The composer writes: Hildegard von Bingen (1098 – 1179) was a woman of many talents: she was an abbess, a philosopher, a scientist, a poet and a composer. An extensive body of her sacred songs was collected in a cycle called the Symphonia armoniae celestium revelationum (The Harmonic Music of Celestial Mysteries). The collection also contains several texts for which Hildegard’s music has been lost, and “O Magna Res” is one of these. “O Magna Res” could be described as a miniature chronology of the Christian spiritual world. It begins with God alone, proceeding to His creation of life, and then to the fall of humanity. As in many of Hildegard’s texts, “O Magna Res” contrasts the Virgin Mary with Eve. Finally, with the birth of Christ (for which the “dawn” is a poetic metaphor) comes the redemption of Woman, and her beneficent influence on the world. TEXT O magna res que in nullo constituto latuit, ita quod non est facta nec creata ab ullo, sed in se ipsa permanet. O vita que surrexisti in aurora, in qua magnus rex sapientiam que in antiquo apud virum sapientem fuit misericorditer manifestavit, quia mulier per foramen antiqui perditoris mortem intravit. O luctus! Ach meror! He planctus, qui in muliere edificati sunt! O aurora, hec abluisti in forma prime coste. O feminea forma, soror Sapientie, quam gloriosa es, quoniam fortissima vita in te surrexit, quam mors nunquam suffocabit. Te Sapientia erexit, ita quod omnes creature per te ornate sunt, in meliorem partem quam in primo acciperent. TRANSLATION (by Barbara Newman) O greatness that lay hidden in nothing created so that it was neither made nor created by anyone but abides in itself. O life, you who arose to the dawn, in which the great king mercifully revealed the wisdom that belonged to the wise man of old: because a woman, through the ancient destroyer’s opening, entered into death. O grief! Ah sorrow! Alas, the mourning that were built in the woman! O dawn, you washed them away in the form of the primal rib. O feminine form, sister of Wisdom how glorious you are, for in you has arisen the mightiest life that death will never stifle. Wisdom has exalted you so that all creatures are adorned through you in a better fashion than they received in the beginning.
