Voices Found: Missa de Sancta Hildegard: WLP#841, 842, VF #105, Enriching our Music: 2 #123, 144

 

Hildegard's Kyrie is the first piece I found when I began to search the Bryn Mawr/ Haverford Libraries for liturgical music  by women composers. There I was  astonished to find the very first musical setting of the Eucharistic Liturgy by a woman, Hildegard of Bingen, Abbess. I made a copy and brought it to St. Mark's Philadelphia to share with the priest, Paulette Schiff, and a women's group.  Paulette sang the Kyrie (that I had transcribed into current notation) for an evening Eucharist where newly authorized inclusive language texts were used. Soon,  Bishop Allen Bartlett of the Diocese of Pennsylvania became interested. The Diocese helped me share my work more broadly.  As a result, my transcription of Hildegard's Kyrie is published by Church Publishing, Inc. in the second hymnal supplement of the Episcopal Church, Wonder Love and Praise.  In addition to the transcription, I wrote  a simplified arrangement that is easy for a congregation to sing. It, too, is published in Wonder, Love, and Praise. I was excited to bring the work of the 12th century Abbess into today's worship. 

 Kyrie may be sung during penitential liturgies, especially at the beginning of a Eucharist.  With its florid melismas, Hildegard's music is appropriate for a soloist or a small group of trained singers.  Bells or an improvised drone may accompany it, so there are optional bell  suggestions in the hymnal. It is not known if Hildegard used  instruments, but in other Abbeys at that time,  composers were experimenting with early polyphony, called organum (vocal instrumental lines sung or played parallel to the main chant at the octave, the fifth, or the fourth) It is certainly possible that such parallel voices were improvised at Hildegard'sAbbey.  There are performance  suggestions in the Leader's Guide to Wonder, Love, and Praise.  

                                                        

                                                   

Kyrie is the only movement of the Ordinary of the Mass that Hildegard set musically. It can be sung in liturgies for either the Office or Mass.  The Abbess  composed most of her liturgical  music for  the Divine Office, or daily prayers, which her nuns could sing   without  a male priest as leader. We can assume that the nuns sang Hildegard's Kyrie as part of the Office.  

At the top of this post is picture of  Hildegard's Kyrie as preserved with much of her other work in the Riesencodex, a huge medieval  manuscript.  It is the later of two manuscripts that preserve Hildegard's music. She, herself, supervised the production of that manuscript at the end of her life, toward the beginning of the 12th century. It remained at her Abbey  for many centuries until it was almost lost in war.

   A photo of the Riesencodex

During the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), the nuns of  Rupertsberg Abbey fled the Abbey  with the Codex to Eibigen (another monastery that Hildegard founded) when Swedish troops looted the Rupertsberg.   In 1814 the Codex was moved to the State Library of Wiesbaden, in the Hesse state of Germany.  During the Second World War it was sent to Dresden where it survived the firebombing inside a bank vault. There the Soviets took it as their  property after the war. An American soldier rescued it and returned it to the  Wiesbaden Library through a clever ruse set up with the library director.  The Soviets complained. Later in a book exchange deal, the Soviets  allowed the Wiesbaden Library to keep the Riesencodex where it now resides. (Wikipedia)

                              

Missa de Sancta Hildegard

Although Hildegard did not set any other Mass movements, I used some of her melodies to create simple musical settings of the  Sursum Corda (EOM 123) and the Agnus Dei (EOM144) at the request of the  Rev. Paulette Schiff  and the women's group at St. Mark's. Those pieces are published in Enriching Our Music 2 as part of my Missa de Sancta Hildegard.  If you would like to sing a  setting of the Mass inspired by Hildegard, you could use the original Kyrie or my simpler arrangement of it, both in  in Wonder Love and Praise.  Hildegard's Laus Trinitati, (Voices Found # 105) could serve as the song of praise  with the Sursum Corda and Agnus from the Missa de Sancta Hildegard published in Enriching Our Music 2  

                                                       

                      https://www.churchpublishing.org/products/enrichingourmusic22

For more information and performance suggestions please see:

                                                                        

https://www.churchpublishing.org/products/voicesfound2