LECTURE: HILDEGARD OF BINGEN: MEDIEVAL MYSTICISM: MUSIC, NUNS, PAIN AND VISIONS
MARCH 4, 2008 Sheila
Roberts
MUSIC: “O Ierusalem: De sancto
Ruperto” Gothic Voices TRACK 4
1. INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
AND THE WORLD OF THE MYSTIC: USE MUSIC
AND HILDEGARD'S MUSIC
We
have probably all had experiences which would be defined as mystical.
Mysticism
is the expression of the innate tendency of the human spirit towards complete
harmony with the transcendental order; whatever be the theological formula
under which that order is understood.
This tendency, in great mystics, gradually captures the whole field of
consciousness; it dominates their life and , in the experience called “mystic
union,” attains its goals. Whether that
goal (end) be called the God of Christianity, and Islam, the Worldsoul of
Pantheism, the Absolute of Philosophy (to name a few). the desire to attain it and the movement
towards it—so long as this is a genuine life process and not an intellectual
speculation is the centre of the life of a mystic. The measure of a mystic is the life that
she/he lives after the return from Mystical Union. The life should reflect absolute love and
compassion.
This is a natural human activity, which
almost all human’s have been a part, so lets talk about this. Evelyn Underhill.
Two mystical paths:
via negative: the mind is emptied of thoughts and images
and the way is through the darkness
via positive: images, visualization, quided meditation
Let me give you an example: via negative.
close your eyes, and clear all thoughts from your mind and all
images---keep pushing thoughts away, pay attention to your breath, and keep
images pushed away as well. NOT AT ALL
EASY
via positive: close your eyes, pay attention to your
breathing, and then imagine the following scene. You are feeling warm and wonderful, and you
wonder outside to a place that you are especially happy in. You sit down and look around you, feeling
warm and secure and interested in your surroundings.
The
end result is described in the same way, but the pathway is different
Both of these paths lead finally, after many, many years, perhaps, to
a unitive experience, and these experiences are described in exactly the same
imagery, even though the paths are different.
Let’s
start with Hildegard. Hildegard is a
visionary, she probably experienced union, she certainly indicates that she
had. However Hildegard is closer to the
Old Testament prophets than most definitions of mysticism would expect. She sees her role, and probably God sees her
role also, as an advisor to clerics and lay people alike, giving them
encouragement and admonishment, and often delivering penance to the less ardent
than herself. However, Hildegard does experience
mystic visions throughout her life, from early childhood, and she stresses
often that she sees these visions while totally awake and conscious, and whilst
still being able to see the natural world.
She experiences the Voice of the Living Light—as light and sound, and
sometimes she hears and experiences the voice of God and the voice of the
Shadow of the Living Light.
Hildegard was born in 1098, the tenth
child of a noble family. She remembers
experiencing visions from the age of three (like Blake). When she was seven or eight her parents gave
her as an oblation to the church and at the age of fourteen to live with Jutta, a young woman who was six
years older than Hildegard in a recluses cell attached to a monastery in the
Rhineland of Germany, at an Abbey called St Disibod with other young
women. Explain the ceremony of
Enclosure. The ceremony took place on
All Saints, 1112, when the two young women with at least one other were
formally enclosed in a cell, intended to be their home for life. Buried with Christ. Jutta was extremely ascetic, and devoted
herself to prayer, fasting, vigils nakedness and cold and tortured her body
with a hair shirt and an iron chain. She
died at the age of forty four, and Hildegard was elected to be the magistra or
abbess of the ten disciples that had lived with Jutta. She continued in this role until in her early
forties God commanded her to “cry out and write” what she saw in her
visions. She had told almost no one but
Jutta and the monk Volmar about them until then, although she had them almost
continually. Migrains. Very ill most of her life, and often in great
pain. Hildegard becomes very sick when
she ignores God’s command and finally with Volmar’s encouragement and the
cautions support of the abbot, she embarks and writing down her visions. Hildegard describes her visions and writes
(or has written down) the words that she hears from the Living Light or the
Shadow of the Living light.
p. 11:
In about 1146-47 Hildegard hears St. Bernard preach, and writes a letter
to him describing her visions and seeks his consolation and advice. Her encourages her, and urges her to “rejoice
int he grace of God”, and to pray for his sinful self. But about a year later Bernard along with
Pope Eugene III visited the Phineland city of Trier for a synod, and when
Eugene heard about Hildegard, he secured a manuscript of the unfinished Scivias, and he had it “read before many
and himself read it out also. He sent
her a letter commanding her to continue to record her visions. This made Hildegard a celebrity, know throughout
Europe. She was told by God to move her
community of nuns to her own Abbey which she did with much opposition from the
Monks and the Nuns themselves. Her
monastery was Rupertsburg. Hildegard had
little formal education, although she did learn from the Psalter, and learned
Latin from memorizing the services, but she obviously never learned Latin
Grammar which is what makes her Latin so creative, but so difficult.
