Sequentia - Hildegard von Bingen - Celestial Hierarchy (2015) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Since the early 1980s, the ensemble Sequentia’s name has been closely linked with the music of Hildegard von Bingen, the visionary abbess whose musical compositions are among the most astonishing and unique creations from the dynamic milieu of 12th-century Benedictine monasticism.

For this recording, a multi-generational ensemble of seven women’s voices has been assembled, together with the flautist Norbert Rodenkirchen and Bagby playing harp.

Sequentia is one of the world’s most respected and innovative ensembles for medieval music. It is an international group of singers and instrumentalists – united in Paris under the direction of the legendary performer and teacher Benjamin Bagby – dedicated to the performance and recording of Western European music from the period before 1300.

Based on meticulous and original research, intensive rehearsal and long gestation, Sequentia’s virtuosic performances are compelling, surprising in their immediacy, and strike the listener with a timeless emotional connection to our own past musical cultures.

Founded by Benjamin Bagby and the late Barbara Thornton, Sequentia can look back on 35 years of international concert tours, performing throughout Europe, North and South America, India, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Australia.

Sequentia has brought to life over seventy innovative concert programmes that encompass the entire spectrum of medieval music, in addition to the creation of music-theater projects such as Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum, the Cividale Planctus Marie, the Bordesholmer Marienklage, and Heinrich von Meissen’s Frauenleich (several of which were filmed for television).

“her melodic lines hover, dip and glide like some supernaturally graceful bird, and those vertiginous swoops in pitch, executed to perfection by the seven-voice female choir, never fail to thrill.” 8BBC Music Magazine)

“Bagby has assembled what is almost a roll call of Europe's finest singers for this kind of music and has managed to create a miraculously coherent monophonic choir…This is all quality music-making.” (Gramophone Magazine)

Tracklist:

Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179)

01. O splendidissima gemma (Antiphon to Maria) [With canticum: Magnificat anima mea dominum (V fol. 154)]
02. O dulcis electe (Responsory to St. John the Evangelist) [V fol. 161v]
03. O speculum columbe (Antiphon to St. John the Evangelist) [With: Gloria patri (V fol. 161v)]
04. O spectabiles viri (Antiphon to the Patriarchs and Prophets) [V fol. 159v]
05. O cohors milicie floris (Antiphon to the Apostles) [With canticum: Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel (V fol. 160v)]
06. O victoriosissimi triumphatores (Antiphon to the Martyrs) [With: Gloria patri (V fol. 163)]
07. Kyrieleison (R fol. 472v)
08. O vos imitatores excelse (Responsory to the Confessors) [(V fol. 163v)]
09. O gloriosissimi lux (Antiphon to the Angels) [V fol. 159]
10. O vos angeli (Responsory to the Angels) [V fol. 159]

Personnel:
Sequentia
Benjamin Bagby, direction