Hildegard von Bingen: Voice of the Blood

CD (total time 76:55)

Recorded October-November 1994 in the church of St. Pantaleon, Köln

Released in 1995 by Deutsche Harmonia Mundi / BMG Classics (05472773462) in co-production with WDR Köln

Booklet 57 pp.

 

Sequentia’s Hildegard von Bingen Project: Initially in collaboration with the West German Radio Cologne (WDR Köln) Sequentia made a series of recordings of the complete works of Germany’s most important medieval composer, the abbess and visionary Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179).

In celebration of the legend of the noble martyr, Saint Ursula, and her 11,000 virgin companions, who were murdered in Cologne by the barbarian soldiers when they refused to renounce their Christianity. The cult of this Virgin Martyr spread widely and was well-known to monastic women. Here, Sequentia’s ensemble of ten women’s voices, directed by Barbara Thornton, in joined by fiddler Elizabeth Gaver. This is the only Sequentia recording in which Benjamin Bagby did not participate.