hildegard's music

I've been meaning to post a link to a bit of the music Stephen and I sang as part of the big chorus for performances of Ordo Virtutum this past weekend.

Take a listen here.

The first two lines of this sequence were sung by a soloist, and we came in on postea viriditas descendit. Later, greenness sank away. If you push it ahead to 312, you come to another part where the chorus sings. Including the veeeeeery long porigat at the end--well, the po... being long and the rigat being slow and final and immensely satisfying.

There were a lot of parts of this that were very satisfying coming up from your body and out of your mouth. Including the non-singing parts, which were the chorus playing the role of the Devil. The Euge part, which I talked about in an earlier post, was lovely satisfying because we kicked it out in a big, loud, low bellow. The pleasure was also in the rhythm and sound of the words.

Quis est tantus timor?
et quis est tantus amor?
Ubi est pugnator,
et ubi est remunerator?

Lovely repeats and serendipitous rhymings, the rhythm and the periodic breaks in rhythm - and we performed it in its own repeat, with one member shouting each line and the rest of the chorus shouting it back... I hate to keep using the same word over and over, but this was so satisfying to recite.

It was interesting feeling that great enjoyment of words for mostly their sound, without the usual instant recognition of meaning. When we were delivered the cue sheets on Friday, they were nothing but words on a page. A heap of sound. By Saturday, as we were bellowing them out in performance, they were a kind of music.