Allegorical Architecture in Scivias:

Abstract

Hildegard of Bingen's Ordo Virtutum has come to occupy a major role among Western European dramatic musical works, with scenes widely anthologized, multiple studies in print, and several recordings. I argue that the “setting” of Hildegard's Ordo Virtutum is the allegorical architecture created in her first major treatise, Scivias, written in the 1140s and early 1150s. In this period, while Hildegard was composing the play and writing her first major theological work, she was also designing a complex of new monastic buildings, which helps explain her concentration on architectural themes and images. Hildegard has situated the main “acts” of the play within allegorical towers, and the musical dimensions of the play are driven by its unfolding within this architectural understanding, including the “climbing” through the modes and the development of longer processional chants that link the action in one tower or pillar to that of another. We can see that the particular characters chosen for the play from a broad array of possibilities, underscore themes that relate to the lives and governance of Benedictine nuns. Hildegard's work provided parallels for her community between the allegorical architecture of Scivias, the play and its music, and the new church whose building was overseen by Hildegard.