for string quartet and piano
Commissioned by the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival for Speculum Musicae
Duration: 12 minutes
O Vis Aeternitatis (2000) for piano quintet is loosely based on the Hildegard of Bingen chant by the same name and is one of three works I have written that are connected to her. The others are, Rainbow Body (2000) for orchestra, and Virtue (2013) for soprano solo, male actor, girl’s choir, and chamber orchestra (based on her Ordo Virtutum).
My love of Hildegard’s musical work is connected to both the repetitive quality of shorter motives found embedded within her melodic writing (unusual for Medieval chant) and to the sound world of the higher vaulting female vocal. I have always felt that her melodies have had an affect (a basic emotive quality) to them, much like the way ancient Greek music or classical Indian music approaches the link between modes and mood, and that much of this quality comes from her distinctive intervallic choices from within the modes. O Vis Aeternitatis translates roughly to ‘O Essence of Eternity,’ and is strongly defined by a rising perfect 5th and minor second. Much of the melodic writing in my piece takes that contour as its starting point. O Vis Aeternitatis was commissioned by the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival for Speculum Musicae and lasts approximately 12 minutes.
—Christopher Theofanidis
Biography