* HILDEGARD VON BINGEN: “11,000 Virgins: Chants for the Feast of St. Ursula.” Anonymous 4. (Harmonia Mundi)
Surely, Hildegard von Bingen, the good Abbess of Rupertsberg, did not want her poems praising God, St. Ursula and the church to be sung in such a New Age, monotonous way. The texts leap off the page with life and passion. The singing of Anonymous 4--Ruth Cunningham, Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer, Johanna Maria Rose--dissolves them in a zoned-out blur.
The program arranges chants about the legendary martyr Ursula and her 11,000 virgin companions around a daily church service, as if to re-create a day in the life at Hildegard’s convent. If so, it was a bland and draggy one, focused utterly on pretty sound and no textual illumination.
Still, it’s not Hildegard’s fault, and criticism of this undistinguished recording is unlikely to slow down her curious revival, now fueled by some 15 discs.
*
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