R. Rex noster promptus est
suscipere sanguinem innocentum.
Unde angeli concinunt et in laudibus sonant.
R. Sed nubes
super eundem sanguinem
plangunt.
V. Tirannus autem
in gravi somno mortis
propter maliciam suam suffocatus est.
R. Sed nubes
super eundem sanguinem
plangunt.
Gloria Patri et Filio
et Spiritui sancto.
R. Sed nubes
super eundem sanguinem
plangunt.
R. Our King is swift and ready to
receive the blood of innocents.
So sing the angels and with praise resound.
R. But yet—the clouds
this blood
bewail.
V. That tyrant still
was choked by death’s oppressive sleep
in punishment of his grave wickedness.
R. But yet—the clouds
this blood
bewail.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit.
R. But yet—the clouds
this blood
bewail.
Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.
Commentary: Themes and Theology by Nathaniel M. Campbell
“But yet—the clouds this blood bewail.” This responsory’s lyrical pathos comes in its repetendum, whose lengthy melisma on plangunt contains an echo of the phrasing for sanguinem in the opening responsorium. As Newman notes, the clouds here take up Rachel’s cry of lament for the blood of the innocent children shed by King Herod in Matt. 2:16-18 (Symphonia, p. 307). Characteristically, however, it is neither mother nor matriarch weeping for these children, but creation itself responding to the sacrilege—an idea rooted in the Bible’s first bloodshed, when God tells Cain, “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground” (Gen. 4:10). Thus, in explication of a verse from the opposite end of Scripture, about the martyrs (Rev. 6:11), Hildegard writes:
Those are called their fellow servants who are slain for the faith and for justice, while their brethren are those who will be consumed at the end of time by the Antichrist, like the infants consumed by Herod, who denied the Son of God, as too the Antichrist will deny him. For the voice of a person’s outpoured blood rises up through his soul to cry out and lament that it has been driven from the seal of the body in which God had placed it. Thereafter that soul receives the merit of its works, either in glory or in punishment. Blood’s first voice, indeed, raised up its cry to God in Abel, for Cain had foolishly and forcefully destroyed the structure of God’s work.
—Liber divinorum operum III.5.13[1]
Herod was a standard type for the Antichrist, but in her Gospel Homilies 10-13 (Expositiones Evangeliorum) on Matthew’s infancy narrative, Hildegard expands the allegorical scope to make him a figure of the Devil.[2] This, too, is the scope of the responsory’s contrast between God “our King” (rex noster) and Herod the “tyrant” (tirannus), for the fundamental error for both the Devil and Herod is the pride that denies the reality of God’s kingship and tyrannically tries to usurp God’s place. As Hildegard explains in explication of Matt. 2:18:
‘A voice in Ramah,’ namely of miseries, ‘was heard’ above, ‘wailing and much lamentation,’ that is, distress and sadness when Pride oppressed Innocence by striking it. ‘Rachel weeping for her children,’ evidently holiness, because the eyes of its knowledge brought forth weeping. She had lost ‘her children’ even as the children, who were supposed to possess an inheritance, were disinherited; but the innocent lamb demanded them back with his own blood.
—Gospel Homily 11 (p. 66)
To see with “the eyes of [holiness’] knowledge” is to recognize God’s true Light, to see reality for what it really is, and therefore truly to live. But to deny that light is to be plunged into darkness, confusion, and death—and this is how Hildegard characterizes Herod’s punishment, “choked by death’s oppressive sleep” (in gravi somno mortis […] suffocatus est). Elsewhere, Hildegard uses a similar phrase to describe the blindness of the Jews to Christ’s divinity, a blindness that would lead them to kill him just as Herod killed the innocents: “For the eyes of the Jews were heavy in the shadow of death [in umbra mortis grauati sunt]: when they heard the words of prophecy, they cast them aside with the true Flower whom the entire earth itself recognized when he breathed his last upon the cross” (Liber divinorum operum III.5.18). As the clouds mourn the spilt blood of the innocents, so too all the elements when touched by the Crucified’s, as in Hildegard’s antiphon, O cruor sanguinis.
Despite the dark violence that sheds it, innocent blood shimmers and sings in Hildegard’s view (cf. Cum vox sanguinis). Through the clouded grief shines the angelic light and its joyous song, for the Christmas peace shatters the tyrant’s power:
In that day when the angels sang of the peace given to humankind, my Son was born of a Virgin, magnified by the angels and glorified by the shepherds who were searching with pious devotion. And the fruit of the earth abounded—the earth to which peace had been restored and the air bestowed its sweetness; and theirs was the joy who among the sons of Jacob had been freed from evil’s past tribulation, for they had once been crushed with just judgment by many tribulations. Furthermore, when the light of true faith illumines the hearts of the faithful, my Son will be magnified in them, for they will believe that he came forth from me; and they will glorify him when they confess that he has returned to me in glory. So too for them will the fruit of good works be lifted high. Their joy will also be increased when they have been snatched from the devil’s power and freed from the punishments of hell, to be counted among the children of God.
—Liber divinorum operum III.5.18
Transcription and Music Notes by Beverly Lomer
E mode
Range: C below the final to E an octave above the final
Setting: primarily neumatic with some melismas
This short responsory is fairly straightforward in phrasing, in which the final E is the primary grammatical marker. Note that the salutation is extended to include promptus est, which ends on E. A tick barline has been placed at the end of that segment for clarification purposes.
There are a number of differences between the sources – some important, some less so. Two significant ones include the opening pitches, which are given as D in Riesenkodex. As the piece is clearly in the E mode, this should probably be considered as a scribal error.
The second has to do with the response, Sed nubes super eundem sanguinem plangunt. It begins on the pitch B, the commonly used secondary tone in this mode. Note that the two final iterations of the response, page 2, lines 3 and 6, of the transcription, show what appears to be an error in the Dendermonde manuscript. Sed begins on A, which is unlikely, as the response is always sung the same way. Riesenkodex gives it correctly.
As far as the other divergences, which are primarily related to different ornamental neumes and some pitch variances, whenever possible I have tried to avoid the ossia staves and notated the differences above the staff. However, some simple changes were still difficult to explain succinctly, hence the partial ossias.
Further Resources for Rex noster promptus est
Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 226 and 307.
[1] Hildegard of Bingen, The Book of Divine Works, trans. Nathaniel M. Campbell (Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming 2018). ↩ [2] Hildegard of Bingen, Homilies on the Gospels, trans. Beverly Mayne Kienle (Cistercian Publications / Liturgical Press, 2011), pp. 62-74. ↩
1. O Pater omnium et o rex et imperator gentium,
qui constituisti nos in costa prime matris,
que construxit nobis magnum casum erumpne,
et nos secute sumus illam
in propria causa in exilio sociantes nos
illius dolori.
2. O tu nobilissime genitor,
per summum studium currimus ad te,
et per dilectissimam
atque per dulcissimam penitentiam
que nobis per te venit, anhelamus ad te
et post dolorem nostrum
devotissime amplectimur te.
3. O gloriosissime
et o pulcherrime Christe, qui es resurrectio vite,
nos reliquimus propter te
fertilem amatorem coniunctionis,
et comprehendimus te in superna caritate
et in virginea virga nativitatis tue,
ac in altera vice copulate sumus tibi
quam prius essemus secundum carnem.
4. Adiuva nos perseverare et tecum gaudere
et a te numquam separari.
1. O Father of all and King and Emperor of the nations,
you founded us in our first mother’s rib,
who drew up for us our hardship’s grandest fall.
So we have followed her,
in our own right in exile sharing
commonly her pain.
2. O noblest Sire,
our course with keenest zeal we run to you,
and in penitence
so sweet and savored,
which comes to us from you, to you we heave our sighs,
and when our pain is past,
devotedly do you embrace.
3. O Christ, most glorious and fair,
you are life’s resurrection!
For you we have relinquished
the fertile lover of a marriage,
and you we have embraced in heaven’s charity
and in the virgin branch of your nativity—
to you we’re joined with different turn
than once we were as to the flesh.
4. Help us to persevere and with you to rejoice
and from you never to be cleaved.
Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.
Commentary by Nathaniel M. Campbell and Beverly Lomer
O pater omnium is a song for widows who have entered the religious life—women whom Hildegard placed lower than virgins but higher than married women in her hierarchy of sanctity. Despite her praise of women, her generally positive feminine theology, and her arguments against women as overly sexual in the Causae et curae, Hildegard nevertheless participated in the negative theological stance toward sexuality that was characteristic of the Church in her era. The punishment of mankind for the fall, human sexuality was associated with carnality and thus to be made subject to control by the rational will. The “pain” of the married (of birthing, first and foremost, but Hildegard may also be thinking of the pain of physical submission to husbands and their demands) is the pain they share with Eve. In having to engage in sexual relations, therefore, married women were less saintly than the virgins who had “conquered” their erotic desires through the efforts of the rational mind. Widows fell between these categories—they now have a second chance, if you will, to rise higher on the ladder of sanctity. As with Hildegard’s “Symphony for Virgins,” O dulcissime amator, this “Symphony for Widows” was likely sung upon their entrance to Hildegard’s abbey, when they undertook that second chance.
