque
doctrina ullius hominis protuli et cantaui cum numquam uel neumam uel cantum aliquem
didicissem.”