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

Abstract

Book Review| April 01 2018 Review: Hildegard of Bingen and Musical Reception: The Modern Revival of a Medieval Composer, by Jennifer Bain Hildegard of Bingen and Musical Reception: The Modern Revival of a Medieval Composer, by Jennifer Bain. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. xiii, 235 pp. Barbara Eichner Barbara Eichner BARBARA EICHNER is Senior Lecturer in Music at Oxford Brookes University. Her research focuses on music and national identity in the nineteenth century and on sacred music in the Age of Confessionalization. She is the author of History in Mighty Sounds: Musical Constructions of German National Identity, 1848–1914 (Boydell, 2012). A study of Lasso's parody masses for the Revue belge de musicologie and a chapter entitled “Richard Wagner's Medieval Visions” for The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism are forthcoming. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the American Musicological Society (2018) 71 (1): 255–260. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2018.71.1.255 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Barbara Eichner; Review: Hildegard of Bingen and Musical Reception: The Modern Revival of a Medieval Composer, by Jennifer Bain. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 April 2018; 71 (1): 255–260. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2018.71.1.255 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search A composer has surely “arrived” when not only her life and works are being studied but also her afterlife. In Hildegard of Bingen and Musical Reception Jennifer Bain asserts that, despite certain academic misgivings about the Hildegard “hype” among the “fandom” (p. 2), “in musicology, the Hildegard revival is in a sense complete” (p. 6). To cite just one example, the recent interdisciplinary Companion to Hildegard of Bingen (a companion of course in itself indicating her canonic status) synthesizes the research undertaken during and since the 1998 anniversary celebrations (another pointer toward Hildegard's unassailable position in European cultural history) and includes an overview of her reception, which historically has focused on her status as a saint and seer.1 Bain herself has written about the use of Hildegard's chants by the record industry,2 and her profound knowledge of the current popularity of the medieval composer is also apparent in... You do not currently have access to this content.