O quam mirabilis

The 12th-century German abbess Hildegard von Bingen is one of the most well-known early composers, highly regarded for her extensive corpus of sacred vocal works, as well as her contributions to religious and scientific literature. The Benedictine nun claimed to receive great visions from God, and she often found a way of including the content of such visions in her music. Hildegard provided both notation and text for the non-liturgical antiphon O, quam mirabilis, allowing her ultimate creative control in the communication of its message. In this piece, which meditates on the divine creation of humanity, language concerning the divine foreknowledge of God occupies the highest register of the antiphon. By contrast, references to humanity and God’s other created forms rest in the lower range, creating a noticeable sonic demarcation between the divine and the created. Hildegard’s setting of the divine “heart” (pectoris), however, shares melodic material with the setting of “human face” (faciem hominis), thereby musically linking the divine and the human, as well as the heavenly and the earthly, through the heart of God.

(c) Emily Masincup and Jason Stell