{"id":1263,"date":"2013-11-04T15:51:46","date_gmt":"2013-11-04T15:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/cantusfirmus\/?p=1263"},"modified":"2013-11-04T18:57:12","modified_gmt":"2013-11-04T18:57:12","slug":"exploring-the-colours-of-hildegard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/cantusfirmus\/2013\/11\/04\/exploring-the-colours-of-hildegard\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring the colours of Hildegard"},"content":{"rendered":"

The upper-voice choir really started to hit its stride today, as we continued to develop pieces of plainsong by Hildegard von Bingen. There’s a particularly luminescent quality about a choir of ladies’ voices, and as we grow more confident in the weavings of the melodic lines, this is beginning to emerge.<\/p>\n

\"Hildegard_von_Bingen\"So far, we’ve looked at Columba aspexit, <\/em>a Kyrie<\/em> setting, and today we began O Virtus Sapientiae<\/em>. The Kyrie<\/em> in particular has started to find its feet, and rehearsing it free of the piano allowed us to launch the various lines into the upper reaches of the concert-hall, and begin to explore the pacing of the lines, and the pauses in between them.<\/p>\n

There was a nod to the forthcoming festive frivolities, too, in a setting of Silent Night<\/em> for four-part upper-voice ensemble that hinted at a glimmer of Christmas magic to come.<\/p>\n

It’s easy to forget, in rehearsing such evocative music as the plainchant, that time is passing; the end of the rehearsal always comes much more quickly than I expect. It’s a testament to the music’s power, to take you out of the quotidian and move, however briefly, out of time and space.<\/p>\n