Hildegard, Hermannus, and Late Chant Style

Abstract

The music of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) has often been described as standing outside medieval chant traditions. This article argues that although many features of her music deviate from early chant, her repertoire conforms instead in remarkable ways with a late chant style, which appeared first in the eleventh century. Detailed analysis and comparison of the music (and theory) of Hermannus Contractus (1013-1054) with Hildegard's demonstrates a shared emphasis on Hermannus's modal nodes of final, fifth, and octave. Further analyses of antiphons from the later Middle Ages for Saints Hubert and Roch, as found in the Salzinnes Antiphonal, confirm that this musical style prevailed for several centuries. A contextualization of Hildegard's musical output makes it clear that she was not as isolated musically (or as musically untutored) as generally thought, but rather immersed in the musical traditions of her day. A historiographical overview reveals that nineteenth-century scholars were already aware of these similarities, in contrast to scholarship of the last thirty years, which has focused on Hildegard's originality.