O viridissima virga
Hildegard of Bingen
Recording
Gothic Voices, Christopher Page
- Album
- A Feather on the Breath of God
- Year
- 1981
- Period
- Gregorian chant
- Listen
Painting
Master of Rubielos de Mora
The Coronation of the Virgin with the Trinity, c. 1400
The piece
Hildegard of Bingen, abbess of Rupertsberg on the Rhine, wrote this Latin song to the Virgin in the twelfth century and gathered it in her collection Symphonia. Its text addresses Mary as the greenest branch, after Isaiah's prophecy of a rod from the stem of Jesse.
The recording
Gothic Voices under Christopher Page recorded it in September 1981 at St Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead, for an album that won a Gramophone Award. Gramophone called the album "a jewel in Hyperion's crown."
Other recordings
Sequentia recorded it on Canticles of Ecstasy (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, 1994).