The Symphonia of Hildegard of Bingen: Ambiguities in Origin and Intention
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The Symphonia of Hildegard of Bingen: Ambiguities in origin and intention Catherine Jeflreys The Symphonia harmoniae caelestium It appears that Hildegard began composing revelationurn [Symphony of the Harmony of Ce- music for liturgical use in the 1140s; two letters lestial Revelations] of German abbess and vision- written to Hildegard in 1148 indicate that her ary Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) occupies a compositional activities date fromas early as 1141 .3 unique position within the corpus of twelfth-cen- During the period in question, it was common in tury plainchant. This cycle of seventy-seven litur- monastic women's communitiesfor one woman to gical songs and a liturgical drama is one of the few assume responsibility for the musical activities of examples where two extant versions of the one the convent, and this often involved the composi- body of plainchant by a single identifiable com- tion of items for liturgical use. In smaller comrnu- poser are available to us from an age, the works of nities, such as that at Mount Saint Disibode, it was which are often characterised by the anonymity of not unusual for the abbess to assume that respon- their composers. The two Symphonia manuscripts ~ibility.~As such, Hildegard may have been in a have long been the subject of considerable debate position to compose items for liturgical use as as the Symphonia survives in two distinct versions, early as 1136. distinguishable in terms of the content of each The idea of collecting together composed items manuscript, that is the number and types of items into a song cycle was not new at the time; famous included in each version of the Symphonia; the examples include Notker of Saint Gall's Liber ordering of items in each manuscript; and the ymnorum from the ninth century and Abelard's intended purpose of each codex in which the Hymnarius Paraclitensis from the twelfth. Both Symphonia is preserved.' The issues concerning Notker of Saint Gall's cycle and the first two books the compilation and content of the two manu- of Abelard's Hymnarius are arranged according to scripts in question provide an insight into the the liturgical calendar; the third book of Abelard's ambiguities in origin and intention (whether the cycle resembles Hildegard's Symphonia as in both, Symphonia was intended as a collection of songs or items devoted to a particular subject are grouped a Gesamtwerk) of the musical output of one of t~gether.~Whether the concept of a song cycle history's most significant woman composers.2 implied performance as a cycle remains unclear. Some biographical details about the Abbess However, the concept of preserving liturgical items Hildegard are important, to establish the historical by providing a structure, that is, an ordering of locus of her Symphonia. Born in 1098 in liturgical items according to the liturgical calender Bermersheim (about 20 kilometers southeast of or by subject matter, is apparent. A distinction is Bingen, which is on the Rhine in the western part to be made here between a manuscript that has of Germany),Hildegard was placed into the care of been compiled as a miscellany, with items merely Jutta of Spanheim who occupied a small cell grouped together according to subject matter, and attached to the Benedictine monastery of Mount a manuscript in which the structuring of each Saint Disibode, near Bingen. Upon Jutta's death in subject group is based on aparticulardesign which 1136, Hildegard became abbess to the small com- displays a structural unity consistent with the no- munity of nuns at the monastery. The visionary tion of a Gesamtwerk. encounters, first experienced in Hildegard's child- The earliest reference to Hildegard's Symphonia hood, intensified with age, and after Jutta's death song cycle appears in the 1150s. In the preface to the matter was submitted to prelates who authen- her Liber vitae meritorum (1 158) Hildegard refers ticated Hildegard's claims to divine perspicacity. for the first time to the Symphonia as one of several This prompted a steady flow of written works items worked on during the 1150~.