Prolation canon on a theme by Hildegard von Bingen (2013) for spatialised string quartet

Duration:  c. 8–10 mins

INTERACTIVE SCORE

PROGRAMME NOTE

The 12th-century mystic Hildegard von Bingen serves as our earliest composer, with a plainchant ‘O Ignus Spiritus’ written in the mid-1100s. In this ‘re-presentation’, the theme is sounded out by a spatialised quartet, playing at different speeds and different times, with ad lib. caesurae between each phrase. The phrases are extended out in long ‘halos’ of sound, often rescored as high string harmonics that infuse the reverberant space with a kind of ‘stained-glass’ echo of the past.