Music Of Hildegard example essay topic

The twelfth-century mystic, herbalist, theologian, visual artist, composer, and poet was born at Bockelheim on the Nac he in 1098. Hildegard's parents, Hilde bert and Mechtild, were members of the nobility. They promised her, as their tenth child, to the service of the Church. At age eight, the family sent Hildegard to an archorness named Jutta to receive her religious education.

At age fifteen she to the veil. Jutta died in 1136, and Hildegard succeeded her as superior. Between 1147 and 1150 she founded a monastery on the Rupertsberg, in the Rhine Valley near Binge. She was called 'abbess' in letters of protection drawn up by Frederick Barbarous.

Through childhood Hildegard frequently experienced divine visions. As a forty year old abbess, the church encouraged her to record these visions. In 1141 with the aid of the monk Vol mar, she felt a divine command to record what she had experienced. The result, Sci vias, which contains fourteen of the song texts of her Symphonia arm onie celestium revelation um, took ten years to write and comprised twenty-six revelations. This was followed by the Liber vite merito rum and Liber divinorum oper um. Her prophecies and miracles brought her fame.

She was known as 'the Sybil of the Rhine' and was consulted by popes, emperors, kings, archbishops, abbots and abbesses, lower clergy and laymen, and was involved in politics and diplomacy. Hildegard also excelled in the craft of musical composition. Hildegard is most often recognized for her accomplishments as a composer of hymns, music honoring saints, and liturgical chants. Her musical style is individual. Perhaps because she wrote her works for female voices her melodies explore a much wider range and often contain dramatic leaps. Her chants also use repeating melodic motives much mote than other pieces in this style.

Hymns and sequences are the least elaborate roulade's; antiphons occupy a stylistic middle ground, often alternating syllabic and highly melisma tic setting. The music of Hildegard is remarkable above all for its formulaic nature: it is made up of a comparatively small number of melodic patterns which recur many times under different melodic and modal conditions and are the common property of her poetic output. Influenced by her visions, the chants are devotional reflecting her belief that "humans are the musical instrument of God". The bulk of the manuscripts she wrote describe her vision and acts; they are examples of God's relationship to humanity, humankind's fall from grace and redemption, and other canonical Christian issues.

Hildegard von Bingen's life with the Church gave her liberty, the resources, and the audience she needed to pursue her intellectual an artistic concerns. Norton Grove Dictionary of Women Composers Edited: Julie Ann Sadie & Rhi an Samuel Copyright 1995 Pages 217,218,219 web copyright 1999-2003 The Art and Culture Network web copyright 2001 Sony Music Entertainment web.