She wrote music for her nuns to sing
during the daily services, she went on Preaching tours (extra-ordinary for a
female who were forbidden to Preach
she became widely sought for her medical
knowledge of cures and herbs, she wrote a book on the body and medicine.
There was much schism and controversy in
the church of her time, and she advised and chastised many of the very highest
men in the church. She was an outspoken
critic of clerical corruption and many of her letters chastise
men and women who are not living up to
their religious vows, many of whom were her monastic superiors. At other times she played the role of
peacekeeper. Beginning in 1158 at the
age of sixty she made four preaching tours traveling to other monastic
communities preaching and encouraging nuns and monks to reform and live strict
religious lives.
One of her miracles was the healing of a
woman possessed by a demon. Others had
failed to help this poor soul, but Hildegard finally attempted a cure, when she
was received at her nunnery. She was
there for the whole of Lent, and very disruptive, but finally at the Easter
Vigil , When the priest solemnly consecrated the baptismal font, the devil
“horribly departed through he woman’s shameful parts, along with
excrement. The Grateful woman, healed
and in her right mind, would spend the rest of her life as a novice at the
Rupertsberg. Hildegard’s last trial was
a interdict which was a collective excommunication which forbad the nuns to
receive Communion nor sing the Divine Office.
It was in effect for a year and Hildegard, who believed that music
carried the soul to heaven suffered terribly.
The reason was about the burial of a young man who had been
excommunicated, but received back into the church, who died and the nuns
allowed to buried in their church graveyard.
The authorities claimed he was not reconciled, and ordered the body
exhumed which Hildegard refused to do, and even hid the grave. finally after many letters pleading and much
pressure the interdict was lifted, just before her death at the age of 81.
Is she the typical mystic? Hardly.
Hildegard is an extraordinary woman.
She is not a typical anything. Musician,
artist, visionary, poet, stateswoman, preacher.
Hildegard's imagery--greenness--caritas as female, sophia,
QUOTED BY PETROFF P. 140 FROMETER DRONKE, THE MEDIEVAL LYRIC. NEW YORK: HARPER AND ROW, 1969. P. 75
Hildegard of Bingen,
prodigiously gifted in many directions, scientific, mystical and poetic,
composed a cycle of Latin liturgical lyrics in which the fusion of images is
taken to an unparalleled visionary extreme.
In its forms and melodies, as in its poetic techniques, this
"Symphony of the Harmony of Heavenly Revelations" as she called it,
stands apart from all other religious lyric, Latin or vernacular, of its time.
1>From Newman; Symphonia. P. 32
" Hildegard’s poetic
world is like the sibyl's cave: difficult of access, reverberating with cryptic
echoes. The oracle's message, once
interpreted, may or may not hold surprises.
But the suppliant emerges with a sense of initiation, and the voice
itself is unforgettable."
Hildegard's poetry is unique--unlike anything else of her time. It is free--unmetered--probably taking as its
model the liturgical chant that she heard continuously during her life. Although Hildegard uses many illusions she
doesn't quote--although the ties to the Bible are omnipresent. Her imagery is most unusual--each image
referring to a single referent, but providing simultaneously chances for total
confusion, or amazing richness.
As far as we know all Hildegard’s poems were meant to be sung--so
these are songs--where the words and the music become a single entity--and
Hildegard’s music certainly is carefully composed to echo the sense of her
text--a fascinating study if you know music and can access the musical scores.
Hildegard's title-- "SYMPHONY OF THE HARMONY OF CELESTIAL
REVELATIONS" reveals much about her thought and work. She attempts while here on earth to echo the
heavenly songs which she tells us come through her visions.
The music was intended to be sung during the divine mass at her monastery
by her nuns, or sometimes composed for other monastic communities.
Most of these songs were antiphons--freely composed texts with melody
sung before and after each psalm of the daily reciting of the divine office,
through the seven canonical hours. The
Psalms would be chanted by two half-choirs alternatively, while the antiphon
was sung by the full choir to a simple tune, which was related to the tune of
the psalm. There were longer, more elaborate antiphons after the gospel
canticles, which concluded the major hours.
