Viriditas: for ten players

Viriditas is a word associated with the composer and abbess Hildegard von Bingen and can mean vitality, fecundity, mutability and growth. This work takes as its starting point a passage of writing from Hildegard’s illustrated work Scivias, which describes a vivid, ritualistic and sometimes terrifying vision of the cosmos. The movement material in the original dance performance explored various ritualistic behaviours. In the music six types of material, all derived from a continuous and never-repeating melodic line, are intertwined to create a continually shifting structure that moves between moments of tranquil calmness and erratic, hocketing episodes. The piece as a whole can be thought of as an imagined ritual for dancers, musicians and audience: an expression of catharsis and resolution.