Hildegard Fantasy 1 - Ave Generosa

Hildegard Fantasy No. 1 - Ave Generosa (2024)

-for Solo Guitar

Duration: approx. 6 minutes

Difficulty: Advanced

Commissioned by the Adelaide Guitar Festival for the 2025 Adelaide International Classical Guitar Competition.

This work is the first 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.

Ave generosa, gloriosa et intacta puella.

Tu pupilla castitatis, tu materia sanctitatis, que Deo placuit.

Hail, well-born girl, untouched and full of glory.

You ward of purity, you substance of holiness, pleasing to God.