Verdant Medicine
Hildegard’s Resonant Apothecary
Verdant Medicine celebrates the music and medicine of Hildegard von Bingen
Interactive Concert Experience
In the words of Hildegard “the senses are to a person as precious stones sealed in a vase.” Deepen your experience with a concert you can not only hear and see—but also touch, smell, and taste!
VERDANT MEDICINE celebrates mystic, medic, and musician Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), a medieval polymath who expanded both Christian theology and the humoral theory of Galen to connect the viriditas (living greenness) of plants and the metaphorical viridity of spirituality directly to the human body and its functioning. Her beliefs are mirrored in the music she wrote for her nuns—ecstatic chants in which unfurling branches, earthbound roots, and medicinal spices are depicted in soaring melodies that swirl throughout an almost three-octave range.
Interactive Add on: This multi-media experience expands upon Hildegard’s music with quotes from her mystical and medical writings paired with projections of images, accompanying fixed media, and materials distributed to the audience that evoke the five senses.
PROGRAM
Reading: Cosmos, Body & Soul – Liber Divinorum (Part I, Vision 4), completed 1173/4
O quam preciosa
Ispariz (instrumental) (music by Shira Kammen)
Reading: Yarrow (Smell) – Physica, written 1150-58
O clarissima mater
Reading: Galangal (Taste) – Physica
O dulcis electe
Reading : God, Cosmos & Humanity (Vision) – Letter to Guibert of Gembloux, 1175
O viridissima virga (instrumental)
Reading – Wild Goose (Touch) – Physica
O virtus sapientie
Reading : Symphony of the Blessed (Hearing) – Scivias, completed 1151/52)
Sophia (music by Shira Kammen – text by Hildegard)
Reading: The Parts of the Earth – Liber Divinorum (Part II, Vision 1)
O viriditas digiti dei (instrumental)
O frondens virga
*all music and readings are composed and written by Hildegard von Bingen except where otherwise noted.
(60 minutes of music - this program is about 75 minutes in performance.)
ARTISTS
Tracy Cowart (voice, harps)
Fiona Gillespie (voice, flute)
Shira Kammen (vielle, harp, voice)
Ben Matus (medieval bagpipes, recorders, percussion)
David McCormick (vielle)
Elisa Sutherland (voice, lyre)
Sian Ricketts (voice, recorders, douçaines)
Niccolo Seligmann (vielles, psaltery, scheitholt)
Spiff Wiegand (percussion)
PAST PERFORMANCES