It is not surprising, then, that the ode for widows is pitched in a lower register than some of Hildegard’s exuberant songs to Mary, the virgin model and ideal (though as Newman notes [Symphonia, p. 307], its text echoes images from several of those, including Mary’s virginal branch in O viridissima virga, and her alteration of human sexuality in O virga ac diadema, verses 1a-2b). It is also not surprising that melismas are absent, another marker of exaltation. The lyrics describe how, since women followed Eve into the Fall, the widow now can replace her earlier sexual self with an asexual one conjoined with Christ. As elaborated in the third verse, this exchange of one type of lover (the “fertile” one with whom these women were once joined in marriage) for another (the more distant and regal Emperor, though still extolled as fairest and most glorious) is also an exchange of views on the body (in altera vice—“in another mode”). The power of the Virgin’s womb to give birth to Christ sublimates conjugal fertility into a higher plane of creative love, “the heaven’s charity” (superna caritate). In the second verse, the conversion from physical to spiritual love follows the conventionally logic-defying path away from the pain of sexual pleasure, through “sweet and savored” penitence, and towards the embrace of God.
Transcription and Music Notes
Mode: E
Range: G below the final to C above final
Setting: Primarily syllabic with some neumatic elements
In this piece, Hildegard makes liberal use of the pitch G as a secondary tone. Typically, B would function as a secondary grammatical marker in this mode, but it is never used that way here. After the initial salutation, O pater omnium et o rex et imperator gentium, which is outlined by the modal final, Hildegard shifts the opening of the next phrase to G, ending it on E. This is a regular gesture throughout the piece. Notice that the opening segments that begin on G are all similar, starting with G, moving to A, and then descending (e.g. page 1, lines 4, 6, 7, and 9). Some are also elaborated, moving first to C and then descending (e.g. page 1, line 3).
Readers will note that Lines 4 and 5 on page 1 should be considered as one phrase. Interestingly, the Riesenkodex ends the word erumpne on E, creating a pause before singing et on F. Dendermonde (our base manuscript) ends erumpne on F and begins et on F. We have chosen to keep erumpne with casum for textual reasons, as it is the final word of the subordinate clause that begins with que; et begins a new main clause with a different subject (nos). Similarly, though erumpne begins with G, the motivic pattern is not the same as those that Hildegard uses as rhetorically significant repetitive opening motifs, as described above. The non-modal F that begins the new textual phrase with et may rhetorically signify the line’s emphasis on the Fall.
On page 2 of the transcription, the opening G motives shift a bit, with the G being repeated before moving on. Some of the phrases are quite short, and thus singers might consider combining lines into longer units. On page 3, tick barlines have been inserted in three places (lines, 2, 4 and 8), to avoid crowding the staves. The phrases in question were too long to fit on a single line. Also on page 3, the Riesenkodex gives the opening pitch of line 6 as E, which is likely more accurate. However, singers can make their own choice as to whether this phrase can be sung as an extension of the previous one. While Hildegard generally outlines her phrases clearly with the final and other key modal tones, as per the rhetorical intent of the text/music relationship, there are also anomalous segments that require some thoughtful interpretations.
Further Resources for O Pater omnium
Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 224 and 306-307.
1a. O dulcissime amator,
o dulcissime amplexator:
1b. Adiuva nos custodire
virginitatem nostram.
2. Nos sumus orte in pulvere,
heu, heu,
et in crimine Ade.
Valde durum est contradicere
quod habet gustus pomi.
Tu erige nos, Salvator Christe.
3. Nos desideramus ardenter te sequi.
O quam grave nobis miseris est
te immaculatum et innocentem
regem angelorum imitari.
4. Tamen confidimus in te,
quod tu desideres gemmam requirere in putredine.
5. Nunc advocamus te, sponsum et consolatorem,
qui nos redemisti in cruce.
6. In tuo sanguine copulate sumus tibi
cum desponsatione,
repudiantes virum et eligentes te,
Filium Dei.
7. O pulcherrima forma, o suavissime odor
desiderabilium deliciarum,
semper suspiramus post te
in lacrimabili exilio.
Quando te videamus
et tecum maneamus?
8. Nos sumus in mundo
et tu in mente nostra,
et amplectimur te in corde
quasi habeamus te presentem.
9. Tu fortissimus leo rupisti celum,
descendens in aulam Virginis,
et destruxisti mortem,
edificans vitam in aurea civitate.
10. Da nobis societatem cum illa
et permanere in te, o dulcissime sponse,
qui abstraxisti nos de faucibus diaboli,
primum parentem nostrum seducentis.
1a. O lover sweet,
so sweet the embrace:
1b. Help us to keep
our virginity!
2. In dust we were begotten—
alas!—
in Adam’s guilt.
So rough it is now to refuse
whatever tastes of that one fruit.
Set us aright, O Savior Christ!
3. We burn in our desire to follow you.
How hard it is for us, the wretched,
to imitate your innocence,
the spotless King of angels.
4. Yet we have put our trust in you,
for you desire to seek again a gem in putrefaction.
5. Now unto you we cry, our bridegroom and our consolation,
who has redeemed us on the Cross.
6. For in your blood we are betrothed to you—
your blood our wedding gift;
for mortal husbands we refuse, choosing you instead,
the Son of God.
7. O beauteous form, O fragrance sweeter than
the most desired of delights:
our sighs of longing ever seek for you
within this lonely wilderness of tears.
When shall we look on you
and with you ever stay?
8. We live within the world,
and you within our minds,
and we embrace you in our hearts
as if you’re present even now.
9. The mighty lion, you have burst the heavens,
descending tp the Virgin’s palace-womb,
destroying death
and building life within a golden city.
10. Grant us her company
to dwell with you, O bridegroom sweet,
who saved us from the devil’s jaws
who dragged our primal parents into death.
Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.
Notes on the Text
Verse numbers: Rather than numbering the verses, the manuscripts indicate the beginning of each new verse with a rubricated initial. In Dendermonde (fol. 165v), the first two rubricated initials are the first “O” and the “A” of “Adiuva,” but in the Riesenkodex (fol. 478ra), “adiuva” is not rubricated, and the second verse begins with “Nos.”
Verse 10: seducentis] R; seducentem, D: the accusative ending is nonsensical and likely a scribal error caused by the endings of the previous words in the line.
Transcription from Dendermonde, fols. 165v-166r:
Transcription from Riesenkodex, fols. 478ra-va:
Commentary: Themes and Theology by Nathaniel M. Campbell
Hildegard gave this piece the unique title of Symphonia virginum, a “symphony of virgins.” Together with O Pater omnium (also called a symphonia, but for widows), and the morality play Ordo Virtutum, it represents the only non-liturgical (or perhaps para-liturgical) genre in Hildegard’s oeuvre. We do not have any direct evidence for when or where these pieces would have been performed, or for what purpose. Nevertheless, it has been reasonably conjectured that the Ordo Virtutum was premiered for the dedication of the Rupertsberg monastery on May 1, 1152, and may perhaps have been performed annually in commemoration of that event. The two symphoniae may similarly have been composed for communal performance whenever a new nun was professed into the abbey.
The liturgy of profession as a vowed female monastic is filled with bridal symbolism, and so it is not surprising to find Hildegard embrace the nuptial imagery of the Song of Songs throughout this symphony. Newman has catalogued the parallels between the nuns and Solomon’s bride: “they praise their lover’s beauty and lament his absence (stanzas 7-8), extol his superiority above all others (stanza 6), bewail their own weakness (stanzas 2-3), and above all, plead for his help (stanzas 1-2, 4-5, 10)” (Symphonia, p. 305).
Intertwined with this highly conventional bridal imagery, however, is a structure more peculiarly Hildegardian: convergences between her virgins and the two great virgin mediators of God’s relationship to humanity, the Virgin Mary and the Virgin Church (Ecclesia). Mary’s model virginity suffuses Hildegard’s writings about the order of the Church to which she belonged, as for example in the antiphon, O pulcre facies. The final two verses of this symphony make this model explicit: because the Virgin is the mediator of Christ’s life-saving leap from heaven into humanity, it is in her company (societatem) that Hildegard’s virgins could follow that path in reverse, from the fallen frailty and mortal exile of “our primal parents” (first lamented in verse 2) to the “golden city” of heavenly, eternal life. Several of Hildegard’s compositions for Mary are likewise situated in that stark drama of death and redemption, with particularly strong verbal echoes between the symphony’s verse 9 and the responsories Ave Maria, O auctrix vite and O clarissima.
