A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

178 leigh-choate, flynn, and fassler
technical language. She never stated that she remained forever ignorant of
the rules of grammar or music, but stressed only that her work originated
in her visionary experience before she had acquired such knowledge.
Whether the surviving music for O vos angeli is a product of Hildegard’s
early years or her maturity, it clearly undermines her disavowal of notational
or theoretical knowledge, since its music reflects deep correspondences
with South German music theory that reinforce Hildegard’s ideas
about angelic music found in her other writings. The most striking correspondence
is the extraordinary range (remarkable even for Hildegard) of
O vos angeli. It employs the full range of the Guidonian gamut, comprising
19 diatonic steps, which was only gradually adopted in her region during
the last quarter of the 11th century via the works of Aribo (who refers to
William of Hirsau in his works) and the treatise of the otherwise anonymous
John.55 The use of the Guidonian gamut in O vos angeli suggests
that the musical conception of the song (as notated) is not only highly
theoretical, but that the theory behind the composition was also current.
Moreover, in a passage from Cause et cure that may be attributed to her
with reasonable certainty, Hildegard refers to an instrument often mentioned
in chant treatises—the monochord:
Now, Adam, before his treachery, used to know angelic song and every kind
of music, and he used to have a voice sounding like a monochord sounds.
But in his treachery, from the cunning of the serpent, a certain wind of his
[of the serpent] twisted him in the marrow and the thigh, and this [wind] is
indeed now in every man. And from that wind, man’s spleen has grown fat,
and foolish joy and laughter and even jeers are shaken out of man.56
55 T. J. H. McCarthy’s Music, Scholasticism and Reform: Salian Germany, 1024–1125 (Manchester,
2009) surveys South German music theory, paying particular attention to the
networks of monastic institutions centered on Gorze and Hirsau. Pages 80–93 treat
the critical reception of Guido’s work, pointing out that John described both ranges for the
gamut but used Guido’s in his treatise. See also T. J. H. McCarthy “Aribo’s De Musica and
Abbot William of Hirsau,” Revue Bénédictine 116 (2006): 62–82, and Gabriela Ilnitchi, The
Play of Meanings: Aribo’s “De Musica” and the Hermeneutics of Musical Thought (Lanham,
Md., 2005). Joan Malcolm, “Epistola Johannis Cottonis ad Fulgentium episcopum,” Musica
Disciplina 47 (1993): 159–69, suggests that John may have been cantor at St Maximin in
Trier, a city Hildegard visited and was closely connected with through the monastery of
Sts Eucharius and Matthias.
56 English translation by William Flynn. Cause, p. 188: “Adam quoque ante preuaricationem
angelicum carmen et omne genus musicorum sciebat et uocem habebat sonantem,
ut uox monochordi sonat. In preuaricatione autem illius de astutia serpentis intorsit
se in medullam et in femur eius quidam uentus, qui etiam nunc in omni homine est. Et
de uento illo splen hominis inpinguescit, et inepta laetitia et risus atque cahinni in homine
excutiuntur.”