After the party: Hildegard since 1998

1998 marked the 900th anniversary of the birth of Hildegard von Bingen, and the world-or at least the part that's interested in the 12th century-took note. New scholarship poured forth, classic texts were reissued, recording after recording appeared, and not just one but at least three separate multi-day conferences took place: in Houston, Vermont and in Bingen itself.

Hildegard is used to having parties in her honour; they have been going on at the appropriate intervals since 1879, and will probably continue as long as we care about the Middle Ages. The burst of publications accompanying such celebrations is nothing new, either. Johann Philipp Schmelzeis's Das Leben und Wirken den hl. Hildegardis, the first 'modern' book devoted to her, came from 1879, for example, and later anniversaries have been similarly marked. What was new about this past one was the sheer volume of interest, as well as a return, in some quarters at least, to views questioning the nature of her accomplishments. Perhaps most prominent in this respect was the essay in the August 1998 issue of Early music, a mere month before Hildegard's feast day of 17 September (the focal point of the largest celebration, in Bingen). Here Richard Witts, whose biography suggested a longstanding interest not in medieval music but rather in icon debunking, questioned (among other things) whether Hildegard had even written music at all, though unfortunately without examining the evidence that suggests that scenario. That essay's appearance was particularly ironic within an issue whose front cover depicted one of the most attractive of all illustrations connected with Hildegard (from the Lucca manuscript of her final visionary work, Liber divinorum operum), and whose back cover was an advertisement for the many Hildegard CDs of the noted ensemble Sequentia, who have recorded almost her entire musical output.

Though Witts offered the most extreme rethinking about Hildegard's music, others questioned various aspects of conventional wisdom (more on this below). The stage was thus set for lively debate. Yet, like so many anniversaries, Hildegard's latest, on the surface at least, slowed down the output of material. The magic publication date of 1998 graced many a creation; the years following have been much less fruitful. Although at least three books are in the works (mine, a joint effort by Stefan Morent and Marianne Richart Pfau, and one by Margot Fassler), the publication of Barbara Stühlmeyer's long-awaited dissertation on Hildegard's songs marks the first major production on her music since the anniversary year.

Stühlmeyer's introduction lays out the scope of Hildegard's work, and is followed by a short, conventional overview of her life and education (no sign, for example, of John Van Engen's bold idea that the document from Pope Eugenius supposedly supporting Hildegard never existed). The next chapter examines the various kinds of evidence that have convinced all but Witts that Hildegard wrote the text and music for 77 songs and the play with music Ordo virtutum: the presence of the music and texts in manuscripts of Hildegard's work, the letter from Magister Odo of Paris commenting on Hildegard's 'new song', the letter from her provost Volmar asking where new music will come from when she is gone, the correspondence with Abbot Kuno of Disibodenberg that includes the texts for three of Hildegard's compositions concerned with St Disibod, the letter from the monk Guibert of Gembloux stating that her melodies were sung in church, the Vita by Gottfried and Theoderich asking who would not marvel at the songs she composed, and Hildegard's own testimony in the autobiographical section of the Vita-where she says she composed and sang chant-and in the foreword to her second visionary work, Liber vitae meritorum, where she says that the Symphonia (the name commonly used for the corpus of her music) was divinely revealed to her.

The third chapter gives a brief and not quite complete overview of the sources for Hildegard's music...