Another subtler parallel is found in verse 4 and the image of the virgins as a gem (gemma), which forms also the central conceit of the Marian antiphon, O splendidissima gemma. As documented in the commentary on that piece, Hildegard envisions the unfallen human body as such a “resplendent jewel,” reflecting and refracting the divine light of which the sun and stars are but dim shadows. Mary’s virginal body was by grace such a vessel, transparent and unpolluted, the perfect chamber for God’s presence that all other human bodies, following the inheritance of Eve, had scorned and vitiated with the darkness and shadow of sin. Thus the virgins in this symphony must at first bewail their fallenness, their gem-like bodies sunk in putrefaction (in putredine). But their yearning hope is affixed upon the radical idea that God himself wants to recover that gem despite the muck. So in the opening vision of Part III of Scivias, Hildegard sees the Living God “hold to His breast what looked like black and filthy mire, as big as a human heart, surrounded with precious stones and pearls.” As the commentary explains:
And to His breast, that is in the wisdom of His mystery, for love of His Son He holds that poor, weak, infirm mire that is Man [homo]: black in the blackness of sins and filthy in the filthiness of the flesh, but the size of a human heart, which is the breadth of the profound wisdom with which God created Man. For He has looked upon those who are saving their souls through penitence, and no matter how in their persistent weakness they have sinned against Him, they will come to Him at last. They are surrounded by ornaments, those great ones who rise up among them: martyrs and holy virgins like precious stones, and innocent and penitent children of redemption like pearls; so that by them the mire is surpassingly adorned, and the virtues, which so gloriously shine in God, shine also in the human body. For He Who put breath and life in Man was scrutinizing Himself. How? Because He foreknew and decided in advance that His Son would be incarnate to bring redemption; therefore, every stain of sin must be washed away from His body.
(…)
Therefore, the human form is to be seen in the inmost nature of the Deity, where neither angels nor any other creatures appear; because My Only-Begotten, to redeem the human race, assumed human form in the flesh of a Virgin. (…) O how beautiful is He! As the Pslamist says:
“Beautiful of form above the children of men” [Psalm 44:3]. This is to say: In Him shines forth beauty beyond beauty, the noblest form free from any spot of sin, without a splash of human corruption, and lacking all desire for the sinful works demanded by fleshly human weakness. None of these ever touched this Man. And the body of the Son of Man was born more purely than other people, for the stainless Virgin bore her Son in ignorance of sin.
—Scivias III.1.4-8[1]
The Virgin Mary’s gleaming, gem-like purity was the matrix by which Christ himself took on human form—but it is through his pure humanity that all are offered the chance to imitate his beauty (celebrated in verse 7 of the Symphony), to recover their own lost purity. So he desires “to seek us again, a gem in putrefaction.”
Scivias II.6: The Crucifixion. Rupertsberg MS, fol. 86rr.
For Hildegard, the Virgin Mary’s mediating role in the Incarnation is directly transferred to the Virgin Mother Church, so that as Christ seeks to recover all humankind, it is through the Church’s motherhood we are born as he was born, and through her gleaming purity that his light shines. This transfer of office came upon the Cross, when Jesus gave his own earthly mother to John the Beloved (John 19:25-27) and betrothed himself to the Church. Thus verses 4-5 of the Virgins’ Symphony set Christ’s rescue of the gem from its filth in direct parallel to his redemption of us on the Cross:
…gemmam requirere in putredine.
…nos redemisti in cruce.
…to seek again a gem in putrefaction.
…has redeemed us on the Cross.
The nuptial imagery is joined (copulate) to the Cross even tighter in verse 6, in which Christ’s blood becomes the sign of betrothal (cum desponsatione). Likewise in Scivias II.6, Hildegard sees the Church standing below the Cross:
By divine power she was led to Him, and raised herself upward so that she was sprinkled by the blood from His side; and thus, by the will of the Heavenly Father, she was joined with Him in happy betrothal and nobly dowered with His body and blood.
And I heard the voice from Heaven saying to Him: “May she, O Son, be your Bride from the restoration of My people; may she be a mother to them, regenerating souls through the salvation of the Spirit and water.”[2]
In the last two verses of the Symphony, Mary becomes the Queen of the “golden city” (aurea civitate)—an instant invocation of the Heavenly Jerusalem of which the Church is the archetype, as found also in the opening line of O Ierusalem, the sequence for St. Rupert that Hildegard likely composed for the dedication of her own abbey in 1152. The sequence is an extended meditation on the convergence of the heavenly city with the walls of her own abbey church, its stained-glass windows glittering with the city’s bejeweled colors, which gleamed too in the virtuous life of St. Rupert (Verse 2b: Nam tu, o nobilis Ruperte, in his sicut gemma fulsisti). Though newly professed virgins taking their marriage vows to Christ on the Rupertsberg might not be immediately familiar with that piece, it would certainly soon enter their repertoire, to reinforce the network of ties between their own virginal lives and eternal virginal life.
Other compositions explicitly made for the dedication of churches also make these virginal symbols into ecclesiological ones. The holy city of heaven and its shimmering, crystalline light also characterize the antiphons O orzchis Ecclesia and O choruscans lux stellarum, the former of which also includes five words drawn from Hildegard’s invented “unknown language” (lingua ignota). Meanwhile, the antiphon O virgo Ecclesia also describes the Church’s betrothal to Christ under the banner of the Cross:
Sed o quam preciosus est sanguis Salvatoris,
qui in vexillo regis
Ecclesiam ipsi desponsavit,
unde filios
illius requirit.
But O, how precious is the Savior’s blood
that with the royal banner sealed
his bridegroom’s promise to the Church,
whose children
he is seeking.
The end effect of this network of images is to establish Hildegard and her virgin nuns as powerful heirs to the Virgin Mary and powerful participants in the Virgin Church. To be a Bride of Christ was also to reign as his Queen Consort. Although the temporal leaders of the Church were all male (her priests and prelates, bishops and popes), Hildegard subtly establishes a profound position of spiritual power for the women of her abbey. Though “in the world,” they live as brides of “the King of angels,” enthroned within their hearts (verses 3 and 8). With their mind fixed firmly on an eternal abode with him, he becomes “present even now” (verse 8), descending into the abbey like once he descended into the Virgin’s “palace” (in aulam, verse 9). Received within those sacred walls, the virgins who sang this Symphony experienced the first sweet taste of eternal life with their Bridegroom, the boundaries between earth and heaven dissolved with the entrance of Christ the New Song (see Ave generosa, verse 7).
Commentary: Music by Beverly Lomer
Mode: E
Dendermonde: E mode transposed and ending on A
Riesenkodex: E mode ending on pitch D (possibly an error)
In both sources the piece moves away from E as a focal tone and then returns, either as E or as E transposed.
Range:
Dendermonde: A below the final [E] to A an octave and a fourth above the final [E].
Riesenkodex: A below the final [E] to E an octave above the final [E].
Setting: Primarily syllabic
O dulcissime amator is a most interesting work. There are significant differences between the sources that create some ambiguity as far as its modality is concerned. Because of the number of discrepancies, we have created two transcriptions, one representing the Dendermonde version (D) and the other the Riesenkodex (R). This was done to avoid having to make extensive use of ossia staves and annotations.
In both sources, the symphony begins with a salutation. The first phrase, O dulcissime amator, is outlined by the modal final, E. The next phrase, o dulcissime amplexator, begins on G and ends on E, thus suggesting that it functions as the second clause of the salutatio. The next phrase, adiuva nos custodire virginitatem nostram, is a plea by the virgins to the Saviour to assist them in preserving their virginity. In D, the word adiuva (“help”) is capitalized, while it is lowercase in R. Thus it is not entirely clear if this phrase represents an independent verse, and the transcriptions differ according to the sources.
In both manuscripts, the piece begins in the E mode, but the tonal shifts and divergences between the sources begin quite early. The phrase that commences with adiuva begins on the pitch G in D and on the pitch A in R, though it ends on E in both. The next verse, Nos sumus . . ., starts with the pitch C in both manuscripts. In D, the tonal focus begins to shift to G as a grammatical marker, but in R, the focus remains on C until the end of the verse, which finishes on the final E. This occurs on the last line of page one in both transcriptions.
E remains dominant, with excursions to other pitch markers until page 3 of the transcriptions, with the phrase segment, repudiantes virum eligentes te, filium dei. In D, this text finishes on A, and the next verse (O pulcherrima forma . . .) commences on F. In R, repudiantes . . . begins and ends on G, while O pulcherrima forma . . . begins on E. From this point on, the sources diverge. In D, the melody moves into the A modality, and flats appear. In R, the movement is downward to C. While the D version continues in A and reaches higher into the range, in R, there is a return to E as an outlining pitch on page 4 of the transcription. Curiously, the R version of the pieces ends on the pitch D, while Dendermonde finishes on A. I am going to suggest that the D ending in R is an error, as the E modality predominates quite clearly after the downward transposition to C. Furthermore, there is no coherent relationship between R’s final pitch of D and the E modality that underlies the major structure.
Because of the interesting tonal shifts in this symphony, I consulted with Dr. Sheila Mary Forrester, whose dissertation, “Hexachordal segmentation as analytical method applied to Hildegard von Bingen’s Symphonia,” (Florida State University, 2001), examines Hildegard’s songs from the perspective of hexachordal analysis. Unlike most Hildegard scholars, who focus on mode and modal transposition to explain some of Hildegard’s more unusual tonal/modal practices, she examines the tonal structures as hexachordal mutations. She believes that one possible explanation for the source differences is that there were indeed two versions of this piece. She also suggests that R might have been intended to accommodate a nun whose vocal range was more limited than that which would be required to perform the D version of this song. Both of these ideas are plausible, as the melodies in certain sections also differ. She also suggests that the B flats added in D be continued when the pitch B appears more than once on a single word, as it would be odd indeed for the melody to shift between natural and flat on the same word. These suggestions are added as notes in the transcription of the D version.
