Anonymous 4 – The Origin of Fire: Music and Visions of Hildegard von Bing (2005) {SACD ISO + FLAC 24bit/88,2kHz}

Returning to the music of Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th-century German abbess and mystic, Anonymous 4 explores the theme of the Pentecostal power of the “Fiery Spirit”. Hildegard’s intensely emotional chants and visions (including the monumental hymn O ignee spiritus and some of her finest antiphons) are presented here framed by hymns and sequences that she and her convent sisters would have heard and sung every day.

After 18 years spent together on the road and in the recording studio, Anonymous 4 decided to call it a day at the end of its 2004 touring season. Sad news for the early music world to be sure, but Anonymous 4 has decided to go out with a bang rather than a whimper, producing as its last scheduled Harmonia Mundi album a second collection of Hildegard von Bingen to go with the group’s great first collection, 11,000 Virgins. The Origin of Fire: Music and Visions of Hildegard von Bingen differs from other offerings of a similar kind in that Anonymous 4 develops a context for Hildegard’s material, combining it with music that Hildegard and her nuns would have sung with regularity. In addition, Anonymous 4 has set to music, apparently for the first time, some of Hildegard’s text-only “visions” by utilizing recitation tones found in medieval sources. One usually finds such music without words, as they are designed to be adaptable for a number of texts within a certain portion of the liturgy – it is nice that Anonymous 4 has located something to hang onto them so that we may hear these psalm tones in recorded form.

Tracklist:
01. Hymn: Veni creator spiritus
02. Sequence: Veni spiritus eternorum alme
03. Antiphon: O quam mirabilis est
04. Vision 1: The fire of creation (prologue)
05. Vision 1: The fire of creation
06. Sequence: O ignis spiritus paracliti
07. Vision 2: Wisdom and her sisters (prologue)
08. Vision 2: Wisdom and her sisters
09. Responsory: O felix anima
10. Vision 3: The fiery spirit (prologue)
11. Vision 3: The fiery spirit
12. Hymn: O ignee spiritus
13. Vision 4: Love (prologue)
14. Vision 4: Love
15. Antiphon: Caritas habundat in omnia
16. Antiphon: O eterne deus
17. Hymn: Beata nobis gaudia