I have picked “O frondens” from the Ordo Virtutum by Hildegard von Bingen as a musical sample to listen to. Early Western music seems to me very sublime, concentrating on the spiritual world of man. It happens since Early Western music was religious and was created in order to help a person reach out to God. I experienced a feeling of flight and light sadness because of the smooth melancholic motif of the main voice that contrasts vividly with the deep, monotonous sound of the choir. I associated this piece of music with a calm, relaxed expression on my face with my eyes closed and turned to the sky since it has ecclesiastical moods and reminds me of something unearthly and sublime.
I did not want to move to this music. I tried to freeze and close my eyes because while listening to such a melody, it is necessary to feel the soul’s movement, not the body. The work evoked images of the church and the light breaking through the colored stained-glass windows. This association with prayer and church comes from Early Western music and has a close cultural and historical relationship with religion. The mood of this musical passage is calm and blissful, which follows from the single bright sounds of the main voices. Combined with soft continuous bass, they bring a sacred feeling.
What struck me most about “O frondens” is the harmony and use of timbre, which is different from modern Western music. The voices in harmony move together and create various modal effects (Hansen et al., 2012), which provides the sample with bright harmonious schemes. It makes the piece lyrical, melodic, and sublime and does not create harsh and dissonant sounds, which originally made me choose harmony as a term to describe. The timbre of the sample is “subtle” to the listener’s ears, which corresponds to the instrumental sound of the Renaissance, but is not confirmed by the known data on vocal performance (Hansen et al., 2012). I have paid special attention to it since the timbre here is high, creating a musical and spiritual vibration as if pushing a person forward and up.
References
von Bingen, H. (n.d.). O frondens. From the Ordo Virtutum. Web.
Hansen B., Whitehouse, D. & Silverman, C. (2012). Introduction to music appreciation. American Public University System ePress.