The second most frequent composition in the Symphonia is the
responsory--these were sung primarily at the main service of the day--matins,
after groups of psalms, antiphons and lessons.
They were more complex than the antiphons, and allowed for soloists and
choirs to display their skill. Then
there are sequences and hymns--hymns much like the ones in the church today,
relatively simple tunes which are repeated over a number of verses, and sequences
which are perhaps more complex, but of a freer composition. Then there are two short pieces for a mass, a
Kyrie, and a sequence.
Let me explain Newman’s
translations--as she says "my verse translations, on the other hand, are
frankly and blithely interpretive...I have tried to convey the freshness and
emotional vitality of Hildegard’s songs in an idiom that is still fresh and
vital to the modern reader, without deviating from their express
content." This Newman’s attempt to
capture the genuine excitement of Hildegard’s poetry without regressing into a
style which sounds generically medieval or aesthetically preposterous.
INTRODUCTION
TO FEMALE MEDIEVAL MYSTIC DISCOURSE---Lochrie pp. 61-70
Difference
between medieval theological texts and medieval mystical texts is the reliance
of the former on auctoritas, and the reliance on the latter on direct
contact with God. So the mystic text
authorizes itself differently.
Prayer
and dialogue are the forms of mystic discourse--but the way to achieve dialogue
is the emptying of self. What the mystic
attempts to do is to create a void and emptiness into which the "divine
will" enters and speaks. The
mystic’s mode of discourse is utterance rather than statements of truth or
objects of knowledge.
The
model for such discourse is the Annunciation; the Virgin Mary retires from the
objective world, and hears the word of God--and literally, in the medieval mind,
conceives through her ear. The mystic
‘I’ is the empty space from which the other-God- speaks.
However,
this is just the beginning because the mystic does not remain an empty cipher,
for the mystic discourse is dialogic.
The mystic engages in a 'dalliance' with her God, a word has both social
and sexual connotations in the Medieval period.
So what we have in mystical texts is a dialogue , the mystical act of
speech is the act of speaking and hearing rather than assembling outside
objects and knowledge and communicating them.
It rejects the institutional and textual authorizations from outside
this dialogue as unimportant.
Where
does the authorization come for this discourse then? Ah here's the rub! It must come from within, from the very place
where this discourse takes place. The
mystic claims divine inspiration for its authority, and then continually
displays doubts about that authority.
The mystic then demands to be heard directly, as a conduit of the holy
spirit, and yet also asserts that she speaks within the context of those
institutions from which she is excluded, and which perhaps she has denied.
The
fissured text. Mystical text is written
to be heard, to be heard not only with the ears but with the spirit or soul, to
be integrated to be lived. It is not
just words on a page. However, mystical
texts always fail, they begin by stating that the experience can not be expressed,
and they continue on to prove their statement.
So the mystical text always fails in its attempt, and that failure is a
fissured at the juncture between its orality and its written form.
Mystic
discourse---Lochrie pp. 61-70
Medieval
women mystics use language and imagery in startling and unique ways. When they use nature imagery, they also use
it in ways that are distinctly different from the male mystics of the same
period. Hildegard is one of a very few
medieval at women who wrote of their mystic experiences, and whose use of
imagery leads into new concepts and approaches to God and the Universe.
Themes: Hildegard celebrates
throughout the Symphonia the mystery of
God become man as the child of Mary.
In Hildegard’s belief, God created the universe, but at that moment of
creation he was preparing for the incarnation of his Word in Christ. Adam fascinated Hildegard, and was for her a
historical person, the exemplar of the human race, as well as the precursor of
Christ. The Virgin Mary comes next after
God because of her role in history, which is logically prior to the other great
events of salvation. Mary represents for
Hildegard, divine motherhood, virginity, which is paradisiacal, and Hildegard
often compares Mary to Eve. Mary is
associated with images of growth and greenness and flowering-- paradisaical
images. Mary's purity and obedience
reversed the corruption and rebellion of Eve, thus redeeming woman --as Christ
is Adam, Mary is Eve.
Union with God is another theme, as is the suffering that sin inflicts
on the world. Hildegard uses apocalyptic
imagery continuously in which the saints become the stones of the walls of the
New Jerusalem.
. INTRODUCTION TO MIDDLE AGES
Use students: medieval religion: heaven purgatory and hell:
churches role: confession and absolution: role of priest: monastic and
recluses.
medieval political structure:
hierarchies: political structures: plague: war
Christianity: what are the basic beliefs: use students:
Sacraments: trinity: incarnation: sacred
calendar: relationship with god: bible as sacred text: passion and its meaning
Let’s look at some of these works:
Music by Hildegard of Bingen
MUSIC:
Hildegard's music is unique in the
medieval world, and rather unique in ours.
