Hildegard Fantasy No. 3 - O Quam Mirabilis

Hildegard Fantasy No. 3 - O Quam Mirabilis (2024)

-for Solo Guitar

Duration: approx. 7 1/2 minutes

Difficulty: Advanced

This work is the third in a set of three fantasies for solo guitar, each based upon plainchant by 12th Century composer, philosopher, mystic, abbess and polymath Hildegard of Bingen.

Motives and melodic phrases from Hildegard’s plainchants have been used freely throughout, occasionally quoted in full, though often represented by motives and intervals which provide a starting point for my own melodic statements. The music seeks to explore an ethereal soundscape evoking a meeting place between earthly and spiritual realms.

O quam mirabilis est

prescientia divini pectoris

que prescivit omnem creaturam.

Oh how miraculous is

the foreknowing of the holy heart

which anticipated all creation.