Page 28 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

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WE SHOULD SING

PSALMS ON A

TEN-STRING PSALTERY

ORDO VIRTUTUM (c.1151), HILDEGARD OF BINGEN

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS
Early female composers
BEFORE
c. 920 The surviving two
stanzas of Jórunn Skáldmaer’s
Sendibítr (“A biting message”)
represent the longest skaldic
verse (a type of Norwegian
poem possibly sung in
performance) by a woman.
1150 In Paris, Abbess Héloïse
possibly composes the Easter
music drama Ortolanus
and the Easter sequence
Epithalamica, attributed to
theologian Peter Abelard.
AFTER ne of the most original Hildegard receives a divine
1180 Beatriz Comtessa de voices in sacred music of vision in an image from a 13th-century
Dia writes a collection of five O the early Middle Ages was manuscript. She is accompanied by
troubadour songs. The song that of the female cleric Hildegard Volmar of Disibodenberg (left) and
her confidante Richardis von Stade.
A chantar m’er de so qu’eu no of Bingen in Germany. Her musical
volria survives with notation. output is also one of the largest of
any single identifiable medieval Hildegard grew up under the
1210 Juliana of Liège may composer. Her collection entitled tutelage of a young visionary
have written music for the Symphonia armonie celestium called Jutta of Sponheim. With
Feast of Corpus Christi, revelationum (“The symphony of support from Jutta and a monk
which is said to have come the harmony of celestial revelation”), named Volmar at the abbey of
to her in a vision. for example, includes more than Disibodenberg, Hildegard learned
70 plainchant compositions. the psalms and practiced the

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