Hildegard Now

Returning to the transformative chants of a 12th century mystic

Depending on which doomsayer you ask, we might be in the grip of late-stage journalism meltdown, a realm where local news goes unreported while life-hack tips addressing a range of concerns repopulate daily. We might be destined for a strange and contextless bot-generated information ecosystem in which everything that’s popular is presumed great. On the way down that slide, we might lose important skills of discernment, or even the ability to have civil discussions about art and its humanizing role in society. (Search “Steve Albini on Steely Dan” for a preview!)

Before we reach that dire day, let’s spend a moment in gratitude for the small graces: It is still possible to turn away from – or mute! – the ritualistic Super Bowl halftime pageant (no further comment), crack open a copy of the New Yorker and take a deep dive into the world of the 12^th century abbess and unlikely mystic Hildegard of Bingen. Whose searching, celestial music, rooted in Gregorian chant, is occasionally recommended for calming the nerves of tender humans.

In a piece titled The First Composer in the February 6 edition, Alex Ross, the magazine’s gifted music critic, traces the life of Hildegard and the contribution she made to music (and the Catholic church) after she began having unexplained ecstatic visions in her late ‘40s. Quoting from correspondence between Hildegard and higher-ups in the church, Ross paints this nun as a poet seized by the mysterious workings of the spirit. When gripped by these forces, Hildegard created songs – long and winding melodies that seek and only occasionally find stable harmonic resolution. Prefiguring what Brian Wilson called  “Teenage Symphonies to God” by centuries, she grouped some works under the heading “Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations.”

Ross’ piece explores how music functioned during Hildegard’s time – notation was still a recent phenomenon, and it would be several more centuries before the notion of authorship of music by a single person became common. He paints Hildegard as a polymath who conjured surreal rapture scenes (with the help of a secretary), developed her own language for use in poetry, and offered practical advice about curing things like jaundice (Ross suggests that she generated some works with the help of others in her abbey). He notes that Hildegard’s time coincided with a relatively short period of creativity by female musicians prior to the Renaissance: “When universities began to replace monasteries as centers of learning an all-male regime took hold.”

The piece also illuminates how challenging Hildegard’s music is to sing. It’s mostly monophonic, just a single line. But those single lines really travel – there are wild intervallic leaps of more than an octave, and brooding passages pitched at extreme low registers followed by ethereal upper-register appeals to the heavens. The lines stretch to superhuman length – with strategic repetitions suggesting structure, and slight pauses evoking the responsorial cadences of the Catholic mass.

Laced throughout Ross’ context-rich piece are mentions of some of the recording artists who’ve created reverent, soul-stirring interpretations of Hildegard’s pieces. There have been many in the CD era. Among the most ambitious is the Sequentia ensemble, whose 9-disc survey (all of it available on Spotify) provides a comprehensive overview. The group has issued and re-issued its spacious cathedral recordings, notable for their graceful reverb trails, several times; those seeking an introductory encounter might enjoy Music for Paradise: The Best of Hildegard of Bingen.

Really, though, it doesn’t much matter which rendition you check out. The works themselves – with single notes formed into stately haunting declarations or swooped into grand and sometimes showy melismatic gestures – are arrestingly strange, filled with the distinct aura of ancient wonder. You might go to them seeking refuge, a way out of the troubled frantic present moment, and wind up someplace even more surreal.