Hildegard von Bingen
The Sacred Fire
Heather Lee and Kim Cunio
ABC Atmospheres 476 5705

The principal difficulty for performing the music of Hildegard von Bingen is that what remains is scarcely more than a basic melody. The performer (or perhaps performers) need to make decisions about the use of instrumentation, rhythm, pacing, inclusion of spoken texts, ornamentation, harmony, vocal timbre, and context within which Hildegard’s melodies are sung: essentially, everything about the musical performance. The booklet written by soprano Heather Lee provides some details of this process, including a set of criteria for realisation that seems to permit nearly everything except the obliteration of the melody.

The resulting music is deliberately slow, with even pacing, attempting to ‘take us into the soundworld of the Benedictine nun’. This statement needs to be understood as poetic, since the accompanying instrumentation includes kamanche (an Arabic fiddle), taragoto (a Hungarian double reed instrument), shakuhachi, baglama (a Turkish lute), a battery of percussion drawn from areas between Turkey and Southern India (and perhaps further depending on the type of gongs used), and harmonium. The latter, that most successful instrument of colonial dissemination, drones throughout the CD as a kind of mark of The Empire of World Music. This is an instrumental combination that would seem troubling were it not so representative of the best of Sydney’s folk music scene. The result is a high standard of performance. Jamal Alrekabi, Tunji Beier, Timothy Constable, Paul Jarman, Llew Kiek, and Browyn Kirkpatrick are all experts of their instruments and improvisers of the highest order.

The poetic idea is that the cross‑continental instrumentation combines with the slow tempo, to create a continuing moment of transcendent omnipresence. For this to be successful, each performer needs to be keenly responsive to the other instruments and voices. For these performers, such requirements are effortless. Cantillation, the choir on several tracks, sounds suitably, lusciously homogenous. The recording quality is also superb, with subtle adjustments in balance always adding to the projection of the mood. Thorough texts and annotations of each piece are provided in the liner notes, though I imagine if you are reading them whilst listening, you are missing the point.

If you enjoy other music by these performers, and I certainly do, you will love this double CD. The singing of Heather Lee in particular will enamour.

I am, however, reminded of my favourite aphorism from Cocteau’s The Cock and The Harlequin: ‘Wagner's works are long works which are long, and long drawn out, because this old sorcerer looked upon boredom as a useful drug for the stupefaction of the faithful.’ Like the best zen koan, it doesn’t stop me listening, but it does make me think differently.

© Michael Hooper