A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

HILDEGARD AS MUSICAL HAGIOGRAPHER:
ENGELBERG, STIFTSBIBLIOTHEK MS. 103 AND HER SONGS
FOR SAINTS DISIBOD AND URSULA
Tova Leigh-Choate, William T. Flynn, and Margot E. Fassler
Many of Hildegard’s musical compositions celebrated saints, from local
patrons like Sts Disibod and Eucharius to the Queen of Heaven. Composed
for the liturgies of institutions within her milieu, these pieces
reveal much about Hildegard’s musical style, her monastic heritage,
and her understanding of saints in their roles as both intercessors in
heaven and models on earth. These liturgical songs complement her
theological and hagiographical writings, and their music, like the Scivias
songs and Ordo uirtutum, can be said to illustrate the varieties of music
in the heavenly symphony that Hildegard saw and heard in vision.1 As
antiphons, responsories, and hymns for the Divine Offfijice, or hymn-like
sequences for Mass, Hildegard’s compositions provided edifying songs of
praise for local monastic communities.
Hildegard’s songs for saints fijit into the hierarchical framework provided
in the fijinal vision of Scivias; they are songs for the Virgin Mary, or for individual
prophets, confessors, martyrs, virgins, etc., and they are organized
according to this hierarchy in the song collections. They do not, however,
comprise a complete liturgical cycle. Instead, Hildegard seems to have
composed her songs on an ad hoc basis: by direct commission, as a gift
for another community, or to fijill a liturgical need within her own convent.
In some cases, the impetus for a song is known; in others, one can only
surmise based on available evidence. As suggested in previous chapters,
some of Hildegard’s songs may have originated during her early years as
an anchoress and magistra on the Disibodenberg. Commemoration of
the saints was certainly part of her formative liturgical experience; she
was enclosed at the Disibodenberg on All Saints’ Day in 1112, and the new
abbey church, with its altars dedicated to St Disibod and other saints, was
constructed over the next three decades. Hildegard’s move with her nuns
to the Rupertsberg between 1148 and 1150 ushered in a period of intense
1 On the music from Scivias and Ordo uirtutum, see the previous chapter, “Hearing the
Heavenly Symphony.” The authors wish to thank Jane Flynn for her assistance with this
chapter.