Hildegard von Bingen - Celestial Harmonies - Naxos: 8557983 - CD or download

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Hildegard, born 910 years ago is the first composer we can confidently identify by name. Technically simple though they may be, her melodies are imaginative and sensual. These recordings rate... — BBC Music Magazine, July 2008, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 28th Apr 2008
Catalogue No: 8557983
Label: Naxos
Length: 73 minutes

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Hildegard: O cohors milite floris

Work length15:46

$4.00

$5.15

Oxford Camerata
Jeremy Summerly

Hildegard: O successores fortissimi leonis

Work length8:19

$2.00

$2.60

Oxford Camerata
Jeremy Summerly

Hildegard: O vos imitatores excelse

Work length6:32

$1.00

$1.30

Oxford Camerata
Jeremy Summerly

Hildegard: O dulcis electe

Work length6:16

$1.00

$1.30

Oxford Camerata
Jeremy Summerly

Hildegard: O victoriosissimi Triumphatores

Work length9:35

$2.00

$2.60

Oxford Camerata
Jeremy Summerly

Hildegard: O cruor sanguinis

Work length6:03

$1.00

$1.30

Oxford Camerata
Jeremy Summerly

Hildegard: O vis eternitatis

Work length8:55

$2.00

$2.60

Oxford Camerata
Jeremy Summerly

O vis aeternitatis (Version for choir)

Track length8:55

$2.00

$2.60

Hildegard: De Sancta Maria , O splendidissima gemma

Work length12:32

$3.00

$3.85

Oxford Camerata
Jeremy Summerly

O splendidissima gemma

Track length12:32

$3.00

$3.85

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About

Now enjoying cult status since her ‘re-discovery’ twenty five years ago, Hildegard von Bingen, the tenth child of an aristocratic family, entered a convent at the age of eight and spent the remainder of her eighty years as a nun as well as a mystic, the latter half as abbess of her own convent. Hildegard’s great musico-poetic collection was completed around the year 1150. Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum (Symphony of the Harmony of Heavenly Revelations) is a collection of 77 songs and one music drama. The subjects of these songs are an idiosyncratic collection of individuals and groups – the pieces included on this recording are variously addressed to the Creator, the Redeemer, the Blessed Virgin Mary, St John the Evangelist, Apostles, Confessors, and Martyrs.

Reviews

July 2008

Hildegard, born 910 years ago is the first composer we can confidently identify by name. Technically simple though they may be, her melodies are imaginative and sensual. These recordings rate highly for clarity, elegance and tonal beauty.

The Oxford Camerata are a group of 12 singers, strong on rhythm (other essentials too, but it is their rhythmic sense that keeps everything alert). There are some excellent voices among them… these are singers with feeling, and at certain moments… the listener catches from them, fresh, the composer’s inspiration.

7th June 2008

In these responsories and antiphons, Jeremy Summerly's pure-voiced sopranos bring rhythmic purpose to her waywardly ecstatic melodies, without impairing their heady devotional atmosphere.
Beauty of sound fully compensates for any lack of verbal clarity in these settings of mystical poetry, still as enigmatic in translation as in Hildegard's idiosyncratic Latin

9th May 2008

Not sure what Hildegard would have thought of CDs, but I hope the 12th-century abbess would have enjoyed these responsories and antiphons, in a resonant acoustic ideal for this sensuous music and Jeremy Summerly’s unaccompanied choir (trimmed to eight voices). For tingling excitement, nothing matches the sopranos’ crazy leaps toward Heaven in the epic O cohors milittiae. Thoughtful performances.

Hildegard von Bingen - Celestial Harmonies

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