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O viridissima virga

music and words by Hildegard of Bingen

WHAT MUST IT HAVE SOUNDED LIKE? Were they good singers, those nuns? How many of them were there? Was there a sounding drone, above and around which Hildegard’s melodious chant rose and curled? Did the nuns’ song fill the echoey chapel?

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) was a Benedictine abbess, born in the Rhineland. She lived a long life, during which she founded monasteries at Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen fifteen years later. She was a mystic and a visionary, a theologian, a natural scientist with a particular interest in medicine, and a composer. It is not always possible to disentangle these activities. Her visions, for example, contained ideas about nature that are reflected in her pioneering work in natural science, her theological writings and her compositions. O viridissima virga is a good example of this.

Veneration of the Virgin Mary began early in the history of Christianity and received recognition at the Council of Ephesus in the fifth century, where the Virgin was for the first time officially named the Mother of God. During the early Middle Ages her popularity grew exponentially throughout Western Europe, sometimes to the point of cultishness. The Blessed Virgin – ‘Our Lady’ – was represented in paintings and statuary, poetry and music – Marian hymns, such as Ave maris stella, Salve Regina and Alma Redemptoris Mater, date from this time. In 1160, construction began on the great cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris – ‘Our Lady of Paris’.

The Benedictines had been early adopters of Marian devotion, so it isn’t surprising that Hildegard’s nuns at Rupertsberg and Eibingen should have venerated the Blessed Virgin, especially since they were themselves led by such a strong and brilliant woman. Many of Hildegard’s hymns and songs are dedicated to Mary, often employing imagery that might startle us today. In Ave, generosa, for example, the nuns sang of God’s pleasure as he impregnated the Virgin, holding her in his grip (amplexione) and implanting in her the heat (calor) of his love. Hardly less remarkable is O viridissima virga, which progresses from the association of the words virgo (virgin) and virga (branch or twig), and is an example of what Hildegard called viriditas. In English the word means greenness, and Hildegard used it in a sense that has a distinctly modern ring to it.

Hildegard believed that the natural world, created by God, was also a depiction of his grace, and that the quality of viriditas was therefore sacred: ‘O viridissima virga ave,’ her hymn begins: ‘O hail to the greenest branch.’ But there was another aspect to the imagery in her hymn, both ancient and specific. In the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament, we read the prophecy of Christ’s birth: ‘And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.’

The Tree of Jesse was a common image in medieval art, purportedly showing, in the manner of a family tree, Christ’s ancestors going back to King David and his father, Jesse. So Hildegard’s ‘greenest branch’ – Mary, ‘Our Lady’, the mother of Jesus, the Mother of God – grows not only from nature, but also from this mythological tree, and from this branch comes Jesus.

Nam in te floruit

pulcher flos qui odorem dedit

omnibus aromatibus que arida erant.

Et illa apparuerunt omnia in viriditate plena.

‘For the beautiful flower [Jesus] grew out of you, giving all dried up perfumes back their scent. And these things have reappeared in full greenness.’

And this is how Hildegard’s music sounds. It is an unstoppable outpouring of song that belies its narrow range of a single octave (a fifth above and a fourth below the tonic/drone) with constant movement. The melodic line proliferates like the spreading greenness of viriditas itself, and the last word of the stanza, plena (full), has the longest and widest melisma (the fullest of notes) in the whole song. Now nature’s womb brings forth corn; the birds of the air build their nests on her.

Deinde facta est esca hominibus

et gaudium magnum epulantium.

Unde, o suavis Virgo, in te non deficit ullum gaudium.

‘Then the harvest was gathered for humankind, and a great joy was among those who feasted, such as the sweet virgin herself never lacked.’ So it’s a song of joy, a hymn of praise to Mary in all her virginal fecundity, in all her greenness. But there’s a twist. There’s one last tree to be recalled – the tree of knowledge of good and evil – and in the poem’s penultimate line, we are reminded that, in the Garden of Eden, Eve rejected greenness: ‘Hec omnia Eva contempsit’.

Nothing, however, can derail the purpose of this song. While Hildegard’s melodic line grew more elaborate for nature’s bounty and Mary’s greenness and joy, there is no equivalent word painting, no narrowing of the range or shortening of the phrase for Eve’s contempt. The melody simply flows through this moment into the final line of the song: ‘Nunc autem laus sit Altissimo’ – ‘Now let there be praise to the Highest!’