~As the texts which date from 1141 to her death on 17 Septem- to fourteen songs which appear in both versions of ber 1179. Part of her visionary experience resulted the Symphonia are found in the thirteenth vision of in one of the largest bodies of plainchant ascribed Book I11 of Hildegard's first written work, the to a single composer. Scivias (1 15 I), it is generally assumed that, firstly, this vision formed the basis of the Symphonia song scripts, Dendermonde (Belgium), Saint-Pieters & cycle and, secondly, the Symphonia was com- Paulusabdij MS. Cod. 9 (hereafter D), dates from pleted by 1158. However, there is evidence of around 1175, some four years before Hildegard's Hildegard's compositional activities both before death in 1179. Two letters written to Hildegard in 115 1 and after 1158. For example, the thirteen around 1175 confm that D was originally in- items devoted to Saint Ursula were composed after tended as a gift of didactic texts and songs for a Hildegard's exposure to the cult of the Saint in community of Cistercian monks in Villiers, Bel- Cologne between 1158 and 1163.7 gium.10 D comprises four works: Hildegard's I As to the question of whether her compositions Liber vitae meritorum, the Liber viarum of existed prior to the song cycle, the genres repre- Hildegard's contemporary Elizabeth of Schoenau, 1 sented in the Symphonia suggest that the items the Symphonia and an anonymous dialogue. The included'in the cycle were composed specifically D codex predates the only other extant version of for liturgical use. As such, they could exist outside the Symphonia by over a decade. Included in the the song cycle. All but three of the items included Riesenkodex, Wiesbaden, Landesbibliothek Hs. 2 in the Symphonia (two Symphonies and an unclas- (hereafter R), the later Symphonia was compiled sified devotional song) can be integrated into the posthumously between 1180 and 1190.l prescribed services of the Mass and the Divine We know that the twoversions of the Symphonia Office. In addition to a Kyrie and an alleluia-verse, were compiled independently from one another as i Hildegardcomposed seven sequencesfor the Mass, D was in Villiers while R was being prepared in sung between the Alleluia and the Gospel. Compo- Rupertsberg. Furthermore, results of exarnina- sitions from the Symphonia associated with the tions of the textual and neumatic content of each i Divine Office include four hymns, eighteen re- manuscript suggest that the manuscripts were not sponsories and forty-three antiphons.* copied from the same source.l2 Even so, of Taking into consideration historical accounts Hildegard's seventy-seven extant liturgical songs, of Hildegard's compositional activities and the fifty-seven are includedin D and seventy-fivein R. genres included in the Symphonia, it is possible Fifty-five songs are common to both sources, that Hildegard's compositions from the 1140s (or although R includes the only extant version with perhaps earlier) and 1150s were collected into a neumes from the twelfth century of Hildegard's cycle once a number of items has been amassed. liturgical drama, the Ordo Virtutum.13 This seems likely as the two manuscripts in which The text of the Ordo Virtutum appears in em- the Symphonia survives date from between 1175 bryonic form in the thirteenth vision of Book 111 of and 1190. The order in which the items appear in the Scivias, alongside the fourteen song texts. the cycle, as Ruth Lightbourne suggests, could Hildegard subsequently expanded the text of the have been revealed to Hildegard through visionary Ordo Virtutum and gave it a musical setting for experience, as documented in the Scivi~s.~This performance by the nuns at Rupertsberg. The has important implications for the way we think of appearance of the liturgical drama in the Scivias the Symphonia, as it is commonly considered a seems to imply that the Ordo Virtutum formed a single work (as opposed to a compilation of items) part of the original Symphonia, as the ordering of which underwent a process of development, while items in the Symphonia appears to have been based the two extant versions of the Symphonia are seen upon the ordering of items in the Scivias. As such, to represent two stages of that developmental the Ordo Virtutum has been considered an integral process. However, if one takes a closer look at the part of the cycle. Its absence from D has prompted two manuscripts, problems associated with the the suggestion that it appeared before the surviving idea that the Symphonia underwent such a process Symphoniain that manuscript, on folios now lost.14 of development which was completed in the latter It is highly unlikely, however, that the Ordo manuscript come to light. Virtutum ever formed past of the Symphonia in D. The two manuscripts in which the Symphonia Firstly, the missing folios theory is based on the is preserved with musical notation were compiled presence of a psalm cadence in the top right hand at the Rupertsberg abbey (situated across the River comer of the opening folio of the D Symphonia. A Nahe from Bingen), Hildegard's official residence psalm cadence, or diferentia, is a melodic formula from around 1147. The older of the two manu- which provides a connection between the end of a 14 Context 7 (Winter 1994) psalm and its accompanying antiphon. It has been antiphon. This occurs especially on the initial believed that this cadence does not belong to the sounding of this note which is described in neumatic opening antiphon 0 magne pater but to another notation by a pressus (a ), a neume which gives now lost.