Modern Medieval

Program: #23-23   Air Date: Jun 01, 2023

NOTE: All of the music on this program comes from the recording The Living Word with the ensemble ModernMedieval Voices directed by our guest Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek. For more information: modernmedieval.org.

ModernMedieval Voices is all-female ensemble created by Dr. Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek to present programs that combine medieval chant and polyphony with new commissions and music from later eras. She is joined by singers drawn from some of the country's leading early and new music ensembles, including Roomful of Teeth, Pomerium, and Trinity Wall Street Choir.​

ModernMedieval Voices takes the vocal techniques developed by Anonymous 4 for singing this repertoire and combines early music with new voices and perspectives, a fresh approach to programming that introduces this wonderful music to new audiences. Programs for the ensemble range from early music offerings to world premieres of new work, usually combinations of both.

ModernMedieval Voices has made appearances at The Ecstatic Music Festival, Liquid Music, MetArtsLive, Electric Earth Concerts, National Museum for Women DC and Virginia Arts Festival, among others, and has given residencies at East Carolina University, SUNYBinghamton and Princeton as part of Princeton Sound Kitchen. Other appearances have included performing with The Folger Consort DC and the Caramoor Music Festival. This coming season includes concerts at Notre Dame University, Princeton University and Dumbarton Oaks in D.C., as well as singing in the world premiere of Christopher Tin's To Shiver the Sky in D.C. They are featured on Grammy award-winning composer Christopher Tin’s recording of this work on the Decca label.

ModernMedieval Voices presents a program of chants by Hildegard von Bingen paired with new works inspired by her music, her life and her message. The title The Living Word refers to the fact that Hildegard was a pioneer — a woman ahead of her time. Her words, music, and achievements continue to resonate today. Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179) is revered as a mystic, poetess, composer and visionary. Her music consists of over 70 chants known collectively as Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum (Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations) and her morality play Ordo virtutum (Play of the Virtues), which includes more than 80 songs.

Given to the monastery at Disibodenberg when she was a child, Hildegard was placed under the care of the anchoress Jutta of Sponheim, a woman who devoted herself to the teachings of God and education of girls. Over the years the community of women grew under Hildegard and Jutta’s guidance and upon Jutta’s death in 1136 Hildegard took over as magistra, or leader, of the community. In 1150, after leaving Disibodenberg, Hildegard and her nuns moved to Bingen and re-founded the monastery of Saint Rupert on the Rhine. Hildegad wrote two large-scale chants to commemorate Saint Disibode and Saint Rupert — O Presul vere Civitatis and O Jerusalem — which begin and end our program. These chants are examples of a sequence — a form of composition common in the Twelfth Century consisting of versicles, that is a verse divided into two parts. Usually both parts of a verse were set to the same melody, with each subsequent verse having a different melody, producing the melodic structure of AA, BB, CC etc. Hildegard departed frequently from this format; often the second part of each versicle is an elaboration of the material in the first, becoming increasingly inventive as the piece progresses and the poetic stanzas lengthen. 

The three short chants Karitas Habundat, O Virtus Sapientie and Spiritus Sanctus Vivificans portray Hildegard’s vision of the Holy Spirit as the Divine Feminine, a being representing Love (Karitas) and Wisdom (Sapientia), who protects and inspires humanity. O Viridissima Virga is a rapturous hymn portraying the Virgin Mary as the bringer of new life through poetic images of nature’s renewal. The four pieces by Daniel Thomas Davis, Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, Caroline Shaw, and Caleb Burhans were all commissioned by Modern Medieval, and represent each composer’s unique approach to interpreting and reinventing Hildegard’s musical language and philosophy. 

Three-Winged Wisdom, by Daniel Thomas Davis, expands on the melody of O Virtus Sapientie underpinned with a pulsing rhythmic figure that uses text from Hildegard’s Lingua Ignota: an invented, secret language she devised for reasons that still remain unclear. The result is two fundamentally separate muical layers, each informing  the other but each with its own distinct language and personality.

Jacqueline Horner-Kwatek’s Meditation is inspired by Hildegard’s vision of wisdom and love as embodiments of the Divine Feminine. It is a meditation on the nature and beauty of Wisdom, using drones and melodic motives that are hallmarks of Hildegard’s compositional style. Caroline Shaw’s Caritas Abundat deconstructs the text of the Hildegard chant, allowing the voices to contemplate the words, and their meaning, through repetition and soaring melodic lines. We Cannot Live, by Caleb Burhans, is a setting of an excerpt from an article written by Elaine Bellezza entitled ‘Hildegard von Bingen, Warrior of Light’ — the text frequently has been attributed to Hildegard herself. The piece uses cyclical melodic and rhythmic figures to create an hypnotic examination of the text and its message.

Composer Info

Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, Hildegard Von Bingen, Daniel Thomas Davis, Caroline Shaw, Caleb Burhans,