In D, an interesting correlation can be observed between grammatical markers and range. The piece begins in the low register and remains there for the initial verses. As the governing pitch begins to move increasingly toward G and A in the last two pages of the transcription, the emphasis also starts to shift to the higher register. There is also a correlation between the register changes and the text. The opening theme has to do with the sorry state of humanity and reveals the struggle that holy women have with maintaining virginity and resisting temptation. As the lyrics move into the exaltation of the nuns’ holy marriage and their celestial bridegroom, the melody ascends into the higher register and mostly remains there until the end.
In her edition (Hildegard von Bingen, Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum, Volume VI. Hildegard Publishing Company), Marianne Richert Pfau regularizes the mode and retains E as the primary modality. This results in transposing large segments and thus departing from the manuscript sources. Unlike our editions, which are intended as literal renditions of the sources, hers are intended for performance and thus would require editorial decisions. In this case, editorial changes would have to be substantial, as hers are, as there is no easy way to reconcile the different manuscript versions.
To summarize, the widely variant versions of O dulcissime amator incorporate different modalities, ranges and melodies. In D, the E modality is transposed, after a series of tonal shifts, to A, on which it ends. The range of this version is considerably higher than in the R rendition. In R, the transposition is downward rather than upward as in D. Despite the tonal migrations, the E modality is mostly preserved, at least until the very end, with the anomalous final pitch D, which we have already concluded is probably an error. All of this is somewhat unusual for Hildegard’s songs. Modes are generally consistent, even in those that employ the non-standard A and C as finals, and the differences between the sources are not this dramatic.
Further Resources for O dulcissime amator
Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 220-2 and 305-6.
[1] Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans. Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), pp. 311-15; Latin text ed. Adelgundis Führkötter and Angela Carlevaris, CCCM 43A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978), pp. 331-36. ↩ [2]Scivias, trans. Hart and Bishop, p. 236; Latin text ed. Führkötter and Carlevaris, CCCM 43, p. 230. ↩
R. O nobilissima viriditas,
que radicas in sole
et que in candida
serenitate
luces in rota
quam nulla terrena excellentia
comprehendit:
R. Tu circumdata es
amplexibus
divinorum ministeriorum.
V. Tu rubes ut aurora et ardes
ut solis flamma.
R. O noblest green viridity,
you're rooted in the sun
and in the clear
bright calm
you shine within a wheel
no earthly excellence
can comprehend:
R. You are surrounded by
the embraces of the service,
the ministries divine.
V. As morning’s dawn you blush,
as sunny flame you burn.
Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell. Although this is marked as a responsory, neither of the manuscripts repeat the repetendum after the verse, as would be proper for the form.
Commentary: Themes and Theology by Nathaniel M. Campbell
The beautiful paradox of this responsory is that its opening image for virginity is vital and fertile—viriditas, one of Hildegard’s favorite terms that connects the fresh, green life of nature to the active Life of the divine and its triple role as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Here, Hildegard traces virginal viridity back to its source, “rooted in the sun” of divinity and its incomprehensible wheel—the rota is one of her classic images for the creative and eternal movement of the divine, as in the opening vision of Part III of Scivias, or the circles of gold, silver, and blue used to illustrate the Trinity in several visions of the Rupertsberg manuscript of that work. Yet, this spinning wheel of divine power is not some cold or distant formulation, but one that sparks and glows with the red blush of dawn and the sun’s warming flames, as Hildegard describes its virginal, life-giving activity in the versicle.
The refrain, meanwhile, carries God’s generally creative activity into the particular service that Hildegard and her nuns offered in their daily lives—the “ministries divine” (divina ministeria) are the opus Dei, the “Work of God,” as St. Benedict described the hours of prayer and musical praise that monastics living under his Rule were to offer every single day. For Hildegard, this divine service was practically sacramental as its sung praises became an open channel to connect her community of nuns to the heavenly choirs and their eternal ministry of praise—in enacting God’s work every day, she and her virgins became agents of divine grace and power. Indeed, the very veils and ornate jewelry with which Hildegard (in)famously clothed her nuns on high feast days were divinely-commanded signs of the verdant, virginal grace that worked within and through them. Their design was revealed in Scivias II.5, a vision of the Orders of the Church—and as the illustration for this vision in the Rupertsberg manuscript shows, preeminent among those orders were the virgins standing at the breast of Ecclesia, some in verdant green cloaks and others in the sky-blue of the Incarnate Word. In their center stands the dawn-red-cloaked Virginitas—Virginity herself, hands lifted in the same virginal praise of God as Virgin Mother Church:[1]
Scivias II.5: Virginitas & the Orders of the Church. Rupertsberg MS, fol. 66r (detail)
After this I saw that a splendor white as snow and translucent as crystal had shone around the image of that woman from the top of her head to her throat. And from her throat to her navel another splendor, red in color, had encircled her, glowing like the dawn (…) and shining mixed with purple and blue [pupura hyacintho]. (…) And where it glowed like the dawn, its brightness shone forth as high as the secret places of heaven; and in this brightness appeared a most beautiful image of a maiden, with bare head and black hair, wearing a red tunic, which flowed down about her feet.
And around that maiden I saw standing a great crowd of people, brighter than the sun, all wonderfully adorned with gold and gems. Some of these had their heads veiled in white, adorned with a gold circlet; and above them, as if sculpted on the veils, was the likeness of the glorious and ineffable Trinity as it was represented to me earlier, and on their foreheads the Lamb of God, and on their necks a human figure, and on the right ear cherubim, and on the left ear the other kinds of angels; and from the likeness of the glorious and supernal Trinity golden rays extended to these other images.
—Scivias II.5, Vision[2]
Hildegard elaborated this vision in a later letter to Guibert of Gembloux:
I saw that all the ranks [ordines] of the Church have bright emblems in accord with the heavenly brightness, yet virginity has no bright emblem—nothing but a black veil and an image of the cross. So I saw that this would be the emblem of virginity: that a virgin’s head would be covered with a white veil, because of the radiant-white robe that human beings had in paradise and lost. On her head would be a circlet [rota] with three colours conjoined into one—an image of the Trinity—and four roundels attached: the one on the forehead showing the lamb of God, that on the right a cherub, that on the left an angel, and on the back a human being—all these inclining towards the [figure of the] Trinity. This emblem, granted to me, will proclaim blessings to God, because he had clothed the first man in radiant brightness.[3]
When Tengswich, the magistra of a community of Augustinian canonesses in Andernach, wrote to Hildegard questioning the propriety of dressing her nuns in flowing white, silk veils, their hair bound only by a golden coronet (rota—the circlet of the crown and the wheel of divinity sacramentally combined, perhaps in a combination of gold and silver with blue enamel, to echo the illustration of the Trinity for Scivias II.2 in the Rupertsberg manuscript), Hildegard responded with a glorious defense of her virgins:
Because the beauty of woman radiated and blazed forth in the primordial root, and in her was formed that chamber in which every creature lies hidden. Why is she so resplendent? For two reasons: on the one hand, because she was created by the finger of God and, on the other, because she was endowed with wondrous beauty. O woman, what a splendid being you are! For you have set your foundation in the sun, and have conquered the world.
(…)
Listen: The earth exudes the viridity of the grass [terra sudat viriditatem graminis], until winter conquers it. Then winter takes away the beauty of that flower, and the earth covers over its vital force [viriditatem] so that it is unable to manifest itself as if it had never dried up, because winter has ravaged it. In a similar manner, a woman, once married, ought not to indulge herself in primordial adornment of hair or person, nor ought she to lift herself up to vanity, wearing a crown and other golden ornaments, excepts at her husband’s pleasure, and even then with moderation.
But these strictures do not apply to a virgin, for she stands in the unsullied purity of paradise, lovely and unwithering, and she always remains in the full viridity of the budding rod [in plena viriditate floris virge]. A virgin is not commanded to cover up her hair and her viridity [non habet tegmen crinium viriditatis sue in precepto], but she willingly does so out of her great humility, for a person will naturally hide the beauty of her soul, lest, on account of her pride, the hawk carry it off.
Virgins are married with holiness in the Holy Spirit and in the bright dawn of virginity [in aurora virginitatis], and so it is proper that they come before the great High Priest as an oblation presented to God. Thus through the permission granted her and the revelation of the mystic inspiration of the finger of God, it is appropriate for a virgin to wear a white vestment, the lucent symbol of her betrothal to Christ, considering that her mind is made one with the interwoven whole [intexte integritati mens eius solidetur], and keeping in mind the One to whom she is joined, as it is written: “Having his name, and the name of the Father, written on their foreheads” [Apoc. 14:1] and also, “These follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth” [Apoc. 14:4].[4]
Although the bridal imagery does not appear in today’s responsory, it does fill her another of her compositions, the “Symphony of Virgins”, O dulcissime amator. Nevertheless, this responsory does make clear the preeminent place that Hildegard perceived for the virgins whose mother she became—the most dedicated of God’s servants, and thus his most powerful agents of fertile grace and viridity.
