Abstract

The framework for Hildegard’s music drama the Ordo Virtutum depends upon the contrast between speech and song. Satan’s five speeches are carefully positioned to unfold within a battle for control of the fallen soul, Anima, who is tutored by a group of virtues to regain the musical prowess she had at the opening of the play. Compositional strategies that Hildegard employed within her lyrical chants are used in even more sophisticated ways in the play, which is a work of significant scope, taking some forty-five minutes to perform. Melodic motives have opportunities to grow and develop over time within the characters, giving the music a dramatic power, with some use of irony and even of humor. It is a serious work which confronts the serious challenges to monastic life that Hildegard surely knew very well as the leader of a community. She has crafted an epic statement about the difficult journeys faced by individual members, the importance of the choices made each makes, and the role of community in providing support.The play does not end in a triumphant bang, but rather in a pleading wimper, as seen in the final chant “In Principio.” The theological themes of chant were very important to Hildegard, who gives the women a finale to sing in the person of Christ on the cross. The play is deliberately left open, making room for the ongoing choices of those who sing their parts against a cosmic backdrop.