Choral Evensong for the Feast of Hildegard of Bingen
Sunday, May 25th, 2008| September 13, 2008 | ||
| 7:30 pm | to | 8:30 pm |
Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, Kenmore invites you to a Choral Evensong service on Saturday, September 13 at 7:30 PM to celebrate the Feast of Hildegard of Bingen. The music for this evening will consist of music by Hildegard and pieces composed using her texts, to be performed by the women of the Redeemer Choir and violinist Laurie Kempen under the direction of Sheila Bristow.
Listen to Hildegard’s music at Last.fm
About Hildegard of Bingen (from Wikipedia):
Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 17 September 1179), also known as Blessed Hildegard and Saint Hildegard, was a German abbess, artist, author, counselor, linguist, naturalist, scientist, philosopher, physician, herbalist, poet, activist, visionary, and composer. Elected a magistra in 1136, she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165.
She is the first composer with an extant biography. One of her works, the Ordo Virtutum, has been called the first form, and possibly the origin, of opera.
She wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, poems, and the first surviving morality play, while supervising brilliant miniature illuminations.
Attention in recent decades to women of the medieval church has led to a great deal of popular interest in Hildegard, particularly of her music. Approximately eighty compositions have survived, which is one of the largest repertoires among medieval composers.
Hildegard communicated with popes such as Eugene III and Anastasius IV, statesmen such as Abbot Suger, German emperors such as Frederick I Barbarossa, and other notable figures such as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.
Many abbots and abbesses asked her for prayers and opinions on various matters. She traveled widely during her four preaching tours, the only woman to have done so during the Middle Ages.
