# Before Hildegard von Bingen?



## aioriacont (Jul 23, 2018)

I found her music to be interesting, though it is not so much in my personal taste.
But there's a heavenly quality to it, I just need to get more used to homophony.
Anyway, the only known composer before her that I found some stuff to listen to is "Kassia".
Are there others with a somehow established recording to listen to that are from an even older generation than HvB?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

There is lots of music - church music and popular music -- and lots of recordings, but very often the name of the composer isn't known.

A good place to start is with Fulbert of Chartres, this is worth hearing









Another contemporary of Hildegard was Abelard. Here are some notes I made on his Planctus David (Dolorum Solatium) which should give you some direction exploring recordings



> Its form is repetitive and the melody is simple enough to risk becoming irritating. It is long, and the audience of today doesn't have a spontaneous understanding of oral Latin.
> 
> Despite these performance challenges, I've found these versions, have I missed any?
> 
> ...


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## aioriacont (Jul 23, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> There is lots of music - church music and popular music -- and lots of recordings, but very often the name of the composer isn't known.
> 
> A good place to start is with Fulbert of Chartres, this is worth hearing
> 
> ...


thanks a lot! Organum: Solem Justitie by Fulbert of Chartres is wonderful!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

aioriacont said:


> thanks a lot! Organum: Solem Justitie by Fulbert of Chartres is wonderful!


In that organum she uses a drone to give a sense of stillness which contrasts with the lively upper voices very effectively.

Another ensemble worth exploring is Sequentia. And there are lots of interesting recordings from Venance Fortunat, always sensual.

Here are the notes (unproofed) from the Fulbert of Chartres CD



> FULBERT OF CHARTRES
> 
> Fulbert, born around 960 in Italy, of a poor family (pauper de sorde levatus ), did brilliant studies in art and science in a French cathedral school. It is not certain whether he was the disciple of Gerbert, but he must have known the works of this erudite scholarfrom Reims, as copies of them were found in the manuscripts at the School of Chartres: towards 987, and certainly before 992, Fulbert was teaching liberal arts in this famous school. He drew from his study of the classical poets the models for the formal perfection of poetry and in the De Institutione Musica by Boethius, he found the technical rules of music: his competence in musical theory is evident in his commentaries found in the margin of some copies of this ancient musical treatise.
> In 1006 chosen by Robert the Pious who had been crowned at Orleans on 25 December 987, he was consecrated as bishop of Chartres by his former fellow student Leothric, archbishop of Sens. On 7 September 1020, the romanesque cathedral at Chartres was destroyed by fire. Fulbert undertook its reconstruction, and salvaged the ancient royal portal which still bears today the symbolic representation of music and mathematics. For the ded-ication of the new cathedrah Fulbert composed three responses, and these were rapidly diffused and sung around the Christian world - as early as the 11th century they are already foundfrom Aquitaine to the far corner of Bavaria, in St Emmeran-de-Ratisbonne. Six years after his journey to Rome in 1022, Fulbert died on the 10 April 1028, leaving behind the memory of an enthusiastic pastor, a wildly known scholar, and a talented com-poser and poet.
> ...


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## classical yorkist (Jun 29, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> There is lots of music - church music and popular music -- and lots of recordings, but very often the name of the composer isn't known.
> 
> A good place to start is with Fulbert of Chartres, this is worth hearing
> 
> View attachment 138370


Thanks for this suggestion, really interesting listening. Some very interesting discordance. At one time I thought I was listening to Ligeti.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

aioriacont said:


> I found her music to be interesting, though it is not so much in my personal taste.
> But there's a heavenly quality to it, I just need to get more used to homophony.
> Anyway, the only known composer before her that I found some stuff to listen to is "Kassia".
> Are there others with a somehow established recording to listen to that are from an even older generation than HvB?


Individual _named_ composers are few and far between the further back you look. "Anonymous" wrote the vast majority of early Middle Ages music. But among that body of repertory there is a wealth of chant and other styles which are readily available.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I listened to some 9th century music today, on this CD


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

The Benedictine monastery of Saint Gall (Sankt Gallen) acted in the early medieval period as a creative center for the development of music and poetry concerned with the liturgy. To be found there were the oldest named composer-poets from the West, especially monks such as Ratpert (d. 890), Notker Balbulus (d. 912) and Tuotilo (d. 913). They enlarged and broadened out the scope of existing liturgical chants. Such tropes and sequences were brought together in the 10th century in Sankt Gallen's codices 484 and 381, with a precise notation in neumes which is unique to the Abbey. This collection presents the first music of Western culture which can be ascribed to individual creators.

The Ensemble Gilles Binchois has included sequences and tropes by all three of these composer monks on their CD _Music and poetry in Saint Gall_. The German ensemble Ordo Virtutum has recorded the sequences and tropes of Notker Balbulus.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

This polyphonic music is likely tens of thousands of years old, and much more interesting than monodic chant.


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## Ekim the Insubordinate (May 24, 2015)

I don't know where this one falls in terms of before or after Hildegard, but I have found it fascinating - a medieval religious drama.


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## aioriacont (Jul 23, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> In that organum she uses a drone to give a sense of stillness which contrasts with the lively upper voices very effectively.
> 
> Another ensemble worth exploring is Sequentia. And there are lots of interesting recordings from Venance Fortunat, always sensual.
> 
> Here are the notes (unproofed) from the Fulbert of Chartres CD


thanks! Yes, Sequentia recorded also a great amount (probably all of which is available to performance) from HvB too, it is good to know that there people willing to revive the music from those times.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

aioriacont said:


> it is good to know that there people willing to revive the music from those times.


I think that word _revive_ is misleading, because so little is known about how to turn the scores into sound that each new release is more akin to a new experiment in interpretation. Sequentia, for example, spent a lot of time exploring contemporary story telling practices in communities in Iceland, some of these practices go back to the vikings and before. And they used this to inform their interpretations.


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