A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hildegard as musical hagiographer 215
Ordering Hildegard’s Antiphons for St Ursula
Eight antiphons for St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins are found in the two
notated collections of Hildegard’s music,45 with rubrics indicating the
occasion (De undecim milibus virginum) and the specifijic liturgical hour (In
matutinis laudibus or Laudes). Typically, the psalmody for a festal lauds
service would consist of fijive antiphons, each preceding and following a
psalm or canticle. Moreover, the fijirst, second, third, and fijifth antiphons
would normally double for the psalmody of second vespers. In monastic
use, antiphons marked in euangelium would accompany the Gospel canticles
of lauds (Benedictus) and vespers (Magnifijicat) and, in liturgical performance,
would be separated from the psalm antiphons by the chapter
reading, responsory, hymn, and versicle and response.
Hildegard’s antiphon series thus contains two more antiphons (eight)
than is normal for lauds (six: fijive for the psalms, plus the Gospel antiphon).
Her eight antiphons occur in the same order in both manuscripts—fijive
antiphons followed by a Gospel antiphon (In evangelium antiphona) and
two further antiphons—before rubrics indicate a new entity (sequentia in
Dendermonde and De innocentis in the Riesenkodex). Both manuscripts
consistently give the text for psalm cadences (euouae), although only Dendermonde
provides music for the psalm tone for each antiphon.
This order suggests that the fijirst fijive antiphons might have accompanied
the festal lauds psalmody, and that the Gospel antiphon accompanied
the lauds canticle. The remaining antiphons (Deus enim rorem
and Sed diabolus, see Table 3: 6–7, below) might then have been reserved
for processions or minor offfijices later in the liturgical day.46 However,
neither of these texts stands easily apart from the other antiphons, as
both contain demonstrative pronouns (illas and istud) with no clear referents,
unless they are performed as part of the series. Moreover, the
antiphon Sed diabolus ends with the devil mocking the opus Dei—
the chanting of the liturgy—and thus offfers an inappropriate conclusion
to a self-contained rite such as a procession.
2010), pp. 250–80, at pp. 264–75. An analysis (and new edition) of the hymn’s music is
forthcoming in William Flynn, “Hildegard of Bingen’s Cum vox sanguinis: a Postlude,” Colloquium:
Music, Worship, Arts 6 (2009–2011).
45 Dendermonde, fols 167v–168v; Riesenkodex, fols 471vb–472rb, see fn. 14 above. A fuller
discussion of the texts, manuscript transmission, and rubrics is in William Flynn, “Reading
Hildegard of Bingen’s Antiphons for the 11,000 Virgin-Martyrs of Cologne: Rhetorical ductus
and Liturgical Rubrics,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 56 (2012): 171–89.
46 Pfau and Morent suggest a reconstruction of the service along these lines in Klang
des Himmels, pp. 61, 260–67.