Hildegard of Bingen, Ordo Virtutum: Vox Animae, Michael Fields (Director) Members of the Manchester Chamber Choir, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester. 7.6. 2007 (RJF)

 

Hildegard of Bingen was born to noble parents in the small village of Bemersheim, near Alzey, Rheinhessen, Germany in 1098. She was the tenth child and as such was dedicated at birth to the church as a tithe child, in the same way that one tenth of income was offered as  a tithe. Hildegard  was obviously unusually talented  and she attributed her skills to visions; later introspection indicating to her that she was unique in this respect. Aged eight she was put into the care of a small community of nuns attached to the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg near Bingen south of Mainz. At 38 she founded her own convent and became Abbess. Four years later a vision, told her to cast off her humility, and although this was a period when few women wrote, she set down her visions and spiritual knowledge in three books illustrated by ‘illuminations’ of her visions.

Hildegard ultimately became known as The Sybil of the Rhine and was the most celebrated woman of her age, consulted by Bishops, Popes and Kings. She was a considerable polymath,  writing music, plays and  poetry as well as more fundamental scripts on the nature of life including books on natural history and medicine – her insights into female reproductive and sexual activity were, to say the least, unexpected in a celibate Abbess. She ascribed all of these works to her visions and spiritual knowledge.

Spiritual knowledge also illuminated her music. Hildegard was a prolific composer of spiritual songs, introduced to lay audiences (as distinct from early music specialists) by the recording A feather on the breath of God issued on the Hyperion label. Performed by Emma Kirkby and Gothic Voices this disc achieved a Gramophone Award in 1983. Since then scholarship has moved on considerably as has performing practice not least under the influence of Michael Fields, Evelyn Tubb and Vox Animae who brought Hildegard’s Ordo Virtutum to Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall.

Ordo Virtutum (The Rite of the Virtues) is the oldest surviving music drama, and perhaps Hildegard's greatest musical work. It represents her vision of the Soul’s choice between innocence and experience, between devotion and temptation. The list of virtues extends beyond the commonplace to a total of seventeen of which the Queen is Humility. Evelyn Tubb, with her vast experience in this field, allied to her extensive vocal range and dynamic, sang this pivotal role. Of particular note to me was the contrast of her ability to sing full out and move quickly to sotto voce, yet with every word of the text extending out into the audience with penetration and clarity. As the Soul, Ansy Boothroyd's voice had not quite the same quality but her acted and sung portrayal was nonetheless very moving:  her initial response to the temptations of the Devil being particularly sensuous when Satan slipped off her white habit to reveal a black shoulderless dress with white hem, a symbol perhaps of Soul's innate purity. This contrasted nicely with  Ms Boothroyd's  portrayal of Soul's later penitence when her plaintive singing at the restoring of the  white habit was particularly expressive and affecting.

Most of the rest of Vox Animae sang and acted two of the virtues each. The tonal range of the voices was the usual female compass and they achieved appreciable sonority when singing in unison. The quality of the individual singing of the various virtues, with only the occasional pitching assistance from Michael Fields on a medieval harp, was of an all-round excellent standard in what is clearly a very difficult technical discipline. The group, appropriately robed, moved around the stage and enhanced the unfolding drama with appropriate gestures and body movements. Audience appreciation of the drama, sung in clear Latin, was aided by the full libretto and translation available in the programme.

If Soul was  to be tempted by the Devil,  there had to be some  men around. A mixed male and female group from the Manchester Chamber Choir sang the Patriarch and Prophets with good early music style at the start and then sat among the audience. John Hanson, a singer in his own right, took the spoken part of the devil. Looking appropriately debonair he would have tempted many a pent up virgin! His spoken declamation was strong and his intentions clear. He takes this part in the DVD recording of this work by Vox Animae.

The large Bridgewater Hall was only sparsely populated for this concert, and this  is probably  a reflection of the general lack of awareness of the beauty of both this music itself and of Vox Animae's  combination of  scholarship and vocal skill in early music drama. Michael Fields gave a most informative pre-performance talk whilst Evelyn Tubb appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour on the morning of the performance. I hope that the publicity for their DVD, and the broadcasts, will bring their work (and the performance of early music drama in general) to a wider audience. Certainly the quality of performance and the detail of presentation it represented deserved a bigger audience. I hope too that the warmth of the audience reception at the Bridgewater Hall served to give satisfaction to the performers: they deserved all of it.  

 

Robert J Farr