A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hearing the heavenly symphony 187
V irtues are the branches (uos rami), the fruit of the Living Eye ( fructus
uiuentis oculi). On their last phrase, the Old Testament fijigures move
upward to their highest pitch “c” on the word “Eye.” The Patriarchs and
Prophets shift mode, cadencing on E, and explain that they were merely a
shadow (nos umbra) in the Living Eye, forerunners of what was to come.
(See Example 4.)
This modal shift prepares for a speech completely in E mode: a lament
of lost souls (Souls Imprisoned in Bodies) longing to regain their prelapsarian
splendor. Upon occasion we see their former glory, especially when
they praise the Living Sun in D, but they slip back into E again, closing on a
cadence of longing and expressing their wish to fijight with the King of Kings.
The shift to E mode and the words of longing and sorrow are then broken
by a return of Anima, who is joyful and bursts forth in D, seemingly
unaware of the lost souls. The music is ironic, for Anima will soon be
joining them, temporarily at least. There is some foreshadowing in her
melody, for after the initial phrases, musically related to the Virtues’ opening
song of joy, Anima shifts mode for a while to F, a mode not often used
in the drama, featuring the note B-flat. At the end, she shifts to E and calls
upon the Virtues, who respond also in E, acknowledging that Anima was
formed in the “deep height of the wisdom of God” (in profunda altitudine
sapientie Dei).78
To demonstrate Anima’s movement from joyful ( felix) to weighed down
(gravata), Hildegard again uses music graphically. Anima’s initial joyful
song plays upon the opening leap of a fijifth, characteristic of the authentic
D mode and used to great advantage by the Virtues when they sing in D.
But when she sings as the “weighed down soul” (Gravata Anima), she can
no longer rise up the fijifth, and the rest of her melody, in contrast with
her joyful song, remains in the lower, plagal register. Her song, like her
character, is weighed down.79 (See Example 5.)
Hildegard often engages in “tone painting,” but evaluating it requires
careful study of context and a deep knowledge of the music. When there
is clear graphic use of music, however, as in her settings of the “roots and
branches” or the “heavy soul,” performers should recognize and play upon
it. Morent has taken this idea further in his study of the ways in which the
characters use the modes to embody their ideas.
78 Peter Dronke, ed. and trans., “Ordo Virtutum: The Play of the Virtues, by Hildegard of
Bingen,” in Nine Medieval Latin Plays, p. 161, l. 21; Ordo, p. 506, l. 30.
79 Morent, “Ordo virtutum. Vom Spiel der Kräfte,” p. 237.