Oddly, until the beginning of this year, I had not performed any of the works of Hildegard Von Bingen. Now, finally, I have been given the excuse I needed to catch up on this incredible medieval figure, who, to my astonishment, is not even mentioned in many standard History of Music text books. My thanks go to Stevie Wishart for reawakening my interest in this amazing woman.
Hildegard von Bingen was born in 1098. She was a German abbess, a mystic and a writer. She is also one of the earliest composers with a known biography, and one of very few recognized female composers. She had visions that she recorded both visually and in writing; she wrote medical and scientific treatises, as well as poetry, which she set to music. She even created her own language. Thanks to her prophecies and visions she was known as the ‘Sybil of the Rhine’; she was involved in politics and diplomacy and was a powerful and influential woman.
Her musical output comprises settings of some 77 lyrical poems that together form a liturgical cycle. She also wrote the earliest known morality play Ordo Virtutum.
Hildegard’s poetic chants were newly composed and not based on existing plainchant melodies. Thanks to her repeated use of certain melodic formulae, her works are instantly recognisable. The chants were notated in a system of medieval German neumes. This very early form of notation is fairly clear as to pitch. However, the interpretation of the rhythm is much less straightforward, and this leads to an interesting array of different performances of Hildegard’s work.
Hildegard’s chants are meditative, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes surprisingly sensual (‘a dripping honeycomb was Ursula the virgin’). Her inspiration came largely from the lives of her favourite saints, such as Saints Disibod, Rupert and Ursula.
You can read more about Hildegard Von Bingen here. You can also listen to the sound samples provided via the discography.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
On Wednesday I paid a visit to the Rubens exhibition at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Belgium.
Rubens, perhaps the best known of all Flemish Painters, lived from 1577 to 1640. He was a hugely talented portrait painter. His studies, for example of an old man used in ‘Christ and the Adulterous Woman’, and of a moor used in ‘The Adoration of the Magi’, are full of energy and life. Just brilliant.
However, Rubens is perhaps best known for his large-scale works – altarpieces and the like. In connection with these, two thoughts persisted as I left the exhibition :
- Why did the energy and vigour of many of the studies not make their way into the final, large-scale work? There are several possible reasons for this. Maybe Rubens left rather a lot to his talented helpers who were then painting at second hand; maybe Rubens himself found it difficult to recapture the freshness of the original study when not working directly from life; maybe he intentionally smoothed off the ‘rough edges’ in order to produced a more polished, though also more static, final result.
- In any event, I was left with the impression of Rubens as essentially a popular artist: someone who used his art, presumably at the behest of his sponsors, to arouse broad-brush emotions concerning love, pain and death.
But for me the real beauty of his work lies in the smaller detail : the brief study of a leg bent at the knee seen from behind with its eloquent toes.
And here I find a parallel in music : while I can appreciate and admire many a musical work that wears its heart upon its sleeve, there remains for me more magic in something a little more quirky, a little further from the beaten track. Of course, that which is popular is usually popular with good reason. It’s just that something that may be appreciated by fewer may have something different but just as valuable to offer.
As a performer, one person in the audience with goose pimples is enough to make it worth while.
The Rubens exhibition runs until January 27th, 2008. It is well worth a visit.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
As the end of 2007 rapidly approaches, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Geert Allegaert for his invaluable help in setting up this website for me.
My thanks also to you for taking the time to visit.
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas with much jollity, a fair amount of silliness and lots of good things to eat and drink.
May 2008 bring you redoubled energy, new chances and fresh ideas.
Monday, December 10, 2007
I am looking for a venue in Brussels in which to perform my latest programme : Poetry in Music.
Ideally, the concert would take place in February or March 2008.
If you know of a small concert hall with an intimate atmosphere (seating-capacity of about 150 people), a good acoustic and a decent piano, please post a comment below and let me know!
Saturday, December 8, 2007
On Monday I heard the Flemish cellist Roel Dieltiens playing Brahms and Schubert with his chamber music group Ensemble Explorations. The two works featured were Brahms’ second sextet Op. 36 and Schubert’s string quintet in C.
The musicians played on ‘original’ instruments – that meant, for example, gut strings, and no spikes for the cellos. The resulting sound, especially for the Schubert, was triumphant (even if tuning was more of a problem than usual). The clarity of the middle voices was particularly striking.
Although baroque chamber music is now almost always performed on period instruments, most chamber groups perform classical, romantic and modern music without changing instruments according to the repertoire.
Why is this? Is the chamber music world simply lagging behind, or are there other reasons to explain this phenomenon? Is it because of practical difficulties created by the traditional mix of musical styles in a chamber music concert? Or do we in some way still accept Haydn as the start of ‘modern’ chamber music?
Do you have another explanation?
