Listening Blog #1 "O rubor sanguinis" - Hildegard von Bingen

-Instrumentation: The instrumentation of this piece is a women’s choir (composed of soprano voices) singing a cappella.

-Texture: Although monophonic (one melodic line), the singers blend almost seamlessly together to create a strong, unified voice and thick texture to the piece.

-Range: The vocal range required in this piece was fairly large: while the piece was solidly within the range of a soprano voice, it did include a large leap into the higher vocal register of the singers.

-Tempo: the tempo of the music was very slow throughout the piece: it seemed almost ceremonial, perhaps used formally in a church as sacred music?

-Meter/Rhythmic Speed: Additionally, the meter of the piece was highly varied and unpredictable: as fluid meter, it didn’t seem to follow a set pattern.

-Volume: The piece showed a good use of dynamics: Whenever beginning a phrase the singers would start off with a soft volume, crescendo into a strong volume at the climax of the phrase, and then decrescendo into soft volume at the end of the phrase. This created a powerful rising/falling dynamic in the piece.

-Timbre: The timbre of the voices was very straight and still with no vibrato, which is a common sound for choirs. It created a very pure, angelic sound.

Other notes: I thought the piece was powerful in its simplicity: the bare quality of the singer’s voices made it seem very intimate and mysterious and emphasized the rise and fall of their voices. There was definitely a strong religious undertone present, in the reverent quality of the sound and the religious lyrics.