penelope turner

Between the drilling and the banging of next door’s renovation project and the clicks and buzzes of my imperfect recording set-up, I post a hymn for Saint Matthias. Until 1969, the feast day of Saint Matthias was today – February 24th (it was then moved to May 14th so as not to fall within Lent).

Saint Matthias, like many of the saints honoured by Hildegard, has a connection to Trier: some of his remains reside there, at the Abbey of Saint Matthias.

mathias sanctus per electionem

#hildegardvonbingen #chant #facsimile

Mathias, holy by selection, a man, champion in victory, who was not elected before the blood of the lamb, he was tardy in his knowledge – like a man not quite awake. The gift of god excited him, so that he rose up for joy, like a giant in his strength, and god foresaw it, as he had foreseen how man, formed of clay, who denied god, fell – like the first angel. Man, who saw choice, alas, alas, he fell, he turned his face away from the oxen and rams that he had and abandoned them. And so he entered the pit of coal and kissing his desires in his ardour raised them up like olympians. Then mathias, divinely chosen, rose up like a giant, because god put him in the place that fallen man had rejected, o wonderful miracle, that shone in him. And so, god foresaw him in his miracles, although he had not yet the merit of works, but the mystery of god had joy in him, joy, that at its conception, it did not have. O joy of joys that god works in this way, when unknowing man spends his grace, and the child does not know where the adult flies, the child is carried by the wings of god. And so, god loves he who knows him not, because his voice calls out for god, just as mathias did, saying: o god, o my god, you who created me, all my works are yours. And so all the church has joy in mathias, who was chosen by god in the dove’s nest. Amen.

February 2nd is the feast day for the purification of the Virgin Mary. It is also the feast of Candlemas – a celebration of the coming of light. I have selected o tu illustrata as my appropriate chant. It is a votive antiphon for the VM, who, according to the text, is lit by divine brightness – so it rather fits the double bill.

I didn’t realize before I started work on o tu illustrata that I would need to make some tricky decisions. Here’s why:

This chant is in only one manuscript (the Riesencodex), so comparison to resolve any notation issues is impossible. The modern edition most often relied upon (originally by Otto Müller and published in the Beuroner Kunstverlag edition) diverges wildly from the note pitches indicated in the manuscript (see below, where I have indicated in yellow where most interpreters have altered the original), and all the recordings I have so far heard either follow this modern edition, or make their own amendments (e.g., Sequentia) to keep the chant clearly centred on re.

I do understand why – and if this were a normal antiphon, with a psalm cadence attached, I might agree (each mode has its own psalm cadence, and so it would be tricky if the antiphon shifted between modes).

But I have decided to sing this chant in its original version, following the manuscript, and here are my reasons:

1. This is not a antiphon that would have been sung with a psalm. It’s a votive antiphon and would have been sung separately, at the beginning or end of an office. It has its own “versicle” written out. Therefore, it does not need a psalm cadence, and Hildegard was potentially free to wander.
2. While there are a few scribal errors in the manuscripts, usually the errors relate to a small group of neumes. Take my last chant, for example: in the Riesencodex the responsory rex noster begins on re, but the rest of the chant is clearly in mi mode. Fortunately, rex noster is also in the Dendermonde manuscript, where it does starts on mi, so my decision to treat the first neume in the Riesencodex as a clerical error was quickly made. In o tu illustata, however, long sections of chant are treated by most interpreters as incorrectly pitched (see below). But errors of this length? It’s easy to imagine a scribe being briefly distracted and writing a handful of neumes on the wrong line; it’s harder to imagine a scribe perpetuating his or her mistake line after line, when at the beginning of each line there is a clear reminder of where the do and the fa are situated on the stave.
3. Allowing modal shifts like this makes for a very interesting chant :-).
4. If the antiphon is repeated after the versicle, which I presume it would have been but which most interpreters do not do, the shifting modes make musical sense to my ear.

One last remark: following the original notation, a vocal range of two and a half octaves is required. I have transposed the chant down a fourth so as to be able to sing it.

If you have any thoughts on this, I’d love to hear from you. Please don’t hesitate to leave me a comment!

#hildegardvonbingen #chant #facsimile

o tu illustrata

O you, illuminated by the divine brightness, bright virgin mary, infused by god’s word, how your womb flowered by the coming of god’s spirit, which gave you breath, and, in you, you exhaled what eve removed, withering purity through the carnally touched contagion of the devil’s suggestion. You miraculously hid within yourself the immaculate flesh, that through divine reason with the son of god flowered in your womb, he being brought forth by divine holiness, against the laws of the flesh that eve constructed, in the whole coming together in divine flesh.

On December 28th, it was the feast day in honour of the Holy Innocents. I have to admit that I had to double-check this one. It refers to the massacre by King Herod of all male children of two years old and under in and around Bethlehem. The Catholic Church regards them as the first Christian martyrs. Hildegard von Bingen wrote a responsory for them:

rex noster promptus est suscipere sanguinem innocentum

Our king is prompt to receive the blood of the innocents of whom the angels sing and make sound in praise but the clouds weep for the same blood. The tyrant however is suffocated by his own malice in the heavy sleep of death. But the clouds weep for the same blood. Glory be to the father and to the son and to the holy ghost. But the clouds weep for the same blood.

The Riesencodex begins this chant on a D. I am treating this as a clerical error.