Five tongues of flame descend upon her. “Warming, not burning,” as she says in one of her many visions. She dictates this vision to her teacher, Volmar. The gold background the background of eternity. God’s paradise always reoccurring, available. Music the richest part of paradise. It floats high above us, yet penetrates most deeply. Hildegard inherited a millennium of church teachings. Inherited its music, too. Male monks chanting their Gregorian chants amidst the dark, heavy stones of Romanesque architecture. From the age of eight, Hildegard lived behind these same stone walls. She hardly ever saw light except when “a blinding light of exceptional brilliance flowed through my entire brain.” She became theologian, abbess, visionary, poet, playwright, physician. She became our first great female composer, infusing the monk’s chants with daring leaps and a vastly extended range of notes, emotions. Her music a “smoke of perfumes” and a “mirror of light.”*
*These are Hildegard’s own words for her composition, Colomba Aspexit. The work of art is from her book, Scivias (1151). Image is from Wikimedia Commons.
Columba Aspexit by Hildegard von Bingen, Performed by Catherine King.
Check out my latest book, Tennis Players as Works of Art, now available on Amazon. Called “madly ambitious” and named one its 5 featured books of 2024 in the category of Art/Imagination/Creativity by Publisher’s Weekly Booklife, Tennis Players as Works of Art has also been named “One of the Best Books we Read in 2024” (Independent Book Review), “Book of the Year” (Inside Tennis Magazine), and Outstanding Book of the Year for its Original Concept by Independent Publisher’s Book Awards.
Happy to announce that this blog is listed as one of Feedspot’s 90 Best Tennis Blogs and Websites of 2025