Commentary: Music and Rhetoric by Beverly Lomer
C mode
Range: G below the final to D an octave and a second above
Setting: primarily melismatic
In this responsory, the opening salutatio consists of the phrase, O nobilissima viriditas (“O most noble greenness”), with viriditas referring to the virgins. As with the corresponding antiphon, O pulcre facies, Hildegard likens the earthly virgins (nuns) to the Virgin Mary, as many of the same metaphors apply. They are rooted in the sun (divinity), blush like the dawn, shine and burn in the sun’s brightness, and are entwined in the embraces of God. The salutation, as is typical, emphasizes the key words through outlining by the final of the mode. Here, each of the words of the salutation is outlined by C.
The text continues with the phrase, que radicas in sole (“who are rooted in the sun”), which extends from the salutatio and begins to expound the various characteristics of these most noble creatures. On the word que, the final is replaced by the pitch E, but the phrase ends on C. In the next phrase, the most significant word, candida, is given a lengthy melisma that extends to the highest range of the piece. The emphasis, then, is on the brightness of the virgins, the highest order of saintliness and a signifier of their special closeness to the divine.
The theme of extraordinary sanctity continues with the text, quam nulla terrena excellentia comprendit (“which no earthly excellence can comprehend”). The final C outlines quam nulla terrena excellentia, while the verb comprehendit begins on C but ends on G, the dominant or second most significant pitch in the mode.
The respondendum (refrain) explicates the next theme, that the virgins are embraced by the divine (tu circumdata es amplexibus divinorum misteriorum). The use of non-standard pitches in this lengthy section—A and D as grammatical markers—might be considered as an indicator that the entire thought should be construed as one idea. This is, however, more than one can sing on a breath, and thus, the absence of a definitive tonal punctuator underscores the holistic nature of the phrase.
The closeness to divinity echoes again in the versicle that closes the responsory (the repetition of the refrain is not marked in the manuscripts): “As morning’s dawn you blush, as sunny flame you burn.” Through its analogy to Mary, this confirms again the special place virginity holds in the hierarchy of sanctity in Hildegard’s theology of the feminine.
Further Resources for O nobilissima viriditas
Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 218 and 304-5.
[1] See Nathaniel M. Campbell, “Imago expandit splendorem suum: Hildegard of Bingen’s Visio-Theological Designs in the Rupertsberg Scivias Manuscript,” Eikón / Imago 4 (2013, Vol. 2, No. 2), pp. 1-68, esp. pp. 36-39 and 57-61; accessible online here. ↩ [2] Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans. Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (Paulist Press, 1990), p. 201; Latin text ed. Führkötter and Carlevaris, CCCM 43 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978), pp. 174-5. ↩ [3] Letter 103r, trans. Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984), p. 169; Latin text in Hildegardis Bingensis, Epistolarium II, ed. L. Van Acker, CCCM 91a (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993), p. 253. ↩
[4] Letter 52r, adapted from The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, vol. 1, trans. Joseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 128-9; Latin text in Hildegardis Bingensis, Epistolarium I, ed. L. Van Acker, CCCM 91, pp. 127-9. Barbara Newman also notes the similarities between this letter and the above responsory (in Symphonia, pp. 304-5). ↩
O pulcre facies
Deum aspicientes
et in aurora edificantes,
o beate virgines,
quam nobiles estis,
in quibus rex
se consideravit, cum in vobis
omnia celestia ornamenta presignavit,
ubi etiam suavissimus hortus estis,
in omnibus ornamentis redolentes.
O faces fair
that gaze on God
and build upon the dawn—
O virgins blessed,
how noble!
In you the King
can glimpse himself, for in you
he sealed once all the ornaments of heaven,
where too you are the lushest garden,
the fragrances of all its ornaments.
Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.
Commentary by Nathaniel M. Campbell and Beverly Lomer
This antiphon and the responsory that follows it, O nobilissima viriditas, are the two pieces devoted to the Choir of Virgins in the celestial symphony of the final vision of Scivias (III.13.7). Whether as individual virgins in this antiphon or collectively as bearers of verdant virginity in the responsory, they are portrayed as analogues of the Virgin Mary. Were it not for the plural nouns in this antiphon and the manuscript rubrics identifying the songs as de virginibus, “for virgins,” one would be tempted to interpret them as pieces devoted to Mary, for the imagery recalls the attributes Hildegard assigns to her in the songs addressed to her. They mirror, for example, the two pieces devoted to the Virgin Mary that opened the Scivias symphony (III.13.1), O splendidissima gemma and O tu suavissima virga. In the latter responsory, the “divinity gazed upon a daughter’s beauty” (divinitas in pulcherrimam filiam aspexit), while in this antiphon, the gaze is reflected back by the beautiful faces of God’s daughters (O pulcre facies Deum aspicientes).
Other images common in Hildegard’s Marian corpus are gathered here, too—the dawn light in Hodie aperuit; the nobility of O frondens virga; and the nearly continuous imagery of the Virgin’s blooming branch and flower, enunciated here with the image of the aromatic garden (see e.g. verses 2-4 of O viridissima virga). Hildegard regularly refers to Mary as “a joyful ornament” (in the versicle of O clarissima) and a mirror of divine beauty (verse 4a of O virga ac diadema). In O quam magnum miraculum, God the King enters into “the female form subdued,” and it is quite simply woman (femina) who “builds up every sweet perfume of virtues” (omnem suavissimum odorem virtutum edificavit) to adorn the heavens. Likewise in this antiphon, God the King sees himself in the faces of the virgins as Mary was the mirror of the divine beauty.
Sanctity is often described by Hildegard as fragrant, and thus the concluding melisma on redolentes, a musical gesture of emphasis and the only melisma of any length in the piece, solidifies the theme of the special holiness of virgin women. The enclosed garden (hortus conclusus) was a common medieval metaphor for virginity, but in Hildegard’s hands (probably frequently smudged with dirt and streaked with green from actually working in the garden), it springs into beautiful, verdant, fragrant life. Experiencing the warm sunshine beaming into the garden and bursting its flowers into bloom might very well have provoked Hildegard in her praise of virgins in this antiphon, which also echoes her description of the Order of Virgins amid the towering figure of Ecclesia, Holy Mother Church in Scivias II.5.5:[1]
Scivias II.5: Orders of the Church. Rupertsberg MS, fol. 66r.
But you see that from her throat to her navel another splendor, red in color, encircles her. This means that after the teaching of the apostles had so invigorated the Church (…), there arose the noblest perfection of churchly religion, which tasted heavenly sweetness with burning ardor and stringently restrained itself in order to gird itself with secret power; rejecting the union of human coupling, it avoided the division caused by the bitterness of the flesh. How?
That splendor glows like the dawn from her throat to her breasts, for this perfection arose from the taste of the excitement of miracles and extended in virginal gladness to the sweet nourishment of churchly religion. And it shines from her breasts to her navel mixed with purple and blue; for she fortified herself for the stringency of inner chastity by the noblest training, namely by imitating the Passion of My Son to gain the celestial love He guarded in His heart. Therefore, where it glows like the dawn, its brightness shines forth as high as the secret places of Heaven; for the perfection that flowers in the state of virginity directs its strength not downward toward heavenly things, but miraculously upward to what is in Heaven.
As most perfect handmaids of the Virgin Mother Church and successors of the Virgin Mother Mary, the women in Hildegard’s convent live out virginal fecundity. The verb presignavit is, in this regard, particularly significant—it shows that virgins have a special place in God’s order and plan for the beauty of the world. At the heart of Hildegard’s perception of the relationship between eternity and time, divinity and humanity, is the notion that Christ’s Incarnation was eternally predestined. By corollary, the means by which God became Man—the Virgin Mother who bore him—was also predestined before all time; and thus, the female figures who mediate God’s presence and activity into the world after and in analogue to her are also predestined. If God had foreseen Mary’s blooming branch in the very first moment of creation (so verse 3a of O virga ac diadema), then so too did he foresee the fragrant gardens of his virgins blooming throughout the Church.
Transcription and Music Notes
E mode
Range: D below the final to G an octave and a third above the final
Setting: primarily syllabic, with some neumatic segments and one long melisma
The salutation in this antiphon is not as straightforward as is often the case, as there is no clear outlining by the final of the mode in the first phrase. O pulcre facies (“O beautiful faces”), which might be considered a brief greeting, begins on the final but concludes on A. This strategy leads to the conclusion that the next two segments should extend the initial salutation. Deum aspicientes (“gazing on God”) employs D and G as tonal markers, neither of which are usually grammatically significant pitches in this mode. This supports the notion that the phrase is an extension of the first and connected to what comes after. The final phrase, et in aurora edificantes (“and building upon the dawn”) concludes on the final It is thus possible to consider the three phrases (lines 1-3 in the transcription) as the entire salutatio. Though it is a bit long, it makes better sense musically than subdividing it. Of course, in performance, breaths might have to be taken, but the rhetorical effect would be enhanced if the entirety were conveyed as a single phrase.