She tells us that she learned how to compose music from her visions--her
contemporaries remarked on its "amazing harmony" and its strangeness.
Hildegard's understanding of music would
now be called mystical, but she is following the beliefs of her time, which was
rather mystical. She writes that
"the very soul is symphonic", in an idea which is taken from
Pythagoras through Boethius. "the
whole structure of the soul and body is united by musical harmony. Boethius added that there are three kinds of
music.
Musica mundana---music of the
spheres--produced by the motion of celestial bodies
Musical humana==which binds the rational
to the irrational part of the soul and both to the body and is always sung with
the human voice
Musical instrumentalist--made by human
beings and the least exalted because it is farthest from the Divine
The right music linked the human to the
divine, the wrong music, or lack of music led to Satan who hated music, and
always tried to silence it
Music is artificial which is contrived by
human skill and played by instruments---music produced by the voice is
modulated by nature and is divinely inspired.
There was a fourth kind of music---Musica
Celestis--the singing of the angels in heaven---the singing of the divine
office attempted to imitate the choirs of angels.
Christ is portrayed in certain works as
musical--and as the Lord of the Dance
Hildegard’s music can be extremely
"melismatic"---more than one note to a syllables---much chant is "syllable" one note per syllable.
*Wide vocal range---often two octaves,
sometimes two and a half. She likes to
use the extreme upper and lower ranges for emphasis--she often uses tones to
paint her meaning, and she writes that she makes the music difficult to
encourage her singers (nuns) to stretch harder to read heaven.
Newman says and I agree with her that
"given her visionary conception of music it is hard to believe that the
rhapsodic quality of her lyrics did not call forth a similarly rapt,
uninhibited performance style."
The Sequentia and Gothic Voices renditions
are probably not historically accurate as they use instruments--which Hildegard
is unlikely to have used as she believed that they produced inferior music.
However, it is the perception of
virginity as the quintessence of female holiness which has such a tremendous
impact on the spirituality and the attitudes towards women. Whereas a novice monk is not particularly
gendered , the nun is always addressed as virgin--virginity is the apex of
holiness in a woman, and it is something that she brings with her into the
monastery, not something which she acquires over time. This introduces a stasis in the female
religious life, in sharp contrast to the growth expected in the male. Nuns were always viewed very much as
woman==not only woman but also bride, wife and mother--unlike monks women were
encouraged to imagine themselves in gender specific roles based on the very
sexuality they were renouncing. A monk
was never described as a husband--although he might be portrayed cross-sexually
as a bride. Marriage to Christ for the
nun was continually compared to earthly marriage--and the misogyny in these
comparisons is apparent--as is the probable truth in the bitter representations
of earthly marriage and childbirth.
----------
“O Quam Mirabilis” The Danish Hildegard Ensemble
Lux Vivens: Songs from TRACK 3
the visions of Hildegard Page 6: Number 3
‘O Vis Eternitatis’ Sequentia: TRACK 1
Canticles of Ecstasy
Page 1: Number 1
“O Virtus Sapientiae” Sequentia: TRACK 8
Symnphoniae Page 6: Number 2
“Hodie aperuit” Sequentia TRACK 2
Canticles of Ecstasy Page 1:
Number 11
“Quia ergo Femina” Sequentia TRACK 3
Canticles of Ecstasy Page 1:
Number 12
“O Quam Mirabilis” The Danish Hildegard Ensemble
Lux Vivens: Songs from TRACK 3
the visions of Hildegard Page 6: Number 3
“O quam magnum miraculum” The Danish Hildegard Ensemble
Lux Vivens: Songs from TRACK 4
the visions of Hildegard Page 4: Number 16
“I viridissima virga” Gothic Voices TRACK 6
“A Feather on the Breath of God”
Page 5: Number 19
“Ave, generosa” Gothic
Voices TRACK 2
“A Feather on the Breath of God”
Page 3: Number 17
“O nobilissima viriditas” Sequentia TRACK 16
Canticles of Ecstasy Page 3:
Number 56
“Spiritus sanctus vivificans” Sequentia TRACK 4
Canticles of Ecstasy Page 2:
Number 24
SOURCE:
HIDLEGARD OF BINGEN SYMPHONIA:
ED. BARBARA NEWMAN: CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1988.
PP.17-32