Booklet.pdf

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ENG
Hildegard has the magical ability to reach out and speak to us across the centuries. I am not only constantly amazed and touched
by the depth and range of her music, truly an avant-garde visionary of her day, but also astounded by the extent of her multifaceted
talents in an age when it was hard for women to reach their potential.
Just as Hildegard only came into her own in her 40s, this CD also had a long gestation process. It is with great thanks to the
patience, persistence and flexibility of Hugh Collins Rice, that the fusion of her music with his contemporary reflection on her work
has grown from a single piece for shawm and fiddle into a whole CD.
It was a huge challenge to step out of our comfortable world of medieval music-making, a repertoire which we had all studied in
depth and regarded as our musical mother tongue, to learn a new musical form of expression. I had spent so many years training
myself to disregard any dynamics added by heavy-handed editors that it took a long time even to notice Hugh’s very exacting
crescendos and sforzandos. Like children learning their first words, at first we were often tongue-tied and frustrated, but as the
months went by we enjoyed becoming more and more fluent in Hugh’s language.
Indeed, it has been a great pleasure and honour to work with such a talented composer as Hugh and to get to know his music
in such depth. I have rarely come across a contemporary composer who was so obviously inspired by our medieval instruments
and could build on what we were naturally able to offer and then go beyond our perceived limits. He has an uncanny knack of
capturing a musical language which remains authentic and expressive in a 21st-century context but which can sit comfortably
beside and illuminate rather than eclipse the 12th-century music with which we were juxtaposing his works.
In terms of our interpretation of Hildegard’s music, in many ways we have been just as free as Hugh. As with all early music it is
almost impossible to know exactly how the composer would have heard their own music, and although research in this field is
extremely important, it is also important that we keep this music alive using what we have to hand; to make it resonate for an
audience today.
It is fairly safe to say Hildegard’s music was written for vocal performance within the context of a church service, which means in
her own lifetime she would not have heard her music performed by instruments. However, Mediva is a mixed ensemble of voices
and instruments, so we explored the pleasing disparity between the heavenly voices of Yukie and Anna fusing together like angels,
to Corina’s almost byzantine interpretation and Anna’s estampiesque treatment of the music. As such, each musician enjoyed the
opportunity to express their own personal connection to Hildegard’s music, an enjoyment they hope is shared by everyone who
listens to this CD.
Ann Allen
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The prominence  – the phenomenon  – of
Hildegard of Bingen
(1098-1179)
is of relatively recent origin. She played little or no
role in the written histories of medieval music until towards the
end of the last century. Even the Church didn’t get round to her
official canonisation until 2012. An award-winning recording by
Gothic Voices in the early 1980s was an introduction for many to
her music, and since that time her reputation has grown; she has
proved an attractive figure to scholars, theologians, musicians,
poets and feminist thinkers  – not to mention an eclectic range
of alternative and new age perspectives  – as evidenced by
recordings, books, conferences and a huge number of websites.
Had she written no music, Hildegard would still claim attention
as an extraordinary figure. Her surviving work includes visionary
theology, writings on medicine and botany, and correspondence
with Popes and Emperors. Her musical legacy, however, is what
sets her apart from other Christian visionaries of the Middle
Ages. Not that she was alone in having musical visions: her
contemporary, the extraordinary hermit St. Godric of Finchale
(c.1065-1170), left us three songs inspired by the Virgin Mary. But
Hildegard was unique in producing a substantial body of musical
work, with a distinct identity. In an age when most of the artistic
endeavour which has survived – whether music, architecture, wall
painting or manuscript illumination – has done so anonymously,
Hildegard seems to foreshadow modern notions of a composer,
with a biography and a catalogue of some 77 compositions.
Hildegard’s musical output comprises sequences, antiphons,
responds, and hymns, as well as the liturgical drama
Ordo
Virtutum
which contains a further 82 musical numbers. Although
all her music is monophonic, she achieves a distinct musical
voice, sometimes simple and syllabic but often more elaborate
and highly melismatic, seeming to reflect directly the ecstatic
nature of her visions. Her technique of using and re-using a
small number of recognisable melodic patterns gives her music
a surprisingly modern sense of style and compositional integrity,
and enables her voice to continue to speak to us from the
historically and culturally remote past of a medieval Rhineland
convent in Bingen.
The pieces comprising
Hugh Collins Rice’s Sequentiae
Hildegardenses
were written intermittently over a period
of about 12 years, as part of a collaborative project with the
ensemble Mediva. The first parts to be written were purely
instrumental, designed to provide contrasting material to live
vocal performance of Hildegard’s music. Many of the pieces
evolved over time through several versions, according to the
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requirements of a particular performance, performer or
instrument. The six pieces presented here, each for a different
combination of voices and instruments, emerged from this
evolutionary process; the numbering of the pieces reflects order
of composition rather than any suggested order of performance.
For a composer who has often been drawn to the ideas and
techniques of early music, collaboration with Mediva provided
a rare and intriguing opportunity to write for combinations of
instruments largely unexplored in modern times. Writing for
medieval instruments does present very particular challenges;
for a composer brought up with the range and facility of
modern instruments these necessitate radical rethinking of
both technique and musical language. By modern standards
these instruments have very limited pitch ranges and almost
no dynamic variation. In the case of the medieval fiddle a flatter
bridge is designed to facilitate drones using the open strings
and in many cases the instruments are not fully chromatic. On
the other hand, this is a palette of timbres simply unavailable on
modern instruments. The earthy expressiveness of shawms is a
sound completely different from any of its modern successors.
The small medieval harp has a very subtle range of colour, and
the medieval fiddle has a naturally soft, veiled tone. Together
with recorders, a blended ensemble is achievable which sounds
fresh and new, despite the age of the instruments. For this reason,
and because of the original performance context of the pieces,
it was an early compositional decision not to use any extended
instrumental techniques, but simply to work with the natural
colours of the instruments.
The work is titled
Sequentiae Hildegardenses
because all the pieces
refer to a technique used in Hildegard’s own Sequences (for
example
O Euchari)
of using the same music in successive lines,
often with alteration. This type of parallel writing, of replaying
music that has already happened, is used both to structure
the pieces and to explain their fundamental relationship with
Hildegard’s own music. The technique is employed in all the
pieces on both large and smaller scales, but is particularly clear
in the three parts of the second piece in the collection,
Karitas,
which cover exactly the same musical ground three times: two
faster outer parts and a slower middle part.
As the various pieces of
Sequentiae Hildegardenses
were always
intended to be performed alongside, and as a contrast to,
Hildegard’s own music, they had to connect with Hildegard’s
work without being either pastiche or arrangement. Certain
features of Hildegard’s music made their mark directly,
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