O beate virgines begins the next idea, and is more predictably outlined by the modal final. The remainder of the piece employs the fifth as its grammatical marker. Lines 8 and 9 (omnia celestia ornamenta presignavit) comprise a single phrase, and a tick barline has been inserted to indicate this continuity.
The seventh line of the piece presents an odd juxtaposition of musical and textual grammar. The verb consideravit ends one grammatical phrase in the text, while the conjunction cum begins another subordinate clause. In normal practice, syntactic units of text would coincide with musical phrases, with the first phrase ending on the final (or, as in this piece, the fifth), and the next phrase beginning there. But in this line, the two textual clauses are conjoined within a single musical phrase, though the conjunction is made on the octave of the final.
The final image commences with ubi etiam suavissimus hortus estis (“where too you are the lushest garden”). The pitch B remains the primary tonal marker until the conclusion of the long melisma on redolentes on the final. The use of A to end the phrase in omnibus ornamentis is a bit surprising, as one would expect to hear B. Redolentes, however, is clearly its own unit.
Further Resources for O pulcre facies
Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 218 and 303-304.
[1] Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans. Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (Paulist Press, 1990), pp. 204-205; Latin text ed. Führkötter and Carlevaris, CCCM 43 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978), pp. 179-180. ↩
O successores
fortissimi leonis,
inter templum et altare
dominantes in ministratione eius
sicut angeli sonant in laudibus
et sicut assunt populis
in adiutorio,
vos estis inter illos
qui hec faciunt,
semper curam habentes in officio Agni.
Successors of
the mighty Lion,
between the temple and the altar
commanding in his service:
as angels sing in praise resounding
and quicken to defend the people
with their aid—
so you among them
as they do these things
keep ever carefully the office of the Lamb.
Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.
Commentary: Themes and Theology by Nathaniel M. Campbell
The first piece devoted to the choir of confessors—a class that for Hildegard consists of the clergy in general—in her vision of the heavenly symphony in Scivias III.13.6, this antiphon turns from the sacramental duties of their priestly office described in O vos imitatores to look at their Christ-like role as the servant-leaders of the Church: leading the people of God in their praise, helping them like the guardian angels, waging the battle against the fallen angel, and in all things imitating Christ’s mighty strength as the Lion and sacrificial love as the Lamb.[1]
This ministry of the confessors is situated within the particular progression of salvation history, reflected in the placement of the choir of confessors after those of the apostles and martyrs in the celestial symphony. After the apostolic dawn of the Church and the flowing of the martyr’s rose-red blood, this choir of confessors took its place among her orders, as likewise described in Hildegard’s exegesis of the Pillar of the Word of God in Scivias III.4.11:
For in the clear light in which My Son preached and spread the truth there have grown up apostles who announce that true light, and martyrs who faithfully shed their blood like strong soldiers, and confessors who officiate after My Son, and virgins who follow the Supernal Branch, and all My other elect, who rejoice in the fountain of happiness and the font of salvation, baptized by the Holy Spirit and ardently going “from virtue unto virtue” (Ps. 83:8[84:7]).[2]
In the antiphon above, the confessors in their office as “successors” or “imitators” of Christ take a middle place between the early martyrs, whose blood “watered” the foundations of the Church, and the order of Virgins who crown Ecclesia, the Church. Thus, the second line situates them as heirs of both the ancient prophets and the martyrs by alluding to Christ’s words of castigation against the scribes and Pharisees for “shedding the blood of the prophets, (…) from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar [quem occidistis inter templum et altare]” (Matt. 23:30 and 35). Moreover, Hildegard transforms their commanding rule (dominantes) over the Church into the service of her ministers (in ministratione); as Barbara Newman notes, “Following Christ’s example and commandment, they exercised their spiritual lordship only through service (Luke 22:25-26)” (Symphonia, p. 290).
As Hildegard explains in her discussion of the Church’s administration of the sacraments of Eucharist and confession in Scivias II.6.92:
One who desires the power of an office for his own boastful pride and not for the glory of My name is to Me like a putrid corpse, but one who seeks it desiring from it not his pride but My honor will be glorious in My kingdom. And so priests should take on the office of spiritual government not for their own sakes but for Mine, that they may rule more surely and devoutly over My people.
In the previous vision’s discussion of the clergy’s office of pastoral service, Hildegard compares them to the shepherd Abel:
The followers [of the apostles], who took their places, faithfully traverse streets and farms and cities and other places, regions and lands, carrying the health-giving charisms and announcing the divine law to the people. For they are fathers and stewards, carefully chosen to make church rules known to the people by their teaching and to distribute to them the food of life. (…)
So, as Abel was in charge of his flock, pasturing and guarding it and with simple devotion offering its increase and its fatty nourishment to God [Genesis 4:4], let the chrism-makers [bishops], who are set over the children of the Church, who are the sheep of Christ, pasture them according to His plan, faithfully nourish them by their words, teaching them the church rules, and protect them forcefully from the snares of the ancient waylayer, and offer gifts from some of them, with sincere reflection, to the Observer of all.
—Scivias II.5.2
Scivias I.6: Choirs of Angels. Rupertsberg MS, fol. 38r.
Although the antiphon above never mentions him, that “ancient waylayer” lies always in the background of Hildegard’s view of the Church’s place in salvation history, her battle against him, and her relationship to the angels. In comparing the office of the Church’s pastors to the angels as they both praise God and, as guardians, come to the aid of humankind, Hildegard draws on the belief that God created the angels for a twofold service, “for the honor of His name and for human salvation”—the latter office “by assigning some to help humans in their need, and others to manifest to people the judgments of His secrets” (Scivias I.6.1). Moreover, Hildegard held firmly to the belief that humankind was created to fill the tenth and highest choir of angels, left empty by the fall of Lucifer and his companions, as she explains Scivias III.2.19.[3]
Musically, Hildegard emphasizes the scope of the angelic analogy by having its two phrases (sicut angeli sonant in laudibus / et sicut assunt populis - in adiutorio) traverse a significant range, from the lowest note of the piece, A below the final (connecting laudibus, “praise,” with in adiutorio, “with aid”), to the D an octave above the final (on sicut, “as,” and assunt, “quicken to defend”). On the other hand, the angels stand slightly apart from the rest of the antiphon, as the analogy is the only phrase to open on a note other than the final (A on sicut). For all their glory, the angels lack the singular grace bestowed on humankind: participation in the divine nature itself, in the form of the Incarnation. Only humans can be “successors of the mighty Lion.” This is why the highest note of the antiphon—F an octave and a third above the final—comes near the end, on officio, “the office of the Lamb” which the confessors carefully keep.
Still, angelic ministry serves for Hildegard as an exemplar for a human ministry that is destined to surpass it. The angels and archangels offer their service to both God and God’s creation (humankind) with a humility to be imitated by the clergy:
Therefore have peace and charity and humility among you, as the souls of the just do not envy the office of the angels, and the angels announce lesser things in the normal course of events, while the faithful people humbly obey. Therefore, let each fulfill his office faithfully. How?
Let those who are vowed monks, like the archangels, renew their powerful assistance whenever there is a great occasion of necessity in the Church; and let those who have the office of clerics, like the angels, do their business in the daily life of their institution; and let people who want to attain to supreme beatitude faithfully receive their words.
—Scivias II.5.36
The clergy of the Church thus assume the twofold office of the angels, analogous to Christ’s twofold summary of the law’s commandment of love: they praise and love God, and they serve and love their neighbors, the children of God and inheritors of the kingdom. As governors, they mediate the angels’ manifestation of God’s commands to his people; as pastors, they “keep and feed God’s sheep to imitate Him in honor” (Scivias III.9.22
Scivias III.9: The Tower of the Church. Rupertsberg MS, fol. 192r (full-page miniature rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise from original orientation).
Finally, as successors of Christ, the confessors are also the successors of the apostles, the Church’s first leaders-in-service who “stand out among the defenders of the Church as its first founders” (Scivias III.9.15). As the successors of the apostles, the confessors also provide that defense, as Hildegard indicates through her interpretation of Song of Songs 4:4:
“Your neck is like the tower of David, which is built with bulwarks; a thousand bucklers hang upon it, all the armor of the valiant.” This is to say:
The Incarnation of the mighty Lion [fortissimi leonis], the Son of the Supreme Ruler, Who arose from the blooming of the Virgin, is the strongest instrument of the new grace; and so too the strength of your incorrupt faith, O Bride, is set as the sure rampart of the faithful people. How? All your children stand and join themselves into the walls around your strength, nourished by the new light that trickles from the pure living Fountain. And in this strong joining they cannot be destroyed or dismembered, anymore than the victorious weapons of true David could be defeated. How?
The strong tower is the strength of Christ Jesus the Son of God, and in it the conquering hosts of the faithful are tested without defeat. No adversary can boast of prevailing over them, for they hold fast to Christ, true God and true Human, through Whom in your Second Coming all your children will gloriously attain adulthood in salvation. To this end the pure Incarnation was foretold by the prophets and adorned by precious gems of virtue. And it was manifested through the world for the salvation of believers through the bulwarks of apostolic doctrine who planted the justice of the True Light.
