Hildegard of Bingen and Musical Reception: The Modern Revival of a Medieval Composer by Jennifer Bain

Abstract

Reviewed by: Hildegard of Bingen and Musical Reception: The Modern Revival of a Medieval Composer by Jennifer Bain John MacInnis Hildegard of Bingen and Musical Reception: The Modern Revival of a Medieval Composer. By Jennifer Bain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. [xiii, 235 p. ISBN 9781107076662 (hardcover), $99.99; ISBN 9781316309711 (e-book), $80.] Music examples, illustrations, discography, bibliography, index. In 2001, the Swedish folk-rock band Garmarna released an album titled Hildegard von Bingen, which featured modern, upbeat renderings of her medieval chants using electronic instruments and sequencers. The creativity of these settings by Garmarna is striking, and it is noteworthy that the author of the lyrics is the same Doctor of the Church celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI as a theologian, a teacher, and a model for Christians today. In fact, as Jennifer Bain makes plain in this straightforward and engaging book, it seems as though every generation has its own Hildegard. Bain begins by describing her own introduction to Hildegard von Bingen (1098– 1179) while a music student in the 1990s. She recalls that, at that time, it was hard to imagine that a woman composed music in the Middle Ages, and it was easy to assume that Hildegard had been rediscovered in the late twentieth century (p. 1). In fact, Bain’s encounter with the significant body of evidence testifying to Hildegard’s pronounced importance throughout the centuries after her death was the impetus for this book; she concluded that “the trope of the forgotten female figure” does not apply here (p. 35). Bain demonstrates that though Hildegard’s story and her scholarship were known and cherished, especially in German-speaking lands, Hildegard’s music was first performed and promoted in the mid-nineteenth century, through the efforts of Ludwig Schneider, who witnessed the dissolution of Hildegard’s convent in 1814 and who served as a priest for the church housing Hildegard’s relics in Eibingen. Bain tells the story of the revival of Hildegard’s music in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and her reception in those eras. As the author explains, reception reveals ideology, and studying the dynamics at play with regard to when and how Hildegard’s writings and music were championed discloses both the personal agendas and the larger cultural forces at work. Although discussion of specific compositions by Hildegard is present in this volume, the primary emphases for this book are cultural and historical. After summarizing Hildegard’s legacy, which was never truly forgotten in German-speaking lands, from her death until the 1850s, Bain emphasizes two revivals of Hildegard’s music. The initial musical revival began in 1857, with the first modern performance of Hildegard’s song “O virga ac diadema” (“O branch and diadem”). Ludwig Schneider, himself a scholar and musician, transcribed “O virga ac diadema” directly from the Riesencodex (a.k.a. the Wiesbaden Codex) so that it could be sung at a special service celebrating both the authentication of Hildegard’s relics and Hildegard’s own feast day on 17 September 1857 (also the anniversary of her passing). The Riesencodex dates from around the time of Hildegard’s death, and it contains Hildegard’s letters and writings as well as her Ordo virtutum and seventy-five of her seventy-seven chants. (Bain notes that the Riesencodex is freely accessible online at https://www.hs-rm.de/de/service/hochschul-und-landesbibliothek/suchenfinden/sondersammlungen/der-riesen-codex-hildegards-von-bingen/ [End Page 300] [accessed 27 June 2016].) Throughout her narrative, Bain quotes extensively from current literature on Hildegard as well as from historical sources. For example, Bain cites specific liturgical elements included in the 1857 service, such as the song “O Sancta Hildegardis,” which was sung to the same tune as “Ave Maria Klare,” and Schneider’s own two-stanza antiphon “Ave Hildegardis” using Hildegard’s name as an acrostic. Schneider’s tireless efforts in studying and promoting of Hildegard in the nineteenth century can be understood in several lights. The erudite revival of liturgical chant championed by the Monks of Solesmes is well known, but a revival of chant was also underway in German areas, in the Cecilian movement, when Schneider presented Hildegard’s “O virga ac...