Saturday, October 27, 2012

O Vis Eternitatis

If you are like me and have been looking for St. Hildegard's music online (not just recordings), you've probably run into some of the same problems I have.  There are only a few transcriptions available online, and those transcriptions represent only a couple of Hildegard's works.  Most of those transcriptions are in modern notation which for me goes one step too far.  The Riesencodex is also available online, but it uses older neumes that require some knowledge to read.  Sequentia (musical group) has done many recordings of Hildegard's music which are respectable.

I have decided to create a project which will make transcriptions of Hildegard's music available in modern Gregorian neumes (using gregorio).  The project is located here on google code where anyone interested is welcome to contribute (especially if you are some kind of expert, which I am not).

To give you some idea, here is the Riesencodex Manuscript of "O Vis Eternitatis"



I listened to Sequentia to hear how they interpret the neumes.  I am guessing they are using a different manuscript because there are a few places where, if that isn't the case, they have employed artistic license.  Most important among these discrepancies are the places where we see the leap of a fourth or fifth above the staff, Sequentia is heard to be singing a minor third - which is not musically unpleasant and possibly is written that way in a different manuscript.  I read a blog post on different possible interpretations of the different manuscripts, but to make my life simpler, I have decided to avoid exegetical questions between the Dendermonde and Riesencodex to produce something that is as faithful as possible (update: I found a guide to reading the neumes here and as a consequence will need to rework a little the O Vis Eternitatis) to the Riesencodex:



3 comments:

  1. Wow! I can't imagine how much work you had to put into this (or is that the beauty of the Google Code -- it does the work for you?) As I have no training in Hildegard's music (or in medieval music generally, besides being an avid listener), I can't say that I can help much with the project, but you have my prayers nonetheless!

    Just two quick typographical corrections in the text, however (I don't have the competency to critique the musical notation): in line 5, "a" and "maximo" should be separated as two words; and in lines 5-7, the final syllable of "benignitas" is an "a", not "i".

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  2. Nathaniel - Thanks for the corrections. I made them and updated the file. I still need to go back through it and adjust my reading of the neumes to the one here.

    It is a bit of work, but it didn't take long to get used to reading the neumes - the rest should flow pretty easily. Now that I have a more authoritative source for interpreting the neumes, I'll be even more satisfied with the result.

    "Gregorio" (Gregorian Chant typesetting program), takes raw text command style input, and takes care of the layout. Rather than a typical WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) word processor, it functions as a WYSIWYM (What you see is what you mean) extension to Tex (a document typesetter). In other words, all I have to worry about is the content itself - the layout is calculated automatically based on the content.

    Thanks for your careful eye and above all your prayers!
    Br. Francis

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  3. Are you still working on this project. Very much agree how fantastic de gregrorian notition is for this music as way to read and sing close to the neums...Thanks for you inspiration. Antje de Wit, the Netherlands

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