(…)
And so a thousand bucklers, perfect defenses of the perfected faith, hang from the Son of God. And the first shepherds of the Church follow His example and despise themselves for the hope of Heaven; they pour out their blood to protect the Catholic faith from the fiery darts of the Devil, which wound human souls. And the other elect, who follow them, also form a heavenly militia and take arms to establish the love of God in this world.
—Scivias III.9.15-17
Transcription and Music Notes by Beverly Lomer
Mode: D
Range: A below the final to F an octave and a third above the final
Setting: primarily syllabic, one long melisma on final word
The phrasing in this piece is fairly straightforward, outlined primarily by the final of the mode. The salutation can be construed briefly as O successores (“O successors”), or to encompass the next phrase, fortissimi leonis (“of the mighty Lion”) Though the second option completes the textual thought, each of the two melodic phrases is outlined by D, the modal final.
The Bb is signed in instances where a tritone occurs and on the melodic figure, A,B,A. Flats are not consistent between the manuscripts. Note also that the melodic progression on the final melisma on agni contains repeated notes. One might want to flat the B in the descent, because it then lands on F. However, the landing on F might also be understood as a descent from A, which is repeated. Hence, the B in the previous phrase segment can be read as a part of a smaller descent that ends on A and thus would not carry a flat. Neither manuscript signs a flat here. In keeping with the signed flat in Dendermonde on A,B,A earlier (p. 1, line 6 of the transcription), one might include a flat on this same figure in the final melisma.
Further Resources for O successores
Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 176 and 290.
[1] Although this antiphon follows the responsory for confessors (O vos imitatores) in the Riesdenkodex (fol. 470va), it comes first in Scivias III.13.6. ↩ [2] All quotes from Scivias adapted from the trans. of Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (New York: Paulist Press, 1990); Latin text ed. Führkötter and Carlevaris, CCCM 43 and 43a (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978). ↩ [3] As she explains Scivias III.2.19: “God foresaw that what had fallen in the lost group [of angels] could be more firmly restored in another. How? He created humankind from the mud of the earth, living in soul and body, to attain to the glory from which the apostate Devil and his followers were cast out. Humankind is thus exceedingly dear to God, Who made them truly in His own image and likeness; they were to exercvise all the virtues in the perfection of holiness, as indeed God formed all creatures to do, and to work in humble obedience to do acts of virtue, and so to fulfill the function of praise among the glorious orders of angels. And thus, in this height of blessedness, humankind was to augment the praise of the heavenly spirits who praise God with assiduous devotion, and so fill up the place left empty by the lost angel who fell in his presumption.” ↩
V. O vos imitatores excelse persone
in preciosissima
et gloriosissima significatione,
o quam magnus est vester ornatus,
ubi homo procedit,
solvens et stringens in Deo
pigros et peregrinos,
R. etiam ornans
candidos et nigros et magna onera
remittens.
V. Nam et angelici ordinis officia habetis,
et fortissima fundamenta prescitis,
ubicumque constituenda sunt,
unde magnus est vester honor—
R. etiam ornans
candidos et nigros et magna onera
remittens.
V. O actors, you who play the Highest Role
within that precious drama,
that glorious sacrament!
How great and beautiful your vested costume,
as steps forth such a man
to loose and bind in God
the slacker and sojourner,
R. to beautify
the shining and the squalid, and their heavy burdens
to remit.
V. For you both hold the office of the angels
and foreknow where’er the firm foundations
of the Church are to be laid—
this twofold duty marks your honor grand:
R. to beautify
the shining and the squalid, and their heavy burdens
to remit.
Latin collated from the transcription of Beverly Lomer and the edition of Barbara Newman; translation by Nathaniel M. Campbell.
Commentary: Themes and Theology by Nathaniel M. Campbell
In this responsory, adapted from one of the two verses sung in praise of the choir of confessors in the heavenly symphony of Scivias III.13,[1] Hildegard uses the language of drama to explain the office of the Church’s principal clergy in their roles as “imitators” (imitatores) of the person of Christ, celebrating the Eucharist and hearing confessions under the apostolic power of “binding and loosing,” to remit the burden of the penitent’s sins. Moreover, they also participate in the “duties of the angelic order” (angelici ordinis officia)—the offering of praise in song to the Lord—and, guided by the Holy Spirit, receive the special knowledge of where to found new churches and monasteries.[2]
Scivias II.6: Crucifixion and Eucharist. Rupertsberg MS, fol. 86r
As with the other parts of the heavenly symphony at the end of Scivias, this responsory reflects upon elements earlier in the work—in this case, Hildegard’s vision of the Crucifixion and Eucharist in Scivias II.6. As the first illustration that accompanies this vision in the Rupertsberg manuscript makes clear, the drama of Christ’s life, culminating in his sacrifice upon the Cross, pierces through time to be reenacted and re-presented upon the altar each time the Church celebrates her dowry, the Eucharist. In both that vision and this responsory, moreover, the priestly office of performing the Eucharist is intimately intertwined with his office of granting absolution to the confessed penitent. Both Eucharist and Confession regenerate the faithful person into the life of the Resurrected, by lifting them up out of the sin they inherited from Adam and into the glory they receive from Christ, the New Adam. Moreover, each sacrament revolves around actions of memory:[3] in the Eucharist, both God and we the Church remember Christ’s sacrifice, while in Confession, each sinner turns away from the deceit that keeps their sin unremembered, “concealed in his secret heart,” and instead makes “manifest his sins, that he may have a witness to his penitence” (Scivias II.6.87).[4]
In Hildegard’s Eucharistic vision, Christ’s initial establishment of that ritual of memory becomes the script that the Church follows in each subsequent performance of the drama. The most vivid part of the vision is the heavenly spotlight that streams down upon the altar during each performance. Thus this play is unlike any other, for the stage crosses the divide between time and eternity: “in its most precious and glorious signification” (in preciosissima et gloriosissima significatione), God acts together with the priest, beholding the same memories, repeating the same lines, and through them, recreating the world (words in italics are from Hildegard’s description of the vision; the voice speaking is that from heaven):
When a priest clad in sacred vestments approaches that altar to celebrate the divine mysteries, you see that a great calm light is brought to it from Heaven by angels. For when he who has the charge of souls is girded with the sacred cincture and approaches the life-giving table to immolate the innocent Lamb, at once the great light of the heavenly inheritance drives away the darkness, shining with the help of celestial spirits from the secret places of Heaven. And it completely illumines the plan of sanctification, for here is the food of the soul by which believers are saved. How? Because the Church in the voice of the priest seeks her dowry, which is the body and the poured-out blood of My Son, in order to be fit for blessed childbearing in saving souls (…). And so then I, Who am the unfailing Light, illumine the place of that consecration with My holiness, to the honor of the body and blood of My Only-Begotten.
For when the priest begins to invoke me on the sanctified altar, and I consider that My Son offered Me bread and wine at the supper of death just before leaving the world; then I see that My Son did this in the hour of His death, as he was about to perish on the wood of the cross, so that when the blessed offering of the holy sacrifice is offered to Me by a priest I might always have His Passion in My sight, never blotting it from My sharp vision. For He too offered Me bread and wine in the outpouring of His blood, when He cast down death and raised up humanity. (…)
The Bride of My Son offers the gift of bread and wine on My altar with a most devoted purpose. How? To remind me in faithful memory by the hand of the priest that in this same oblation I delivered up the body and blood of My Son. How? Because the sufferings of My Only-Begotten are seen perpetually in the secret places of Heaven; and thus that oblation is united to My Son in My ardent heat in a profoundly miraculous way and becomes most truly His body and blood. And thence the Church is quickened with blessed strength.
—Scivias II.6.6-11
For Hildegard’s typological mind, the signification of the Eucharistic sacrifice encompasses not just the Crucifixion, but also its foreshadowing in the Passover feast and the Exodus from Egypt. This provides her a natural bridge to consider its role in freeing the sinner from the bondage of sin:
“Remember this day in which you came forth out of Egypt, and out of the house of bondage; with a strong hand the Lord brought you forth out of this place, so look that you eat no leavened bread” [Exodus 13:3]. What does this mean?
You who wish to be imitators [imitatores] of My Son, turn your eyes from death to life and keep in mind the salvation of that Day which is My Son, Who trampled death and gave life, so that you went forth from the wretched exile of perdition; you threw off the thick darkness of infidelity and tore yourselves away from the house of the Devil, to whom Adam’s transgression had given you. Turn your eyes from earthly to heavenly actions, for by divine power I the Lord have led you out of evil; I Who rule all with such strength that no obstacle can stand against My might, but I sharply penetrate all things. So through My Son I have snatched you from the place where you shamefully lay in your wickedness, serving death by your infidelity instead of doing good works.
