Hildegard Revived

A performance of works by Hildegard of Bingen Sunday, Nov. 15, St. John’s Cathedral

Few performers can bring old music - really old music - fully to life. But Sunday afternoon at St. John’s Cathedral, a group of 17 musicians - all women - took the audience back eight centuries into the sometimes calm, sometimes passionate beauty of the music of Hildegard of Bingen.

The afternoon’s concert, a part of The Cathedral and the Arts series, was one of the most beautiful experiences I can remember.

The concert was a celebration of the 900th anniversary of Hildegard’s birth. She was a Roman Catholic nun, a mystic, a writer on theology and the sciences, and a composer.

The performance included works Hildegard composed in honor of the Virgin Mary, a work she wrote for the dedication of a new church, scenes from her liturgical drama the “The Play of the Virtues” and songs she wrote in tribute to the martyr St. Ursula. A trio of instrumentalists improvised accompaniments for the voices and created the musical milieu by improvising preludes based on Hildegard’s melodies.

The moving spirit behind Sunday’s astonishing experience was Margriet Tindemans. A Dutch-born, Seattle-based instrumentalist, singer and scholar, Tindemans was one of the pioneers in the revival of performances of the music of Hildegard. Her unobtrusive leadership radiated magic.

Tindemans’ experience performing with the ensemble Sequentia and with other groups specializing in performing medieval music enabled her to meld her own six-member Hildegard Ensemble from Seattle with eight Spokane singers into an ensemble that seemed as much at home in the 12th century as the 20th.

The mixture that made the performance so moving was a combination of sound and atmosphere. The singers used little vibrato, sang medieval Latin (not “modern” Italianate church Latin) with excellent diction, and had a fine command of the flexible rhythm Hildegard’s music (all medieval music, actually) requires.

The cathedral, with its haunting near-echoy sound and with the late afternoon sun making the rose windows glow before giving way to candle-lit dusk, provided the right atmosphere. The performance enjoyed a capacity audience so attentive and reverent that the listeners themselves became part of the pleasure.