Hildegard von Bingen, Ensemble Belcanto, Dietburg Spohr

Hildegard of Bingen's Ordo Virtutum, written around 1150, is a sung morality play in which a human soul wavers between the Virtues and the Devil. ECM calls it the first large-scale musical work beyond the prescribed form of the Mass liturgy. The Frankfurt Ensemble Belcanto and its founder Dietburg Spohr approach it without any claim to historical literalness, as if the piece had been written for them, and the result stands far from the usual sound of medieval chant on record.

Spohr's group spent more than a quarter of a century as a force in new music, and its previous New Series album, Come un'ombra di luna (ECM New Series 1739), was devoted to Wolfgang Rihm, Konrad Boehmer and other living composers. It had been singing Hildegard since the early 1990s. Here Spohr sings mezzo-soprano and directs a small group of women's voices, among them Andrea Baader, Martina Scharstein, Edith Murasov and Rica Rauch, with a girl's soprano and two speaking voices. The recording was made in October 2010 at the Festeburgkirche in Frankfurt am Main, with Markus Heiland as Tonmeister.

The arrangement is Spohr's, and she reads the drama for its contrasts. In his liner note Gerhard R. Koch describes the soul "erring, doubting, hoping" along the contested path of faith, a kind of psychodrama pointing toward imaginary sacred theatre. Belcanto divides the work into 51 short tracks over nearly 79 minutes, from the opening Patriarchae et Prophetae through the parade of individual Virtues, Humilitas, Caritas, Fides, Spes and the rest, each given its own vocal character. The voices draw on techniques from contemporary vocal music, with gasps, laughter, whistling, staccato attacks and lines that drift into dissonance. The long Epilog closes the disc.

Spohr's stated aim was "to free Hildegard from mystical-esoteric associations and to emphasize the work of an emancipated woman and composer." Richard Morrison in The Times found the performance "sounding more like Stockhausen than sacred medieval music," with "whispers, screams and a multiplicity of sonic layers." Dominy Clements in MusicWeb International described its "gasping and pain-ridden vocalisations, laughing and whistling" and set it apart from the Sequentia and Vox Animæ versions he compared it with.

CD, ECM New Series 2219, released on 26 July 2013, with liner notes by Koch and Spohr in German and English.