And now that you are freed in My Only-Begotten from that oppression, go from strength to strength and take care not to admit into your consciences the infidelity, which does not strengthen but bitterly weighs down your heart. What does this mean? Do not follow the arts of the Devil or the other fictions people devise for themselves (…), but imitate My Son as a mirror of faith, Who delivered you from the prison of Hell when He gave Himself for you to the suffering of the cross. And, that you may more carefully follow in His footsteps, strengthen your hearts with the celestial bread, and so with faithful devotion receive His body. For He came from Heaven and was born of the sweet and pure Virgin, and, by suffering for you on the cross, gave you His very self; so that now you may receive the sweet and pure bread, which is His body, consecrated on the altar by divine invocation, without any bitterness but with sincere affection, and thus escape from humanity’s inner hunger and attain to the banquet of eternal beatitude.
—Scivias II.6.27
The “thick darkness of infidelity” that the light of this glorious sacrament dispels, and the “inner hunger” that it fulfills with its “sweet and pure bread”—these are the shadows and lusts of sin that, in enflaming a person with their dark fire, make a person “eat and drink unworthily” of the Eucharist (1 Corinthians 11:29). It is in her exegesis of St. Paul’s description of the Eucharist that Hildegard pivots to the failure of memory and the concealment of the truth with sin:
Truly I say to you, anyone who, being unworthy and foul with sin, eats the bread of life or receives the cup of salvation, which is the sacrament of Him Who is the Lord of Heaven and Earth, shall feel himself at fault for it. How? Because he receives the body and blood of the Lord, the Savior of the world, snarling and dying; inclined to evil and polluted with uncleanness, he forgets the fear of the Lord and approaches the palace of healing redemption in a state of contamination. And so he commits murder there. How? By treating the sacrament presumptuously, concealing his crimes without cleansing or washing them by penance; and so with many wounds he tears himself to pieces.
—Scivias II.6.58
But there is a remedy for this state of corrupted memory and intentional forgetting:
But if anyone labors under too great a number of these tendencies and is not able to resist them by themselves, let them with devoted purpose seek Me and humbly uncover to Me the wounds of their heart. How? Let them lay bare these wounds by making a humble confession to a priest. And why is this? Because true confession is a second resurrection. How? The human race was slain by the fall of the old Adam; the new Adam by His death raised it up. And so the resurrection of souls arose in the death of the new Adam. (…) Hence confession was instituted, to raise people up after they fall. And so anyone who confesses their sins to a priest for love of Me rises again from death to life; as the woman who purged herself from her impurity with tears at the banquet in the presence of My Son was snatched away from uncleanness (cf. Luke 7:36-50).
(…)
Faithful people should seek the help of My Son, because when they repeat the ancient crime of Adam after baptism they cannot rise from their fall by themselves. And therefore they should seek counsel as it were from the patriarchs and prophets, and derive instruction as if from the high priests and the ordinary priests, and accept help as if from the apostles, laying bare their wounds and displaying their sins truly and purely. How?
They should confess their sins to the priest, who is the minister of My Son, with devoted heart and mouth. And then the priest will give them a remedy of penance and bury their sins in the death of My Only-Begotten. And then they will rise again to life and glorify the Resurrection of My Son.
—Scivias II.6.82-83
Hildegard then turns her attention to those priests, with dire warnings against those who abuse their office, whether by failing “to teach true doctrine to the people” by not exhorting them to penance, or by their own crimes “in perverse filth and adulterous wickedness” (Scivias II.6.94-95). Throughout her works, the Visionary Doctor consistently castigated the clergy for their failures and sins, for she holds them the higher standard of responsibility and integrity owed the honor of their office:
You, rather than others, have received in My Son the keys of Heaven; which are righteous decisions of just judgment made in knowledge of the Scriptures, as long as you consider rightly what you should bind. What does this mean?
When people stubbornly oppose themselves to My Law, you must inspire them with fear of My judgment. And if they do not then correct themselves, extend over them your power of binding. How? You will bind these rebels in My words with a clear voice, and show them the power of the binding; for their stubbornness they are bound in My sign, as My Son showed to the Church’s first pastor, saying:
“I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. And whatsoever you shall bind on earth, it will be bound also in Heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose on earth, it will be loosed also in Heaven” (Matthew 16:19). What does this mean? I, Who have all power in Heaven and earth, by My grace give to you, My devout imitators [imitatores], those judgments that touch the dignity of the Kingdom of Heaven. As you see people sin on earth, you will bind the wicked deed on earth with just judgment, and it will be entangled in its wickedness and bound in Heaven; it will be separated and driven out from Heaven, for in the heavenly mansions there is no freedom and no place for iniquity. But after I withdraw a person’s soul from their body, you will not extend your judgment over them, for that judgment is Mine. Likewise, if a transgressor is penitent, you will loose on earth the chain you fastened on him in rebellion, and it will be loosed in the secret places of Heaven, for God does not reject the groans of a devout heart. But after the person’s death you will pray for their soul, but you cannot absolve it from being bound.
(…)
This is the purpose of that binding: that one who perversely refuses to obey Me or the precepts of their superiors may be separated by My word from celestial things. Thus Adam, when he disobeyed Me, was by My command cast out of Paradise. And until such a person repents and obeys, they will not be received into the company of the faithful; as the human race was recalled to the celestial country by the martyrdom of My obedient Son.
—Scivias II.6.96-97 and 99
Scivias II.6: Eucharist, detail of recipients. Rupertsberg MS, fol. 86v.
Finally, we turn to Hildegard’s description of the effects of this sacrament of penance, “to beautify the shining and the squalid” (etiam ornans candidos et nigros). This recalls her vision of the various states of grace and iniquity in which people might approach to receive the Eucharist, as illustrated below the priest at the altar in the second illustration for Scivias II.6 in the Rupertsberg manuscript:
And as other people approached the priest to receive the sacrament, I notice five modes of being in them. For some were bright of body and fiery of soul, and others seemed pale of body and shadowed of soul; some were hairy of body and seemed dirty in soul, because it was pervaded with unclean human pollution; others were surrounded in body by sharp thorns and leprous of soul; and others appeared bloody of body and foul as a decayed corpse in soul. And all these received the same sacraments; and as they did, some were bathed in fiery brilliance, but the others were overshadowed by a dark cloud.
—Scivias II.6, Vision
In chs. 51-57, Hildegard offers an elaboration of these states of soul. Only the first (“bright of body and fiery of soul”) approach the altar “clear in faith about the sacrament, (…) and because they are sanctified by this mystery they will appear in this same body in Heaven after the resurrection of the dead; and their souls are transformed and enkindled by the fiery gift of the Holy Spirit, so that, flooded with enlightenment, they reject earthly things and long for the heavenly ones” (Scivias II.6.52). Each of the other four states of soul are mired in ever graver levels of sin—yet to each, Hildegard’s exposition holds out the offer of redemption: “the fountain of salvation will still flow for them if they take care to wash themselves from this wickedness of theirs by worthy penitence” (Scivias II.6.56).
Transcription and Music Notes by Beverly Lomer
C mode
Range: F below the final to C an octave above
Setting: Primarily syllabic, one long melisma, several short melismatic segments
The responsory begins with a syllabic setting of the salutatio, “O you imitators of the most exalted person.” This is a bit different, as Hildegard often favors a more elaborate treatment of the opening greeting. The only substantial melisma in the piece is found on remittens at the end of the repetendum.
As is typical of the songs in which C is the final, the Bb is notated only in the lower octave. In this case, there are quite a number of differences between the manuscripts. In Dendermonde, most of the cadences on C that are preceded by B indicate a flat. This is not always the case in the Riesenkodex. Though we have added no editorial ficta, take note of the last line of page 1 of the transcription. The Bb noted in Dendermonde should be continued until the cadence on C, and similar figures should be treated the same elsewhere. For example, on page 2, line 5, the descent from G to B and finish on C appears elsewhere in Dendermonde with a notated flat. Our recommendation is to add the flat here and in other instances of repetition as well.
The second refrain, Etiam ornans…, differs in R from the way it appears earlier, as well as differing from D. It should be internally consistent.
Further Resources for O vos imitatores
Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman (Cornell Univ. Press, 1988 / 1998), pp. 174 and 289.
[1] Although the responsory appears first in the Riesdenkodex’s ordering of the Symphonia (on fol. 470rb), it follows the antiphon for confessors (O successores) in Scivias III.13.6. ↩ [2] I will look more closely at the connections between the offices of the angels and the confessors in relation to Hildegard’s antiphon for confessors, O successores. Newman notes: “In the verse [Hildegard] calls to mind two additional privileges of these saints: they share in the angelic office, the singing of God’s praise, and they found churches on sites that have been providentially revealed to them. The abbess may have been remembering her own vision of the Rupertsberg as a site for her new monastery.” (Symphonia, p. 289) ↩ [3] See Anne W. Astell, “‘Memoriam Fecit’: The Eucharist, Memory, Reform, and Regeneration in Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias and Nicholas of Cusa’s Sermons,” in Reassessing Reform: A Historical Investigation into Church Renewal, ed. Christopher M. Bellitto and David Zachariah Flanagin (Catholic University of America Press, 2012), pp. 190-213. ↩ [4] All quotes from Scivias II.6 adapted from the trans. of Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), pp. 237-89; Latin text ed. Führkötter and Carlevaris, CCCM 43 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978), pp. 229-306. ↩